InfiniBand Network Monitoring: Challenges and Possibilities

Within the realm of High Performance Computing, the InfiniBand Architecture is among the leading interconnects used today. Capable of providing high bandwidth and low latency, InfiniBand is finding applications outside the High Performance Computing domain. One of these is critical infrastructure, encompassing almost all essential sectors as the work force becomes more connected. InfiniBand is not immune to security risks, as prior research has shown that common traffic analyzing tools cannot effectively monitor InfiniBand traffic transmitted between hosts, due to the kernel bypass nature of the IBA in conjunction with Remote Direct Memory Access operations. If Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet is used instead, it is possible to restore traffic visibility in novel ways. This research shows that this approach, together with an InfiniBand capable adapter, allows common traffic analyzing tools to be used to monitor network traffic without unnecessarily sacrificing the bandwidth and performance of InfiniBand