Slead: low-memory, steady distributed systems slicing

Abstract

Slicing a large-scale distributed system is the process of autonomously partitioning its nodes into k groups, named slices. Slicing is associated to an order on node-specific criteria, such as available storage, uptime, or bandwidth. Each slice corresponds to the nodes between two quantiles in a virtual ranking according to the criteria. For instance, a system can be split in three groups, one with nodes with the lowest uptimes, one with nodes with the highest uptimes, and one in the middle. Such a partitioning can be used by applications to assign different tasks to different groups of nodes, e.g., assigning critical tasks to the more powerful or stable nodes and less critical tasks to other slices. Assigning a slice to each node in a large-scale distributed system, where no global knowledge of nodes’ criteria exists, is not trivial. Recently, much research effort was dedicated to guaranteeing a fast and correct convergence in comparison to a global sort of the nodes. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art slicing protocols exhibit flaws that preclude their application in real scenarios, in particular with respect to cost and stability. In this paper, we identify steadiness issues where nodes in a slice border constantly exchange slice and large memory requirements for adequate convergence, and provide practical solutions for the two. Our solutions are generic and can be applied to two different state-of-the-art slicing protocols with little effort and while preserving the desirable properties of each. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is extensively studied in several simulated experiments.