Cloud Media Processing - Embedded Community - Intel

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Service-Aware Load Balancing and Traffic Redirection Load balancing is an essential aspect of managing the workload sent to media servers because it optimizes resource utilization and minimizes bottlenecks that impact performance. Another important workload Load Balancing Cloud Media Processing | Radisys White Paper management task is traffic redirection, which is prevalent in teleconferencing. For example, a conference call may have three participants calling into the cloud, and all of the messaging and signalling needs to be routed to the single node supporting the call. Multi-party services and collaboration can make traffic redirection more complicated. Within the cloud, many identical servers may be required to provide services for many thousands (if not millions) of individual clients. Therefore, a vital component of a cloud service platform is the module that distributes traffic evenly across a dedicated bank of servers. Radisys offers two types of solutions for providing the load balancing function in an ATCA chassis. The first, ‘wirespeed’ load balancing, resides on the ATCA chassis’ internal switch/hub. The second, which provides an intelligent adaptable load balancing solution, is a software technology called ‘FlowEngine,’ designed to run on the Radisys family packet processing blades based on NetLogic and Cavium processors. Wirespeed load balancing leverages functions inherent within the switching silicon itself to parse packet headers for the fields that contain the identity of the particular user (client) or flow and to use the values found to select a service blade or thread to process the packet. Since the switch is able to perform this function on packets as they are received directly off the ingress port, there is very little additional latency. The switch can load balance all external facing ports at the full line data rate. A potential limitation of switch based load balancing is that the forwarding decision has to be made on a completely stateless basis. This means the identification of the target for the packet is derived solely as a mapping (or hash) of the bits in the relevant header fields. The target cannot be specifically assigned when any one connection is first made. In the context of a media server platform, where conferencing is a common requirement, it is important that packets belonging to a particular call can be sent to a specific blade. To address the requirement, FlowEngine-based intelligent load balancing is often a more appropriate solution. FlowEngine is a software technology that allows Radisys to create application-specific load balancing appliances on top of an ATCA packet blade. Such intelligent load balancers are able to look-up key packet header fields or hashes in a table to see if the packet belongs to a known connection or if it belongs to a new one (a previously unseen user/session), in which case a new forwarding rule has to be created. The new forwarding connection can be based upon a weighted round robin snapshot of recent server loadings or can be specifically created as part of the process of setting up the session/call by the control plane part of the media server platform. Both switch and FlowEngine-based load balancing provide high availability features to respond to the failure of a load-balanced service blade. Packets destined for the failed blade can either be redirected to a standby blade, or if a standby is not available, they can be distributed among the server blades which remain in service. Once the failed blade is restored, the load balancer can either return packets back to the original target, or in the case of FlowEngine, minimize further session disruption by using the restored blade only for new users/sessions as they appear. 8
Radisys Solution: Radisys media processing solutions can be delivered with other Radisys products, including ‘wirespeed’ load balancing on ATCA chassis internal switch/hub. Alternatively, a Radisys software technology called ‘FlowEngine’ can deliver load balancing on the Radisys family of NetLogic and Cavium-based packet processing blades (see sidebar: Load Balancing) Developer API’s and Interfaces Developers of telecom applications need straightforward mechanisms to invoke media services that are compatible with a diverse set of application development and run-time environments. This typically entails an API that makes it easier to support multiple client platforms, such as Internet browsers, smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. Radisys Solution: Radisys media servers support standard-based APIs, including: • Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an IETF-defined application-layer control (i.e., signaling) protocol for creating, modifying and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution and multimedia conferences. 7 • VoiceXML (VXML) is the W3C’s standard XML format designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony and mixed initiative conversations. 8 • Media Server Markup Language (MSML), described in RFC 5707, 9 is designed to provide feature– rich media processing control in an IP–based communications network. MSML has been adopted by dozens of vendors and is used to control many millions of IP media server ports in numerous service provider networks around the globe. • HTTP RESTful Interfaces, soon to be supported by Radisys, are growing in popularity because they are a good fit for cloud and other Web-based services due to their HTTP synergies and client-side scripting capabilities (e.g., web browsing). For example, JSON (Javascript Object Notation) or XML-encoded media control functions are well-suited for mobile web Cloud Media Processing | Radisys White Paper applications employing media services hosted in the cloud. In comparison, the protocols previously discussed are better suited for non-IP-based telephony. Requirements for Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) Cloud computing is capable of supporting media processing services, due in large part to significant advances in computing and IP networking technology that are enabling a new class of real-time telecom services. The stringent performance requirements of MPaaS can be met, in many cases, by existing cloud network elements. Special considerations, in order of importance, are outlined in the following, where MPaaS is compared to other applications moving to the cloud. • Network I/O and Associated Load/Traffic Management—High Importance ˸ Media processing controls and manipulates IP media streams, and like other applications involving multiple video sources, it can consume a large amount of network bandwidth. ˸ High-quality network connections are critical to avoid network jitter, which can significantly impair the quality of experience (QoE). • Compute Resources—Medium Importance ˸ Media processing is computing intensive, as are many other applications. • Element Management—Medium Importance ˸ Perhaps more distributed than most applications, media processing can be complex to manage, especially when a service provider’s solution spans in-house service infrastructure and outsourced cloud computing infrastructure. • Billing—Low Importance ˸ Billing is obviously an important aspect of a cloud media processing service. While normally not a function or top concern for the media processing layer, billing grows in importance when the service offering involves customer-facing application layer elements. 9
Page 1 and 2: Overview White Paper | May 2012 Clo
Page 3 and 4: What is a Real-time Service? Cloud
Page 5 and 6: Overcoming Challenges Around MPaaS
Page 7: Radisys Solution: Radisys continues
Page 11 and 12: To better serve cloud computing cus
Page 13 and 14: PSTN Phone 2G Cellular Laptop with

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