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Ming Zhang, Microsoft Research (Redmond)11:00 a.m.
November 3, 2009
Tech C211
Dr. Ming Zhang, Microsoft Research, Redmond
"Automating Network Application Dependency Discovery: Experiences, Limitations, and New Solutions" | Abstract: Large enterprise networks consist of thousands of services and applications. The performance and reliability of any particular application may depend on multiple services, spanning many hosts and network components. While the knowledge of such dependencies is invaluable for ensuring the stability and efficiency of these applications, thus far the only proven way to discover these complex dependencies is by exploiting human expert knowledge, which does not scale with the number of applications in large enterprises.
Recently, researchers have proposed automated discovery of dependencies from network traffic. In this talk, we present a comprehensive study of the performance and limitations of this class of dependency discovery techniques (including our own prior work), by comparing with the ground truth of five dominant Microsoft applications. We introduce a new system, Orion, that discovers dependencies using packet headers and timing information in network traffic based on a novel insight of delay spike based analysis. Orion improves the state of the art significantly, but some shortcomings still remain. To take the next step forward, Orion incorporates external tests to reduce errors to a manageable level. Our results show Orion provides a solid foundation for combining automated discovery with simple testing to obtain accurate and validated dependencies.
Bio:
Ming Zhang is a researcher in the Networking Research Group at Microsoft Research Redmond. His current research focuses on enterprise network management, data-center network protocols and services, and troubleshooting in wireless networks. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2003 and 2005 respectively and his B.S. from Nanjing University in 1999. Before joining Microsoft Research, he interned at International Computer Science Institute and Intel Research Pittsburgh where he worked on reordering-robust TCP and Internet-scale sensor network service. |
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