KVLB: An In-network Key-Value Load Balancer using Multi-Valued Hash
Xikun Zheng, Zhengyan Zhou, Jingwen Lv, Dong Zhang, Chunming Wu · GLOBECOM 2022 - 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference · 2022
Today's Internet service architectures rely extensively on distributed key-value stores (KV-stores) to meet their performance requirements. One of the bottlenecks lies in the un-balanced load among key-value store nodes caused by the skewed workloads. With the flexibility and power of programmable switch ASICs, in-network computing becomes a propeller of application performance. This paper introduces KVLB, a new system that uses the programmable switch to achieve load balancing between key-value store nodes. KVLB uses selective replication of hot items and allocates replica node locations to the hot items through multi-value hash. This allows the switch to reroute the hot item to the replica node through a multi-valued hash calculation and requires fewer hardware resources for programmable switch ASICs. Our experimental results on an initial prototype show that KVLB improves the throughput of KV-stores at various degrees of skew and rely only on a small amount of switch hardware resources.