Abstract

In cloud computing environments guarantees, consistency mechanisms, (shared) state and transactions are frequently traded for robustness, scalability and performance. Based on this challenge we present CMQ, a UDP-based inherently asynchronous message queue to orchestrate messages, events and processes in the cloud. CMQ’s inherently asynchronous design is shown to perform especially well in modern Layer 2 switches in data center networks, as well as in the presence of errors. CMQ’s lightweight edge-to-edge design, which is somewhat similar to Unix Pipes, makes it very composable. By presenting our work, we hope to initiate discussion on how to implement lightweight messaging paradigms that are aligned with the overall architectures and goals of cloud computing.