PerfsonarUI a Standalone Graphical User Interface for Querying perfSONAR Services

1
PerfsonarUI a Standalone Graphical User
Interface for Querying perfSONAR Services

• Nina Jeliazkova, Luchesar Iliev, Vedrin Jeliazkov
• Institute for Parallel Processing
• Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
• Acad. G. Bonchev 25A, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria
• ninailievvedrin_at_acad.bg

2
Presentation outline

• Introduction
• Network monitoring tools
• Visualization of network measurements
• PERformance Focused Service Oriented Network
  monitoring ARchitecture
• PerfsonarUI
• Design, Implementation and Requirements
• Functionality
• Use cases
• Conclusions and future work

3
Introduction GÉANT2

• A European RE Networking Model
• pan-European research network infrastructure
• Project partners include the EC, 30 of Europes
  national research and education networks (NRENs),
  DANTE and TERENA
• Connects 34 European countries and serves over
  3500 research and education establishments across
  Europe
• Over 30 million users
• Provides extensive international connectivity to
  other world regions
• Provide a gigabit-speeds infrastructure to
  support European research and education
• Deploy the first international hybrid network
  routed IP traffic combined with switched
  point-to-point circuits
• Implement end-to-end QoS provision
• Provide a research infrastructure for network
  technology developments
• Develop a wider range of network services
• Performance monitoring
• Security
• Bandwidth on demand
• Testbed facility
• Mobility and roaming
• Coordinate RTD activities

4
Introduction GÉANT2 TopologyJune 2006

• National Research and Education Networks provide
  high performance services to researchers across
  the world
• Very high throughput and availability
• Low latency and jitter, access to new
  technologies
• A range of network performance monitoring tools

5
Introduction Network Performance Measurements

• Survey showed that many network performance
  metrics are of interest, especially
• Link utilization
• One-way delay and its variation (aka jitter)
• Round trip time and its variation
• Packet loss
• Interface errors and drops
• Differentiation demanded for IPv4/IPv6 and
  unicast/multicast

6
Visualization tools

• A variety of visualization tools already exist
  for displaying these metrics,
• But these have limitations
• Not cross-organizational (reflect different
  transparency policies)
• Combined measurement and visualization of a
  limited set of metrics
• Limitations with respect to user groups

7
Popular state-of-the-art network monitoring tools

• Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG)
  http//oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
• De facto industry standard for visualizing SNMP
  interface counters.
• While very useful, MRTGs statistics are usually
  not presented in a seamless way across different
  domains, hampering their use in more complex
  environments to certain extent.
• CACTI http//www.cacti.net/
• A complete network graphing solution designed to
  harness the power of RRDtools data storage and
  graphing functionality.
• CACTIs capabilities make it very suitable for
  deployments in single domain environments.
• Smokeping http//oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/
• Measures, stores, and displays latency, latency
  distribution, and packet loss.
• Implements a latency measurement plug-in
  interface for seamless extendibility and features
  a powerful anomaly detection and alarm reporting
  mechanism.
• Commercial tools - HP OpenView, Infovista,
  Mercury Interactives tools, etc.
• Designed for network providers internal use
• Not tailored for multi-domain environments.
• When used together, CACTI and SmokePing provide a
  very good summary and detailed overview of some
  of the most important network performance metrics
  like interface rate, round trip time, latency
  distribution, and packet loss. However, a higher
  level of integration between metrics reporting
  across multiple domains is desirable in many
  cases.

8
The need for Multi-domain Monitoring

• Observations
• e2e troubleshooting is not straightforward
• End system vs. network based problem
• Dont want to spend too much time when the
  problem isn't on your network
• IP e2e doesnt stop at the boundaries of a domain
• Monitoring is done locally to your network
• Examples Video-conference, high data rate
  transfer.
• Network researchers needs network information
• The end-users currently dont have any or very
  little view about the networks
• Visualisation currently dictated either by the
  tool or the data provider
• Facilitate the retrieval of monitoring
  information from multiple administrative domains.

9
What is perfSONAR?

• perfSONAR is a software
• Wraps around existing measurement tools data
  stores
• Helps in exporting measurement data
• perfSONAR is an infrastructure
• Provides a set of services (software)
• Help in locating data, making measurements,
  retrieving data, authentication authorisation
  of users
• Provide seamless access to multi-domain data
• perfSONAR provides a framework
• Many types of measurement tools data stores are
  in use today
• Framework allows them to be easily integrated
  into a perfSONAR service

10
perfSONAR system

• perfSONAR (Performance focused Service Oriented
  Network Monitoring Architecture) system
• Is a joint effort of GÉANT2-JRA1, Internet2, and
  ESnet
• The solution is deployed and further elaborated
  in
• European Research Backbone Géant
• Connected European National Research and
  Education Networks
• Internet2 s Abilene network
• ESnet (Energy Sciences network in US)
• RNP (Brazilian NREN)
• Open source development also for other interested
  networks
• Name reflects the choice of Service Oriented
  Architecture

11
perfSONAR system Measurement framework
12
perfSONAR system Measurement framework

• Measurement point layer
• Performs active or passive measurements and
  storing network characteristics.
• A monitoring agent provides information on a
  specific metric by accessing the corresponding
  Measurement Points.
• Each network domain can, in principle, deploy
  Measurement Points of its choice
• Service layer
• Allows for the exchange of measurement data and
  management information between those domains.
• In each domain, a set of entities (services) is
  responsible for the domain control.
• Independent entities in charge of a specific
  functionality,
• authentication and authorisation
• discovery of the other entities providing
  specific functionalities,
• resource management
• Example Measurement Archive (MA) Service is
  designed as a repository for measurement results.
  
• User interface layer
• Adapt the presentation of performance data to be
  appropriate for the needs of specific user
  groups.
• May allow users to perform tests, using the lower
  layers of the framework.

13
Locations of deployed RRD Measurement Archives
and IPPM Measurement Points
18 RRD MAs Ann Arbor Athens Belgrade Berkeley Camb
ridge Poznan Prague Rio Sofia Thessaloniki Trondhe
im Zagreb Zurich
31 IPPM MPs Amsterdam (2) Ann Arbor Athens
(2) Bologna Budapest (2) Frankfurt
(2) Geneva Gent Lisbon Ljubljana London
(2) Madrid Milano New York City Paris (2) Petach
Tikve Poznan (2) Prague Rome Sofia Stockholm Thes
saloniki Tromso Zagreb
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
ü
14
perfSONAR Users

• Deployments of perfSONAR software
• 18 Round Robin Database Measurement Archives (RRD
  MA) Installations (Europe, USA, Brazil)
• IP Performance Measurement Archives (IPPM MA),
  BWCTL MPs, SSH Telnet MPs
• SQL MA starting to be deployed
• E2ECU
• End-2-End Co-ordination unit
• Status of dedicated lightpaths
• Support projects
• EGEE
• Accessing data using their visualisation tools
• Visualisation tools to help Grid Operations
  Centre
• NOC personnel and Users in different networks

15
perfSONAR system User group requirements

• NOC/PERT (Performance Emergency Response Team)
  staff
• Detailed metric information for troubleshooting
• Possibility to trigger additional active tests
• Project members (e.g. EGEE project)
• Visualization of project network with specific
  views and metrics
• End users
• Meaningful application performance metrics
• Administrative/non-technical staff
• Overview functionality

Level of technical experience
16
PerfsonarUI

• Stand alone and open source graphical user
  interface to query a range of perfSONAR services,
  currently
• 18 RRD Measurement Archives (utilization data)
• 1 IPPM Measurement Archive (delay, jitter, loss
  measurements)
• Primary user groups for perfSONARUI
• NOC and PERT staff
• Projects with demanding network performance
  requirements
• End-users with some basic technical background

17
Main Features (1/2)

• A sample user interface (UI) application
  implemented in Java
• Uses Apache Axis SOAP implementation
  http//ws.apache.org/axis.
• Visualization based on http//www.jfree.org/jfreec
  hart library
• Retrieval of published data from RRD MA services
• Retrieval of published data from IPPM MA
  services
• Ability to run queries to RRD MAs and IPPM MAs
  simultaneously (in parallel threads)
• Visualization of OWD, IPDV and packet loss
  between IPPM measurement points
• Compatible with all currently deployed RRD MA
  services, using either the "NMWG(v2) 2" or the
  older "perfsonar" XML schema

18
Main Features (2/2)

• Search for interfaces within a list of
  user-supplied IPv4 or IPv6 addresses
• Parsing of arbitrary IPv4 or IPv6 traceroute
  command output and visualization of
  summary/details for the matched interfaces
• Utilization summary for all selected interfaces
  in tabular and graphical form
• Visualization of utilization details for a chosen
  interface and a selected time period
• interface selection through the interfaces table,
  the bar summary graph, or the radar (spider)
  chart
• time interval for summary selection and details
  selection
• measurement identifier (mid), packet size, group
  size, interval, and precedence selection for IPPM
  measurements
• Zoom capability

19
PerfsonarUI RRD MA visualisation
Selection of Measurement Archives
Traceroute output
Interface information
Interface navigation
Interface utilization
Details for a selected interface
Time scale selection
20
PerfsonarUI IPPM MA visualisation
Endpoint selection
Hades box selection
Measurement details
One way delay

• Active measurements
• Special sending and receiving boxes, synchronized
  via GPS receivers
• IPPM MA deployed at DFN Erlangen

IP delay variation
Packet loss
21
Installation

• Check
• http//wiki.perfsonar.net/jra1-wiki/index.php/Perf
  sonarUI
• for the latest release download links.
• Choose between
• automated installer for Microsoft Windows family
  of operating systems (NT, 2000, XP, 2003)
• simple ZIP archive containing all the required
  files.
• Both distributions include the source code of the
  application.
• Windows users should prefer the automatic
  installer, while the ZIP archive is suitable for
  any other platform.

22
Conclusions and future work

• perfSONAR network monitoring framework
• a promising approach to closing the gap between
  different administrative domains
• Enables better integration between different
  network performance metrics monitoring solutions.
  
• A range of new services are being implemented and
  deployed at present, in particular the Lookup
  Service, the Authentication and Authorisation
  service, as well as Looking Glass, Telnet/SSH,
  NetFlow, SNMP, BWCTL, OWAMP Measurement Points,
  etc.
• PerfsonarUI planned support for
• Lookup Service
• Authentication and Authorisation Service
• Integration between PerfsonarUI and all deployed
  perfSONAR services through its powerful plug-in
  interface.

23
Thank you for your attention!

• Any questions?