CloudPatterns.org

Problem

Even if IT resources are scaled on-demand by a cloud platform, performance and scalability can still be inhibited when remote access to the IT resources is impacted by network bandwidth limitations.

Figure 1 - A scenario whereby a lack of available bandwidth causes performance issues with cloud consumer requests.

Solution

A system is established in which additional bandwidth is allocated dynamically to the network to avoid runtime bottlenecks. This system ensures that individual cloud consumer traffic flows are isolated and that each cloud consumer is using a different set of network ports.

Application

The automated scaling listener mechanism and intelligent automation engine scripts are used to detect when traffic reaches a bandwidth threshold and to then respond with the dynamic allocation of additional bandwidth and/or network ports.

The cloud architecture may be equipped with a network resource pool containing network ports that are made available for shared usage. The automated scaling listener monitors workload and network traffic and signals the intelligent automation engine to increase or decrease the number of allocated network ports and/or bandwidth in response to usage fluctuations.

Note that when applying this pattern at the virtual switch level, the intelligent automation engine may need to run a separate script that adds physical uplinks specifically to the virtual switch. Alternatively, the Direct I/O Access pattern can also be applied to increase network bandwidth that is allocated to the virtual server.

NIST Reference Architecture Mapping

This pattern relates to the highlighted parts of the NIST reference architecture, as follows: