Data plane and Control Plane Separation

As Engineering Systems become more complex, architects, designers and developers have to think about ways to optimize their systems for simplicity, performance and resilience. A common approach is to view engineering systems as two logical constructs the Control Plane and the Data Plane.

Separating Data Plane and control plane

The approach of separating the control plane from the data plane was first made popular in the networking domain. This terminology can be applied into engineering and applied the principles set out by networking to describe a way of separating logical parts of the system. The main focus is to split functionality based on controlling the data (Control Plane) and retrieving the data (Data Plane). The goal is to create highly available systems that can still serve customers when parts of the system are down.

Data Plane

The Data Plane is where most of the data transforms happen. The Data Plane is optimized for speed of processing for simplicity and for regularity. Simply, data plane refers to all the functions and processes that forward data from one interface to another based on control plane logic

Control Plane

The Control Plane is what controls the data plane. Simply, it refers to all functions and processes that determine which path to use to send data. Changes such as creating, saving, deleting and updating of resources. The control plane also handles propagating any changes made.

As an example….

An example of a control plane and data plane could be that when a user sets up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), the control plane will handle the set-up such as saving TOTP or a Backup MFA method to the database. If you were using an event-style architecture, the control plane would also deal with new or updated events and propagate them to a database. The data plane would deal with retrieving this information from the database.

Benefits of separating the Data Plane and Control Plane

This separation of control, plane and data plane is both logical and real. The code development, hardware, development, infrastructure integration can all benefit from separating control, plane and data plane functions as separation delivers no words.

High availability

Most of the systems need to be highly available. Separating the application logic into a control plane and data plane allows us to focus the attention on the most critical systems to have up and running. The most critical system here is the data plane.

The control plane still needs to be reliable and as available as possible, but if a service went down, we would want it to be the control plane and have the data plane still serving.

Scaling

When splitting logic into a data and control plane, we can see that the data plane receives a higher volume of requests than the control plane.

On this basis, it makes sense that we can scale these services independently to allow us to scale tasks based on what endpoints and requests are being made.

Resilience

If there’s a problem with the control plane, it should affect to the data plane.. If the control plane goes down, data plane continues.

Simplicity

Software can be up-gradable in flight. Both the in flight to support, continuous deployment. If functions need to change, you can just instantiate a new data plane and route data to the new data plane without taking down the hole system. The control can be distributed for improved overall management of systems. Overall, you can drive data plane or control plane, innovations separately from the other plane at fungible.

Drawbacks of separating Control and Data Plane

The control plane and data plane is a great architecture to be followed in some situations.

It’s easy to over-engineer solutions, increasing scope and slowing down the delivery time and the solution to become more complex. This can increase the time it takes to understand the solution before being able to develop in it.

When deciding on the architecture of your system, you need to have a solid plan. Your should have a clear understanding of the requirements, both functional and non functional and understanding about what each component in your design will be doing

Management Plane

Other than the Data plane and control plane, the management plane also can be defined. The Management plane has supplementary services for Data Plane that are not blocking functions to the business operations. Simply management plane, handles all the functions you use to control and monitor.

The control plane and data plane architecture is great to follow when developing services to be highly available and independently scalable. However, before committing to it, make sure to research and ensure it’s the correct architectural pattern for you to follow for the solution you are building.

Goodbye until the next time… Happy Reading!!!