Efficient embedding virtual clusters in physical network is a challenging problem. In this paper we consider a scenario where physical network has a structure of a balanced tree. This assumption is justified by many real- world implementations of datacenters. We consider an extension to virtual cluster embedding by introducing replication among data chunks. In many real-world applications, data is stored in distributed and redundant way. This assumption introduces additional hardness in deciding what replica to process. By reduction from classical NP-complete problem of Boolean Satisfia- bility, we show limits of optimality of embedding. Our result holds even in trees of edge height bounded by three. Also, we show that limiting repli- cation factor to two replicas per chunk type does not make the problem simpler.
The most popular virtual network abstraction for batch-processing applications today is the , introduced in the Oktopus paper @cite_2 , and later studied by many others @cite_9 @cite_6 . Several heuristics have been developed to compute good'' embeddings of virtual clusters: embeddings with small footprints (minimal bandwidth reservation costs) @cite_2 @cite_9 @cite_6 . The virtual network embedding problem has also been studied for more general graph abstractions (e.g., motivated by wide-area networks). @cite_11 @cite_3
@cite_9 @cite_3 @cite_6 @cite_2 @cite_11
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It is well-known that cloud application performance can critically depend on the network. Over the last years, several systems have been developed which provide the application with the illusion of a virtual cluster: a star-shaped virtual network topology connecting virtual machines to a logical switch with absolute bandwidth guarantees. In this paper, we debunk some of the myths around the virtual cluster embedding problem. First, we show that the virtual cluster embedding problem is not NP-hard, and present the fast and optimal embedding algorithm VC-ACE for arbitrary datacenter topologies. Second, we argue that resources may be wasted by enforcing star-topology embeddings, and alternatively promote a hose embedding approach. We discuss the computational complexity of hose embeddings and derive the HVC-ACE algorithm. Using simulations we substantiate the benefits of hose embeddings in terms of acceptance ratio and resource footprint. The most natural way to speed-up the training of large networks is to use data-parallelism on multiple GPUs. To scale Stochastic Gradient (SG) based methods to more processors, one need to increase the batch size to make full use of the computational power of each GPU. However, keeping the accuracy of network with increase of batch size is not trivial. Currently, the state-of-the art method is to increase Learning Rate (LR) proportional to the batch size, and use special learning rate with "warm-up" policy to overcome initial optimization difficulty. By controlling the LR during the training process, one can efficiently use large-batch in ImageNet training. For example, Batch-1024 for AlexNet and Batch-8192 for ResNet-50 are successful applications. However, for ImageNet-1k training, state-of-the-art AlexNet only scales the batch size to 1024 and ResNet50 only scales it to 8192. The reason is that we can not scale the learning rate to a large value. To enable large-batch training to general networks or datasets, we propose Layer-wise Adaptive Rate Scaling (LARS). LARS LR uses different LRs for different layers based on the norm of the weights and the norm of the gradients. By using LARS algoirithm, we can scale the batch size to 32768 for ResNet50 and 8192 for AlexNet. Large batch can make full use of the system's computational power. For example, batch-4096 can achieve 3x speedup over batch-512 for ImageNet training by AlexNet model on a DGX-1 station (8 P100 GPUs). Many resource allocation problems in the cloud can be described as a basic Virtual Network Embedding Problem (VNEP): the problem of finding a mapping of a request graph (describing a workload) onto a substrate graph (describing the physical infrastructure). Applications range from mapping testbeds (from where the problem originated), over the embedding of batch-processing workloads (virtual clusters) to the embedding of service function chains. The different applications come with their own specific requirements and constraints, including node mapping constraints, routing policies, and latency constraints. While the VNEP has been studied intensively over the last years, complexity results are only known for specific models and we lack a comprehensive understanding of its hardness.This paper charts the complexity landscape of the VNEP by providing a systematic analysis of the hardness of a wide range of VNEP variants, using a unifying and rigorous proof framework. In particular, we show that the problem of finding a feasible embedding is @math -complete in general, and, hence, the VNEP cannot be approximated under any objective, unless @math holds. Importantly, we derive @math -completeness results also for finding approximate embeddings, which may violate, e.g., capacity constraints by certain factors. Lastly, we prove that our results still pertain when restricting the request graphs to planar or degree-bounded graphs. Many resource allocation problems in the cloud can be described as a basic Virtual Network Embedding Problem (VNEP): finding mappings of request graphs (describing the workloads) onto a substrate graph (describing the physical infrastructure). In the offline setting, the two natural objectives are profit maximization, i.e., embedding a maximal number of request graphs subject to the resource constraints, and cost minimization, i.e., embedding all requests at minimal overall cost. The VNEP can be seen as a generalization of classic routing and call admission problems, in which requests are arbitrary graphs whose communication endpoints are not fixed. Due to its applications, the problem has been studied intensively in the networking community. However, the underlying algorithmic problem is hardly understood. This paper presents the first fixed-parameter tractable approximation algorithms for the VNEP. Our algorithms are based on randomized rounding. Due to the flexible mapping options and the arbitrary request graph topologies, we show that a novel linear program formulation is required. Only using this novel formulation the computation of convex combinations of valid mappings is enabled, as the formulation needs to account for the structure of the request graphs. Accordingly, to capture the structure of request graphs, we introduce the graph-theoretic notion of extraction orders and extraction width and show that our algorithms have exponential runtime in the request graphs' maximal width. Hence, for request graphs of fixed extraction width, we obtain the first polynomial-time approximations. Studying the new notion of extraction orders we show that (i) computing extraction orders of minimal width is NP-hard and (ii) that computing decomposable LP solutions is in general NP-hard, even when restricting request graphs to planar ones.