System and method for detection of elephant flows

A method of managing a switching device, the method comprising:

• detecting storage locations information included in one or more first messages received for forwarding at the switching device, the storage locations information identifying a storage node and being forwarded to a computing device;
• detecting opening of a connection between the computing device and the storage node based on one or more second messages received for forwarding at the switching device;
• determining identifying characteristics of an elephant flow based on information associated with the connection;
• receiving one or more network packets at the switching device;
• determining whether the network packets are associated with the elephant flow based on the identifying characteristics;
• and
• forwarding the network packets using an altered forwarding strategy when the network packets are associated with the elephant flow;
• wherein the first and second messages and the network packets are received on ports of the switching device.

An information handling system comprising:

• a switching device comprising:
• one or more ports;
• a memory;
• and
• a control unit coupled to the ports and the memory;
• wherein the control unit is configured to:
• detect storage locations information included in one or more first messages received for forwarding on one or more of the ports, the first messages being exchanged between a Hadoop client on a computing device and a name node of a Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) or the Hadoop client and a first data node of the HDFS, and the storage locations information identifying a second data node of the HDFS;
• detect opening of a connection between the Hadoop client or a storage module of the first data node and a storage module of the second data node based on one or more second messages received for forwarding on one or more of the ports;
• determine identifying characteristics of an elephant flow based on information associated with the connection;
• determine whether one or more network packets received for forwarding on one or more of the ports are associated with the elephant flow based on the identifying characteristics;
• and
• forward the network packets using an altered forwarding strategy when the network packets are associated with the elephant flow.