5. Feature set and Requirements from Infrastructure

A profile Profiles, Profile Extensions & Flavours specifies the configuration of a Cloud Infrastructure node (host or server); Profile Extensions (specialisations) may specify additional configuration. Workloads utilise profiles to describe the configuration of nodes on which they can be hosted to execute on. Workload Flavours provide a mechanism to specify the VM or Pod sizing information to host the workload. Depending on the requirements of the workloads, a VM or a Pod will be deployed as per the specified Flavour information on a node configured as per the specified Profile. Not only do the nodes (the hardware) have to be configured but some of the capabilities also need to be configured in the software layers (such as Operating System and Virtualisation Software). Thus, a Profile can be defined in terms of configuration needed in the software layers, the Cloud Infrastructure Software Profile, and the hardware, the Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profile.

5.1. Cloud Infrastructure Software profile description

Cloud Infrastructure Software layer is composed of 2 layers, Figure 5.1:

  • The virtualisation Infrastructure layer, which is based on hypervisor virtualisation technology or container-based virtualisation technology. Container virtualisation can be nested in hypervisor-based virtualisation

  • The host OS layer

Cloud Infrastructure software layers

Figure 5.1 Cloud Infrastructure software layers

Ref

Cloud Infrastructure Software

Type

Definition/Notes

Capabilities Reference (1)

infra.sw.001

Host Operating System

<value>

Values such as Ubuntu20.04, Windows 10 Release #, etc.

e.cap.021

infra.sw.002

Virtualisation Infrastructure Layer

<value>

Values such as KVM, Hyper-V, Kubernetes, etc.

e.cap.022

  1. Reference to the capabilities defined in Infrastructure Capabilities, Measurements and Catalogue.

For a host (compute node or physical server), the virtualisation layer is an abstraction layer between hardware components (compute, storage, and network resources) and virtual resources allocated to a VM or a Pod. Figure 5.2 represents the virtual resources (virtual compute, virtual network, and virtual storage) allocated to a VM or a Pod and managed by the Cloud Infrastructure Manager.

Cloud Infrastructure Virtual resources

Figure 5.2 Cloud Infrastructure Virtual resources

A Cloud Infrastructure Software Profile is a set of features, capabilities, and metrics offered by a Cloud Infrastructure software layer and configured in the software layers (the Operating System (OS) and the virtualisation software (such as hypervisor)). Figure 5.3 depicts a high level view of the Basic and High Performance Cloud Infrastructure Profiles.

Cloud Infrastructure Software Profiles

Figure 5.3 Cloud Infrastructure Software Profiles

The following sections detail the Cloud Infrastructure Software Profile capabilities per type of virtual resource.

5.1.1. Virtual Compute Profiles

Table 5-1 and Table 5-2 depict the features related to virtual compute.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

Capabilities Reference

infra.com.cfg.001

CPU allocation ratio

<value>

Number of virtual cores per physical core.

i.cap.016

infra.com.cfg.002

NUMA alignment

Yes/No

Support of NUMA at the Host OS and virtualisation layers, in addition to hardware.

e.cap.007

infra.com.cfg.003

CPU pinning

Yes/No

Binds a vCPU to a physical core or SMT thread. Configured in OS and virtualisation layers.

e.cap.006

infra.com.cfg.004

Huge pages

Yes/No

Ability to manage huge pages of memory. Configured in OS and virtualisation layers.

i.cap.018

infra.com.cfg.005

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)

Yes/No/Optional

Allows multiple execution threads to be executed on a single physical CPU core. Configured in OS, in addition to the hardware.

e.cap.018

Table 5-1: Virtual Compute features.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

Capabilities Reference

infra.com.acc.cfg.001

IPSec Acceleration

Yes/No/Optional

IPSec Acceleration

e.cap.008

infra.com.acc.cfg.002

Transcoding Acceleration

Yes/No/Optional

Transcoding Acceleration

e.cap.010

infra.com.acc.cfg.003

Programmable Acceleration

Yes/No/Optional

Programmable Acceleration

e.cap.011

infra.com.acc.cfg.004

GPU

Yes/No/Optional

Hardware coprocessor

e.cap.014

infra.com.acc.cfg.005

FPGA/other Acceleration H/W

Yes/No/Optional

Non-specific hardware. These Capabilities generally require hardware-dependent drivers be injected into workloads.

e.cap.016

Table 5-2: Virtual Compute Acceleration features.

5.1.2. Virtual Storage Profiles

Table 5-3 and Table 5-4 depict the features related to virtual storage.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

infra.stg.cfg.001

Catalogue Storage Types

Yes/No

Support of Storage types described in the catalogue

infra.stg.cfg.002

Storage Block

Yes/No

infra.stg.cfg.003

Storage with replication

Yes/No

infra.stg.cfg.004

Storage with encryption

Yes/No

Table 5-3: Virtual Storage features.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

infra.stg.acc.cfg.001

Storage IOPS oriented

Yes/No

infra.stg.acc.cfg.002

Storage capacity oriented

Yes/No

Table 5-4: Virtual Storage Acceleration features.

5.1.3. Virtual Networking Profiles

Table 5-5 and Table 5-6 depict the features related to virtual networking.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

infra.net.cfg.001

Connection Point interface

IO virtualisation

e.g. virtio1.1

infra.net.cfg.002

Overlay protocol

Protocols

The overlay network encapsulation protocol needs to enable ECMP in the underlay to take advantage of the scale-out features of the network fabric.

infra.net.cfg.003

NAT

Yes/No

Support of Network Address Translation

infra.net.cfg.004

Security Groups

Yes/No

Set of rules managing incoming and outgoing network traffic

infra.net.cfg.005

Service Function Chaining

Yes/No

Support of Service Function Chaining (SFC)

infra.net.cfg.006

Traffic patterns symmetry

Yes/No

Traffic patterns should be optimal, in terms of packet flow. North-south traffic shall not be concentrated in specific elements in the architecture, making those critical choke-points, unless strictly necessary (i.e. when NAT 1:many is required).

Table 5-5: Virtual Networking features.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

Capabilities Reference

infra.net.acc.cfg.001

vSwitch optimisation

Yes/No and SW Optimisation

e.g. DPDK.

e.cap.019

infra.net.acc.cfg.002

SmartNIC (for HW Offload)

Yes/No

HW Offload

e.cap.015

infra.net.acc.cfg.003

Crypto acceleration

Yes/No

e.cap.009

infra.net.acc.cfg.004

Crypto Acceleration Interface

Yes/No

Table 5-6: Virtual Networking Acceleration features.

5.1.4. Security

See Chapter 7 Security.

5.1.5. Platform Services

This section details the services that may be made available to workloads by the Cloud Infrastructure.

Reference

Feature

Type

Description

infra.svc.stg.001

Object Storage

Yes/No

Object Storage Service (e.g S3-compatible)

Table 5-7: Cloud Infrastructure Platform services.

Platform Service Category

Platform Service Examples

Data Stores/Databases

Ceph, etcd, MongoDB, Redis

Streaming and Messaging

Apache Kafka, Rabbit MQ

Load Balancer and Service Proxy

Envoy, Istio, NGINX

Service Mesh

Envoy, Istio

Security & Compliance

Calico, cert-manager

Monitoring

Prometheus, Grafana (for Visualisation), Kiali (for Service Mesh)

Logging

Fluentd, ElasticSearch (Elastic.io, Open Distro), ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana)

Application Definition and Image Build

Helm

CI/CD

Argo, GitLab, Jenkins

Ingress/Egress Controllers

Envoy, Istio, NGINX

Network Service

CoreDNS, Istio

Coordination and Service Discovery

CoreDNS, etcd, Zookeeper

Automation and Configuration

Ansible

Key Management

Vault

Tracing

Jaeger

Table 5-7a: Service examples.

5.1.5.1. Platform Services - Log Management Service (LMS)

The table below specifies a set of requirements for the Log Management Service (LMS).

Reference

Requirement

Notes

pas.lms.001

LMS must support log management from multiple, distributed sources

pas.lms.002

LMS must manage log rotation at configurable time periods

pas.lms.003

LMS must manage log rotation at configurable log file status (%full)

pas.lms.004

LMS must manage archival and retention of logs for configurable time periods by different log types

pas.lms.005

LMS should ensure log file integrity

pas.lms.006

LMS must monitor log rotation and log archival processes

pas.lms.007

LMS must monitoring the logging status of all log sources

pas.lms.008

LMS must ensure that each logging host’s clock is synched to a common time source

pas.lms.009

LMS must support reconfiguring of logging as needed based on policy changes, technology changes, and other factors

pas.lms.010

LMS must supppoort the documenting and reporting of anomalies in log settings, configurations, and processes

pas.lms.011

LMS must support the correlating of entries from multiple logs that relate to the same event

pas.lms.012

LMS must support the correlating of multiple log entries from a single source or multiple sources based on logged values (e.g., event types, timestamps, IP addresses

pas.lms.013

LMS should support rule-based correlation

Table 5-7d: Platform Services - Log Management Service (LMS) Requirements.

5.2. Cloud Infrastructure Software Profiles features and requirements

This section will detail Cloud Infrastructure Software Profiles and associated configurations for the 2 types of Cloud Infrastructure Profiles: Basic and High Performance.

5.2.1. Virtual Compute

Table 5-8 depicts the features and configurations related to virtual compute for the two (2) Cloud Infrastructure Profiles.

Reference

Feature

Type

Basic

High Performance

infra.com.cfg.001

CPU allocation ratio

<value>

N:1

1:1

infra.com.cfg.002

NUMA alignment

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.com.cfg.003

CPU pinning

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.com.cfg.004

Huge pages

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.com.cfg.005

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)

Yes/No/Optional

Y

Optional

Table 5-8: Virtual Compute features and configuration for the 2 types of Cloud Infrastructure Profiles.

Table 5-9 lists the features related to compute acceleration for the High Performance profile. The table also lists the applicable Profile Extensions and Extra Specs that may need to be specified.

Reference

Feature

Profile-Extensions

Profile Extra Specs

infra.com.acc.cfg.001

IPSec Acceleration

Compute Intensive GPU

infra.com.acc.cfg.002

Transcoding Acceleration

Compute Intensive GPU

Video Transcoding

infra.com.acc.cfg.003

Programmable Acceleration

Firmware-programmable adapter

Accelerator

infra.com.acc.cfg.004

GPU

Compute Intensive GPU

infra.com.acc.cfg.005

FPGA/other Acceleration H/W

Firmware-programmable adapter

Table 5-9: Virtual Compute Acceleration features.

5.2.2. Virtual Storage

Table 5-10 and Table 5-11 depict the features and configurations related to virtual storage for the two (2) Cloud Infrastructure Profiles.

Reference

Feature

Type

Basic

High Performance

infra.stg.cfg.001

Catalogue storage Types

Yes/No

Y

Y

infra.stg.cfg.002

Storage Block

Yes/No

Y

Y

infra.stg.cfg.003

Storage with replication

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.stg.cfg.004

Storage with encryption

Yes/No

Y

Y

Table 5-10: Virtual Storage features and configuration for the two (2) profiles.

Table 5-11 depicts the features related to Virtual storage Acceleration

Reference

Feature

Type

Basic

High Performance

infra.stg.acc.cfg.001

Storage IOPS oriented

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.stg.acc.cfg.002

Storage capacity oriented

Yes/No

N

N

Table 5-11: Virtual Storage Acceleration features.

5.2.3. Virtual Networking

Table 5-12 and Table 5-13 depict the features and configurations related to virtual networking for the 2 types of Cloud Infrastructure Profiles.

Reference

Feature

Type

Basic

High Performance

infra.net.cfg.001

Connection Point interface

IO virtualisation

virtio1.1

virtio1.1*

infra.net.cfg.002

Overlay protocol

Protocols

VXLAN, MPLSoUDP, GENEVE, other

VXLAN, MPLSoUDP, GENEVE, other

infra.net.cfg.003

NAT

Yes/No

Y

Y

infra.net.cfg.004

Security Group

Yes/No

Y

Y

infra.net.cfg.005

Service Function Chaining

Yes/No

N

Y

infra.net.cfg.006

Traffic patterns symmetry

Yes/No

Y

Y

Table 5-12: Virtual Networking features and configuration for the 2 types of SW profiles.

Note: * might have other interfaces (such as SR-IOV VFs to be directly passed to a VM or a Pod) or NIC-specific drivers on guest machines transiently allowed until mature enough solutions are available with a similar efficiency level (for example regarding CPU and energy consumption).

Reference

Feature

Type

Basic

High Performance

infra.net.acc.cfg.001

vSwitch optimisation (DPDK)

Yes/No and SW Optimisation

N

Y

infra.net.acc.cfg.002

SmartNIC (for HW Offload)

Yes/No/Optional

N

Optional

infra.net.acc.cfg.003

Crypto acceleration

Yes/No/Optional

N

Optional

infra.net.acc.cfg.004

Crypto Acceleration Interface

Yes/No/Optional

N

Optional

Table 5-13: Virtual Networking Acceleration features.

5.3. Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profile description

The support of a variety of different workload types, each with different (sometimes conflicting) compute, storage, and network characteristics, including accelerations and optimizations, drives the need to aggregate these characteristics as a hardware (host) profile and capabilities. A host profile is essentially a “personality” assigned to a compute host (also known as physical server, compute host, host, node, or pServer). The host profiles and related capabilities consist of the intrinsic compute host capabilities (such as number of CPU sockets, number of cores per CPU, RAM, local disks and their capacity, etc.), and capabilities enabled in hardware/BIOS, specialised hardware (such as accelerators), the underlay networking, and storage.

This chapter defines a simplified host, profile and related capabilities model associated with each of the different Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profile and related capabilities; the two Profiles, Profile Extensions & Flavours (aka host profiles, node profiles, hardware profiles) and some of their associated capabilities are shown in Figure 5.4.

Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profiles and host associated capabilities

Figure 5.4 Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profiles and host associated capabilities

The profiles can be considered to be the set of EPA-related (Enhanced Performance Awareness) configurations on Cloud Infrastructure resources.

Note: In this chapter we shall not list all of the EPA-related configuration parameters.

A given host can only be assigned a single host profile; a host profile can be assigned to multiple hosts. In addition to the host profile, Profiles and Workload Flavours and additional capability specifications for the configuration of the host can be specified. Different Cloud Service Providers (CSP) may use different naming standards for their host profiles. For the profiles to be configured, the architecture of the underlying resource needs to be known.

Ref

Cloud Infrastructure Resource

Type

Definition/Notes

Capabilities Reference

infra.hw.001

CPU Architecture

<value>

Values such as x64, ARM, etc.

e.cap.020

The host profile properties are specified in the following sub-sections. The following diagram (Figure 5.5) pictorially represents a high-level abstraction of a physical server (host).

Generic model of a compute host for use in Host Profile configurations

Figure 5.5 Generic model of a compute host for use in Host Profile configurations

5.4. Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profiles features and requirements.

The configurations specified in here will be used in specifying the actual hardware profile configurations for each of the Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Profiles depicted in Figure 5-4.

5.4.1. Compute Resources

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

infra.hw.cpu.cfg.001

Minimum number of CPU sockets

Specifies the minimum number of populated CPU sockets within each host (*)

2

2

infra.hw.cpu.cfg.002

Minimum number of cores per CPU

Specifies the number of cores needed per CPU (*)

20

20

infra.hw.cpu.cfg.003

NUMA alignment

NUMA alignment enabled and BIOS configured to enable NUMA

N

Y

infra.hw.cpu.cfg.004

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)

SMT enabled that allows each core to work multiple streams of data simultaneously

Y

Optional

(*) Please note that these specifications are for general purpose servers normally located in large data centres. Servers for specialised use with the data centres or other locations, such as at edge sites, are likely to have different specifications.

Table 5-14: Minimum sizing and capability configurations for general purpose servers.

5.4.1.1. Compute Acceleration Hardware Specifications

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

Capabilities Reference

infra.hw.cac.cfg.001

GPU

GPU

N

Optional

e.cap.014

infra.hw.cac.cfg.002

FPGA/other Acceleration H/W

HW Accelerators

N

Optional

e.cap.016

Table 5-15: Compute acceleration configuration specifications.

5.4.2. Storage Configurations

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

infra.hw.stg.hdd.cfg.001*

Local Storage HDD

Hard Disk Drive

infra.hw.stg.ssd.cfg.002*

Local Storage SSD

Solid State Drive

Recommended

Recommended

Table 5-16: Storage configuration specification.

Note: *This specified local storage configurations including # and capacity of storage drives.

5.4.3. Network Resources

5.4.3.1. NIC configurations

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

infra.hw.nic.cfg.001

NIC Ports

Total number of NIC Ports available in the host

4

4

infra.hw.nic.cfg.002

Port Speed

Port speed specified in Gbps (minimum values)

10

25

Table 5-17: Minimum NIC configuration specification.

5.4.3.2. PCIe Configurations

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

infra.hw.pci.cfg.001

PCIe slots

Number of PCIe slots available in the host

8

8

infra.hw.pci.cfg.002

PCIe speed

Gen 3

Gen 3

infra.hw.pci.cfg.003

PCIe Lanes

8

8

Table 5-18: PCIe configuration specification.

5.4.3.3. Network Acceleration Configurations

Reference

Feature

Description

Basic

High Performance

Capabilities Reference

infra.hw.nac.cfg.001

Crypto Acceleration

IPSec, Crypto

N

Optional

e.cap.009

infra.hw.nac.cfg.002

SmartNIC

offload network functionality

N

Optional

e.cap.015

infra.hw.nac.cfg.003

Compression

Optional

Optional

infra.hw.nac.cfg.004

SR-IOV over PCI-PT

SR-IOV

N

Optional

e.cap.013

Table 5-19: Network acceleration configuration specification.