Prepare for the future of cloud infrastructure: Distributed Services Platforms By moving service modules closer to applications, Distributed Services (DS) Platforms will future-proof cloud architectures–improving performance, responsiveness, observability, and troubleshooting. Network pioneer Silvano Gai demonstrates DS Platforms’ remarkable capabilities and guides you through implementing them in diverse hardware. Focusing on business benefits throughout, Gai shows how to provide essential shared services such as segment routing, NAT, firewall, micro-segmentation, load balancing, SSL/TLS termination, VPNs, RDMA, and storage–including storage compression and encryption. He also compares three leading hardware-based approaches–Sea of Processors, FPGAs, and ASICs–preparing you to evaluate solutions, ask the right questions, and plan strategies for your environment. Understand the business drivers behind DS Platforms, and the value they offer See how modern network design and virtualization create a foundation for DS Platforms Achieve unprecedented scale through domain-specific hardware, standardized functionalities, and granular distribution Compare advantages and disadvantages of each leading hardware approach to DS Platforms Learn how P4 Domain-Specific Language and architecture enable high-performance, low-power ASICs that are data-plane-programmable at runtime Distribute cloud security services, including firewalls, encryption, key management, and VPNs Implement distributed storage and RDMA services in large-scale cloud networks Utilize Distributed Services Cards to offload networking processing from host CPUs Explore the newest DS Platform management architectures Building a Future-Proof Cloud Architecture is for network, cloud, application, and storage engineers, security experts, and every technology professional who wants to succeed with tomorrow’s most advanced service architectures.

Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1:  Introduction to Distributed Platforms 1.1 The Need for a Distributed Services Platform 1.2 The Precious CPU Cycles 1.3 The Case for Domain-Specific Hardware 1.4 Using Appliances 1.5 Attempts at Defining a Distributed Services Platform 1.6 Requirements for a Distributed Services Platform 1.7 Summary Chapter 2:  Network Design 2.1 Bridging and Routing     2.1.1 L2 Forwarding     2.1.2 L3 Forwarding     2.1.3 LPM Forwarding in Hardware     2.1.4 VRF 2.2 Clos Topology 2.3 Overlays     2.3.1 IP in IP     2.3.2 GRE     2.3.3 Modern Encapsulations     2.3.4 VXLAN     2.3.5 MTU Considerations 2.4 Secure Tunnels 2.5 Where to Terminate the Encapsulation 2.6 Segment Routing 2.7 Using Discrete Appliance for Services     2.7.1 Tromboning with VXLAN     2.7.2 Tromboning with VRF     2.7.3 Hybrid Tromboning 2.8 Cache-Based Forwarding 2.9 Generic Forwarding Table 2.10 Summary 2.11 Bibliography Chapter 3:  Virtualization 3.1 Virtualization and Clouds 3.2 Virtual Machines and Hypervisors     3.2.1 VMware ESXi     3.2.2 Hyper-V     3.2.3 QEMU     3.2.4 KVM     3.2.5 XEN 3.3 Containers     3.3.1 Docker and Friends     3.3.2 Kata Containers     3.3.3 Container Network Interface     3.3.4 Kubernetes 3.4 The Microservice Architecture     3.4.1 REST API     3.4.2 gRPC 3.5 OpenStack 3.6 NFV 3.7 Summary 3.8 Bibliography Chapter 4:  Network Virtualization Services 4.1 Introduction to Networking Services 4.2 Software-Defined Networking     4.2.1 OpenFlow     4.2.2 SD-WAN     4.2.3 gRIBI     4.2.4 Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) 4.3 Virtual Switches     4.3.1 Open vSwitch (OVS)     4.3.2 tc-flower     4.3.3 DPDK RTE Flow Filtering     4.3.4 VPP (Vector Packet Processing)     4.3.5 BPF and eBPF     4.3.6 XDP     4.3.7 Summary on Virtual Switches 4.4 Stateful NAT 4.5 Load Balancing 4.6 Troubleshooting and Telemetry 4.7 Summary 4.8 Bibliography Chapter 5:  Security Services 5.1 Distributed Firewalls 5.2 Microsegmentation 5.3 TLS Everywhere 5.4 Symmetric Encryption 5.5 Asymmetric Encryption 5.6 Digital Certificates 5.7 Hashing 5.8 Secure Key Storage 5.9 PUF 5.10 TCP/TLS/HTTP Implementation 5.11 Secure Tunnels     5.11.1 IPsec     5.11.2 TLS     5.11.3 DTLS 5.12 VPNs 5.13 Secure Boot 5.14 Summary 5.15 Bibliography Chapter 6:  Distributed Storage and RDMA Services 6.1 RDMA and RoCE     6.1.1 RDMA Architecture Overview     6.1.2 RDMA Transport Services     6.1.3 RDMA Operations     6.1.4 RDMA Scalability     6.1.5 RoCE     6.1.6 RoCE vs iWARP     6.1.7 RDMA Deployments     6.1.8 RoCEv2 and Lossy Networks     6.1.9 Continued Evolution of RDMA 6.2 Storage     6.2.1 The Advent of SSDs     6.2.2 NVMe over Fabrics     6.2.3 Data Plane Model of Storage Protocols     6.2.4 Remote Storage Meets Virtualization     6.2.5 Distributed Storages Services     6.2.6 Storage Security     6.2.7 Storage Efficiency     6.2.8 Storage Reliability     6.2.9 Offloading and Distributing Storage Services     6.2.10 Persistent Memory as a New Storage Tier 6.3 Summary 6.4 Bibliography Chapter 7:  CPUs and Domain-Specific Hardware 7.1 42 Years of Microprocessor Trend Data 7.2 Moore’s Law 7.3 Dennard Scaling 7.4 Amdahl’s Law 7.5 Other Technical Factors 7.6 Putting It All Together 7.7 Is Moore’s Law Dead or Not? 7.8 Domain-specific Hardware 7.9 Economics of the Server 7.10 Summary 7.11 Bibliography Chapter 8:  NIC Evolution 8.1 Understanding Server Buses 8.2 Comparing NIC Form Factors     8.2.1 PCI Plugin Cards     8.2.2 Proprietary Mezzanine Cards     8.2.3 OCP Mezzanine Cards     8.2.4 Lan On Motherboard 8.3 Looking at the NIC Evolution 8.4 Using Single Root Input/Output Virtualization 8.5 Using Virtual I/O 8.6 Defining “SmartNIC” 8.7 Summary 8.8 Bibliography Chapter 9:  Implementing a DS Platform 9.1 Analyzing the Goals for a Distributed Services Platform     9.1.1 Services Everywhere     9.1.2 Scaling     9.1.3 Speed     9.1.4 Low Latency     9.1.5 Low Jitter     9.1.6 Minimal CPU Load     9.1.7 Observability and Troubleshooting Capability     9.1.8 Manageability     9.1.9 Host Mode versus Network Mode     9.1.10 PCIe Firewall 9.2 Understanding Constraints     9.2.1 Virtualized versus Bare-metal Servers     9.2.2 Greenfield versus Brownfield Deployment     9.2.3 The Drivers     9.2.4 PCIe-only Services     9.2.5 Power Budget 9.3 Determining the Target User     9.3.1 Enterprise Data Centers     9.3.2 Cloud Providers and Service Providers 9.4 Understanding DSN Implementations     9.4.1 DSN in Software     9.4.2 DSN Adapter     9.4.3 DSN Bump-in-the-Wire     9.4.4 DSN in Switch     9.4.5 DSNs in an Appliance 9.5 Summary 9.6 Bibliography Chapter 10:  DSN Hardware Architectures 10.1 The Main Building Blocks of a DSN 10.2 Identifying the Silicon Sweet Spot     10.2.1 The 16 nm Process     10.2.2 The 7 nm Process 10.3 Choosing an Architecture 10.4 Having a Sea of CPU Cores 10.5 Understanding Field-Programmable Gate Arrays 10.6 Using Application-Specific Integrated Circuits 10.7 Determining DSN Power Consumption 10.8 Determining Memory Needs     10.8.1 Host Memory     10.8.2 External DRAM     10.8.3 On-chip DRAM     10.8.4 Memory Bandwidth Requirements 10.9 Summary 10.10 Bibliography Chapter 11:  The P4 Domain-Specific Language 11.1 P4 Version 16 11.2 Using the P4 Language 11.3 Getting to Know the Portable Switch Architecture 11.4 Looking at a P4 Example 11.5 Implementing the P4Runtime API 11.6 Understanding the P4 INT 11.7 Extending P4     11.7.1 Portable NIC Architecture     11.7.2 Language Composability     11.7.3 Better Programming and Development Tools 11.8 Summary 11.9 Bibliography Chapter 12:  Management Architectures for DS Platforms 12.1 Architectural Traits of a Management Control Plane 12.2 Declarative Configuration 12.3 Building a Distributed Control Plane as a Cloud-Native Application 12.4 Monitoring and Troubleshooting 12.5 Securing the Management Control Plane 12.6 Ease of Deployment 12.7 Performance and Scale 12.8 Failure Handling 12.9 API Architecture 12.10 Federation     12.10.1 Scaling a Single SDSP     12.10.2 Distributed Multiple SDSPs     12.10.3 Federation of Multiple SDSPs 12.11 Scale and Performance Testing 12.12 Summary 12.13 Bibliography Index