CN110572284B - Method, device and system for upgrading virtual network element - Google Patents

Abstract

The application provides a network element upgrading method, device and system. Wherein, the method comprises the following steps: a first network element in the network element cluster receives an upgrading instruction, wherein each network element in the network element cluster is used for providing the same network service; the first network element switches the network element state of the first network element to an unreachable state according to the upgrading instruction, wherein the first network element does not provide network service when in the unreachable state; and after the first network element determines to switch the network element state of the first network element to the unreachable state, upgrading the first network element. The method can ensure that the network element cluster can still normally provide the network service in the upgrading process of the first network element, and can improve the stability and reliability of the operation of the network service.

Description

Method, device and system for upgrading virtual network element

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of communications technologies, and in particular, to a method, an apparatus, and a system for upgrading a virtual network element.

Background

A network element, also called a network function (VF), is a minimum unit that can be monitored and managed in network management, and can independently perform a certain function. The network element may run on a physical machine or on a virtual machine or container created in a physical device (e.g., a server). A network element may also be referred to as a physical network element when the network element operates on a physical machine, or a virtual network element when the network element operates on a virtual machine or container.

With the increasing of the service types provided by the telecom operators, the network element versions need to be updated frequently, that is, the network elements need to be upgraded to meet new requirements.

However, in the process of upgrading the network element, the device (e.g., a physical machine, a virtual machine, etc.) in which the network element is deployed needs to be restarted to complete the network element upgrade regardless of the physical network element or the virtual network element. During the period of restarting the device, the network element cannot provide any network service, which will cause network interruption and abnormal operation of communication service. How to ensure that the network element does not interrupt the network service in the upgrading process and improve the stability and reliability of the service operation is a technical problem to be solved urgently at present.

Disclosure of Invention

The embodiment of the invention discloses a network element upgrading method, a network element upgrading device and a network element upgrading system, which can ensure that network service is not interrupted in the upgrading process and improve the stability and reliability of service operation.

In a first aspect, the present application provides a method for upgrading a network element, where the method includes: a first network element in a network element cluster receives an upgrade instruction, wherein each network element in the network element cluster is used for providing the same network service; the first network element switches the network element state to an unreachable state according to the upgrading instruction, wherein the first network element does not provide network service when in the unreachable state; and after determining to switch the network element state to the unreachable state, the first network element performs upgrading.

In the scheme provided by the application, in order to upgrade a first network element in a network element cluster, the first network element switches the network element state according to a received upgrade instruction, the first network element switches the network element state to an unreachable state, and it is determined that the first network element switched to the unreachable state does not receive a service packet sent by a scheduling device any more and does not provide network services any more. Optionally, the first network element may be deployed on a virtual machine or a physical machine. According to the method and the device, the first network element is upgraded after the first network element is determined to be switched to the unreachable state, the first network element can be prevented from being upgraded by directly restarting a virtual machine or a physical machine, the first network element is guaranteed not to receive the service message in the upgrading process, the stability and the reliability of network service operation are improved, and the influence on the processing of the service message is avoided.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the first network element shields a service address of the first network element, so that the service address of the first network element is not acquired by a scheduling device of the network element cluster, where the scheduling device is configured to schedule a service packet in the network element cluster.

In the scheme provided by the application, the first network element realizes the switching of the network element states by shielding the service address of the first network element, and after the first network element shields the service address, the scheduling device cannot acquire the service address of the first network element, and the network element state of the first network element needs to be further discriminated and determined.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, before the first network element determines to shield the service address of the first network element, the first network element receives a service packet sent to the first network element based on the service address, and provides a network service for the service packet.

In the solution provided in the present application, the network element status switching of the first network element is a process, and is not completed instantaneously, that is, the first network element starts to mask the service address until it is determined that there is a period of time for masking the service address, and during this period of time, the scheduling device will still send the service packet to the first network element. Therefore, the first network element still receives the service message and provides the network service for the received service message before determining to shield the service address, so that the first network element can still process the service message and provide the network service in the period of switching the network element state, the normal operation of the network service is ensured, and the stability and the reliability of the operation of the network service are improved.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, a first network element receives at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, where each detection packet is used to obtain a service address of the first network element; the first network element discards the at least one detection packet.

In the scheme provided by the application, the first network element performs the network element state switching by discarding at least one received detection message periodically sent by the scheduling device, and because the first network element discards the detection message, the scheduling device cannot receive a response message sent by the first network element and further cannot acquire the service address of the first network element, but in order to reduce the misjudgment rate and avoid that the first network element does not respond to the detection message sent by the scheduling device in time due to network fluctuation and the like, the scheduling device does not immediately stop sending the service message to the first network element, that is, the service message is continuously scheduled to the first network element and is processed by the first network element. In addition, the scheduling device will continue to send a probe message to the first network element to detect the network element status of the first network element, and repeat the above process, if the response message of the first network element is not received after the preset time, the scheduling device will stop scheduling the service message to the first network element, and the scheduling device determines that the first network element is already in an unreachable state. Similarly, if the first network element does not receive the service packet within the preset time, it may be determined that the scheduling device has sensed that the first network element is in the unreachable state, and then may not schedule the service packet to the first network element, so that it may be determined that the first network element has successfully switched to the unreachable state. Optionally, the preset time may be set as required.

Optionally, the first network element may distinguish the probe packet from the service packet according to address information included in the received packet. Because each network element has a unique detection address, the scheduling device sends a detection message according to the detection address, and therefore the first network element can judge the type of the message according to whether the received message contains the detection address. Alternatively, the first network element may distinguish the type of the received packet according to the service port number. The first network element has a plurality of service ports, and different service ports receive different types of messages, so that the first network element can determine whether a probe message or a service message is received according to the service port number.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the first network element recovers the service address of the first network element after the first network element is upgraded, so that the scheduling device of the network element cluster obtains the service address of the first network element.

In the solution provided by the application, the first network element restores the service address after the upgrade, that is, the service address is unmasked, so that the scheduling device is ensured to obtain the service address of the first network element again, the scheduling device can reschedule the service packet to the first network element, and the first network element can continue to process the service packet to provide the network service.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, a first network element receives at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, where each detection packet is used to obtain a service address of the first network element; and the first network element responds to at least one detection message periodically sent by the scheduling equipment.

In the solution provided by the present application, the first network element cancels shielding of the service address of the first network element by responding to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, so as to complete switching of the network element status, and after receiving the response packet sent by the first network element, the scheduling device may determine that the first network element has been switched from the unreachable status to the reachable status, and may continue to process the service packet to provide the network service.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, before the first network element switches the network element state to the unreachable state according to the upgrade instruction, the configuration of the network service of the first network element is recorded; and before the first network element switches the network element state from the unreachable state to the reachable state, restoring the network service according to the recorded configuration.

In the solution provided by the present application, the first network element relies on the corresponding configuration to provide the network service. Therefore, the first network element records the configuration corresponding to the current network service before switching to the unreachable state, and recovers according to the recorded corresponding configuration before switching the network element state from the unreachable state to the reachable state, so that the first network element can continue to normally provide the network service after upgrading, and other network elements in the network element cluster can start an upgrading process.

With reference to the first aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the first aspect, after receiving an upgrade instruction, a first network element sends a first status switching message to a second network element in the network element cluster, where the first status switching message is used to indicate that the second network element is switched to an unreachable state, the second network element does not provide network services when the second network element is in the unreachable state, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance; and after upgrading, the first network element sends a second state switching message to the second network element, wherein the second state switching message is used for indicating that the second network element is switched from a non-reachable state to a reachable state, and the second network element provides the network service when in the reachable state.

In the scheme provided by the application, the first network element sends the first state switching message to the second network element after receiving the upgrade instruction, and the first network element sends the second state switching message to the second network element after upgrading, so that the second network element and the first network element synchronously complete the network element state switching, and it can be ensured that the scheduling device can timely sense the change of the network element state of the second network element in the upgrade process of the first network element, and avoid that the service message is still scheduled to the second network element for processing when the instance is restarted, thereby ensuring the normal operation of the network service, and providing the stability and reliability of the network service. Alternatively, instances may include physical machines, virtual machines, and containers.

In a second aspect, the present application provides a first network element, including: the receiving module is used for receiving an upgrading instruction; a switching module, configured to switch a network element state of the first network element to an unreachable state according to the upgrade instruction, where the first network element does not provide a network service when in the unreachable state; and the processing module is used for upgrading after determining that the network element state of the first network element is switched to the unreachable state.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the switching module is specifically configured to: shielding the service address of the first network element so that the service address of the first network element is not acquired by a scheduling device of a network element cluster, wherein the scheduling device is used for scheduling a service message in the network element cluster; and determining to shield the service address of the first network element.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the receiving module is further configured to receive a service packet sent based on the service address before the switching module determines to shield the service address of the first network element; the processing module is further configured to provide the network service for the received service packet.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the receiving module is further configured to receive at least one probe packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, where each probe packet is used to obtain a service address of the first network element; the switching module is further configured to discard the at least one detection packet.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the switching module is further configured to recover the service address of the first network element, so that the scheduling device of the network element cluster obtains the service address of the first network element.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the first network element further includes a sending module, where the sending module is configured to respond to at least one probe packet periodically sent by the scheduling device.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the processing module is further configured to record a configuration of a network service of the first network element before the switching module switches the network element status of the first network element to the unreachable status; the processing module is further configured to, before the switching module switches the network element status of the first network element from the unreachable status to a reachable status, restore the network service according to the recorded configuration.

With reference to the second aspect, in a possible implementation manner of the second aspect, the sending module is further configured to send a first status switching message to a second network element after the receiving module receives the upgrade instruction, where the first status switching message is used to indicate that the second network element is switched to an unreachable state, the second network element does not provide a network service when the second network element is in the unreachable state, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance; the sending module is further configured to send a second status switching message to the second network element after the processing module performs the upgrade, where the second status switching message is used to instruct the second network element to switch from a non-reachable status to a reachable status, and the second network element provides the network service when in the reachable status.

In a third aspect, the present application provides a computing device, where the computing device includes a processor and a memory, where the memory is used to store program codes, and the processor is used to call the program codes in the memory to execute the first aspect and the method implemented in conjunction with any one of the first aspects.

In a fourth aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, which stores a computer program, and when the computer program is executed by a processor, the computer program can implement the first aspect and the process of the network element upgrading method provided in connection with any one implementation manner of the first aspect.

In a fifth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, where the computer program product includes instructions, and when the computer program product is executed by a computer, the computer may execute the first aspect and the process of the network element upgrading method provided in connection with any one implementation manner of the first aspect.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention, the drawings needed to be used in the description of the embodiments are briefly introduced below, and it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are some embodiments of the present invention, and it is obvious for those skilled in the art to obtain other drawings based on these drawings without creative efforts.

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system architecture provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of another system architecture provided by embodiments of the present application;

fig. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a network element upgrading system according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 4 is a schematic flowchart of a network element upgrading method according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 5 is a schematic flowchart of another network element upgrading method according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of a first network element according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 is a schematic structural diagram of a computing device according to an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application are described below clearly and completely with reference to the accompanying drawings, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present application, and not all of the embodiments. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present application.

Reference herein to "an embodiment" means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment can be included in at least one embodiment of the application. The appearances of the phrase in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment, nor are separate or alternative embodiments mutually exclusive of other embodiments. It is explicitly and implicitly understood by one skilled in the art that the embodiments described herein can be combined with other embodiments.

First, a part of words and related technologies referred to in the present application will be explained with reference to the accompanying drawings so as to be easily understood by those skilled in the art.

The network element cluster is composed of a plurality of network elements which realize the same function and provide the same service, can provide network service with high reliability and high performance, and can realize load balance or establish a main-standby relation among the network elements in the network element cluster. The functions that can be performed by the network elements in the network element cluster include, but are not limited to: virtual Private Network (VPN), Elastic Load Balance (ELB), Network Address Translation (NAT), speed limiting, and the like.

The network element upgrading refers to that the network element has function change or has problems and needs to be repaired, or the operating system installed by the network element is changed, and the network element with a low version needs to be replaced by the network element with a high version to provide network service. Upgrading a network element, especially a cold upgrade, requires restarting the instance in which the network element components are deployed, so that the upgrade of the network element is only effective. During the network element upgrade process, the network element will not be able to provide network services, resulting in network disruption.

The scheduling device is a device that establishes network connection with a network element cluster and can send a probe packet and a service packet to each network element in the network element cluster, for example, a switch, and the like, and the scheduling device may implement load balancing on the connected network element cluster by using an equal-cost routing (ECMP) technique, for example, A, B, C network elements form one network element cluster, and the scheduling device may perform equal-cost routing processing on network paths corresponding to the three network elements, and schedule the service packet to the three network elements for processing, thereby implementing load balancing.

The ECMP is a routing technology, and in a network environment where a plurality of different links reach the same destination address, the ECMP can use the plurality of links at the same time, thereby implementing multi-path load balancing and link backup, increasing transmission bandwidth, and enabling data transmission of a backup failure link without delay or packet loss.

Examples refer to devices for carrying network elements including, but not limited to, physical machines, virtual machines, containers, and the like.

The present application provides a method for upgrading a network element, where the method is performed by a network element upgrading system, where the network element upgrading system may specifically include one or more network element clusters, each network element cluster includes a plurality of network elements, each cluster has a scheduling device, and optionally, the network element upgrading system may further include an upgrade manager. The upgrading method can ensure that the network element cluster can still normally provide the network service in the network element upgrading process, and improve the stability and reliability of the network service operation.

As shown in fig. 1, the network element upgrade system may be deployed on one or more computing devices (e.g., a central server) on a cloud environment, particularly a cloud environment. The system may also be deployed in an edge environment, specifically on one or more computing devices (edge computing devices) in the edge environment, which may be servers. The cloud environment indicates a central cluster of computing devices owned by a cloud service provider for providing computing, storage, and communication resources; the illustrated edge environment indicates a cluster of edge computing devices geographically distant from the central cloud environment for providing computing, storage, and communication resources.

As shown in fig. 2, the network element upgrading system includes multiple parts (e.g., includes multiple network element clusters), so that the parts of the network element upgrading system may also be distributed and deployed in different environments. For example, a part of the network element upgrade system may be deployed in a cloud environment or an edge environment, respectively, that is, a part of the network element cluster may be deployed in the cloud environment or the edge environment, respectively.

As shown in fig. 3, the network element upgrading system 300 includes an upgrade manager 310 and a network element cluster 320, where the network element cluster 320 includes a network element 321, a network element 322, an element …, and a network element 32N, and the N network elements provide the same network service and are respectively deployed on different instances, where N is a positive integer greater than 1. The functions of each part and the functional units it comprises are briefly described below, respectively. Each network element cluster has a scheduling device, multiple clusters can share the scheduling device, and the scheduling devices of the network element clusters are not shown in the figure.

It should be noted that, in the present application, a network element may refer to various types of network elements, for example: a Terminal Multiplexer (TM), a regenerative Repeater (REG), an add-drop multiplexer (ADM), a data cross connect equipment (DXC), or a network element that implements the functions of an ELB, a VPN, and an NAT. Each type of network element is deployed in a cluster manner, and load balancing and establishment of a main-standby relationship between network elements are realized inside each type of network element cluster, that is, a plurality of network elements cooperate together to realize the same function (for example, a VPN function).

Taking the network element 321 as an example for illustration, other network elements are similar to the network element 321. A state switching unit 3212, configured to switch the network element state of the network element 321 to an unreachable state and determine to switch the network element state to the unreachable state; an upgrading unit 3213 is configured to upgrade the network element 321.

Optionally, the upgrade manager 310 is configured to obtain network element cluster information of each network element deployed in each virtual machine, and perform upgrade orchestration according to the obtained network element cluster information. The upgrade manager 310 includes a plurality of functional units, wherein the data obtaining unit 311 is configured to obtain network element cluster information of each network element, where the network element cluster information mainly includes a cluster name and an identifier (e.g., a network element id) of the network element, and a unique network element corresponding to the cluster name and the identifier of the network element can be determined in the corresponding network element cluster through the identifier of the network element; the summarizing unit 312 is configured to summarize the received network element cluster information, and respectively summarize network element cluster information of different types together, for example, generate a plurality of lists, where each list stores a type of network element cluster and an identifier of a network element belonging to the network element cluster; the arranging unit 313 is configured to perform upgrade arranging according to the upgrade policy, so as to implement that the different types of network element clusters can be upgraded in parallel, that is, part of the network elements in the different types of network element clusters can be arranged to be upgraded at the same time.

When the network element upgrade system is deployed with an upgrade manager, correspondingly, the network element further includes a data collection unit, which still takes the network element 321 as an example. The network element 321 includes a data collecting unit 3210, configured to collect network element cluster information of the network element 321, where the network element cluster information is used for performing upgrade organization by the upgrade manager 310, and includes a network element cluster name and an Identifier (ID) of the network element; a data reporting unit 3211, configured to report the network element cluster information collected by the data collecting unit 3210 to the upgrade manager 310;

it should be understood that the network element upgrading system may be deployed on an instance of one data center, or may be deployed on an instance of a different data center, where the instance includes a virtual machine, a container, and a physical machine, and the application is not limited thereto.

Based on the above, the network element upgrading method, device and system provided by the embodiment of the present application are described below. Referring to fig. 4, fig. 4 is a schematic flowchart of a network element upgrading method according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 4, the method includes, but is not limited to, the following steps:

s401: and the first network element reports the network element cluster information to the upgrade manager.

In this application, the first network element may be any one of network elements in a network element cluster, and in an operation process of the first network element, if a network element with a higher version is found, the first network element determines that the first network element needs to be upgraded, and therefore, the network element cluster information needs to be reported to the upgrade manager. The upgrade manager is used for receiving the network element cluster information reported by all the network elements and assisting the network elements to complete the upgrade. The network element cluster information may include a name of a network element cluster to which the first network element belongs and an ID of the first network element in the network element cluster, and the first network element may be uniquely determined in the network element cluster by the ID. The name of the network element cluster may be named by a network service provided by the network element cluster, such as elastic public network IP (EIP), VPN, ELB, NAT, and the like; the ID of each network element may be a randomly generated segment of a scrambling code, or may be generated by a timestamp, as long as the ID may correspond to a unique network element.

S402: and the upgrade manager performs upgrade orchestration.

The upgrade manager may perform upgrade orchestration in two ways:

1. and after receiving the network element cluster information sent by one network element, the upgrade manager sends an upgrade message to the network element, so that the network element can be upgraded according to the upgrade message.

2. After receiving the network element cluster information sent by the network elements, the upgrade manager firstly collects the network element cluster information sent by the network elements, then performs grouping arrangement on the network elements, sends upgrade information to part of the network elements according to batches, and sends the upgrade information to the network elements of the next batch after the network elements of the previous batch are upgraded successfully.

Specifically, after receiving the network element cluster information sent by the network element with the upgrade requirement, the upgrade manager needs to summarize all the received network element cluster information, that is, to put the information of various network element clusters together respectively.

Optionally, the upgrade manager generates a corresponding list for each type of network element cluster, where the list records the name of the network element cluster and the network element ID corresponding to the network element belonging to the network element cluster. Illustratively, there are 4 network elements belonging to the EIP network element cluster with IDs ID1, ID2, ID3, ID4, respectively, and 3 network elements belonging to the NAT network element cluster with IDs ID5, ID6, ID7, respectively. The upgrade manager generates two lists after receiving the network element cluster information reported by the upgrade manager, wherein one list records a { "cluster name": EIP, "network element ID": [ ID1, ID2, ID3, ID4], and another list has recorded therein { "Cluster name": NAT, "network element ID": [ ID5, ID6, ID7] }.

Further, the upgrade manager needs to perform upgrade orchestration after the aggregation. It is easy to understand that for different types of network element clusters, since the network services provided by them are different, they do not affect each other and can be upgraded in parallel. For the same network element cluster, all network elements cannot be upgraded simultaneously, because the network element cluster cannot normally provide network services, the network services cannot normally run, and the network elements must be upgraded in batches, so that in some network element upgrading processes, another part of network elements always can provide network services normally, and the network is ensured not to be interrupted. Therefore, the upgrade manager needs to send the upgrade message to the network elements in each network element cluster in batches according to the upgrade policy, and ensure that the upgrade message is sent to the network elements in the next batch after the network elements in the previous batch are upgraded successfully, and finally ensure that all the network elements in the whole network element cluster are upgraded successfully. For example, for each network element cluster, half of the network elements are randomly selected to preferentially send an upgrade message, and after the upgrade is successful, the upgrade message is sent to the remaining network elements.

For example, for the two upgrade lists, the upgrade manager first sends upgrade messages to the IDs 1 and 2 in the EIP network element cluster and the IDs 5 and 6 in the NAT network element cluster, and then sends upgrade messages to the IDs 3 and 4 in the EIP network element cluster and the IDs 7 in the NAT network element cluster after the upgrade messages are successfully upgraded.

S403: the upgrade manager sends an upgrade message to the first network element.

In a possible implementation manner, the upgrade message sent by the upgrade manager carries address information of the upgrade package, the first network element parses the received upgrade message to obtain an address of the upgrade package, then obtains the upgrade package according to the address, and can perform upgrade after obtaining the upgrade package.

In a possible implementation manner, the upgrade message sent by the upgrade manager carries an upgrade package, and the first network element obtains the upgrade package by parsing according to the received upgrade message and then directly performs upgrade according to the upgrade package.

S404: the first network element switches to an unreachable state.

Specifically, after receiving the upgrade message sent by the upgrade manager, the first network element switches its state to an unreachable state, and when the first network element is in the unreachable state, the first network element cannot provide the network service, in other words, when the first network element is in the unreachable state, the network service can only be provided by other network elements in the first network element cluster.

Further, when the first network element is in an unreachable state, the first network element shields a service address of the first network element, so that the scheduling device corresponding to the first network element cluster cannot acquire the service address of the first network element, and the scheduling device allocates a service packet to the first network element only if the scheduling device continuously acquires the service address of the first network element, and if the service address of the first network element is not acquired over a preset time, the scheduling device does not allocate the service packet to the first network element, and the first network element cannot provide network service. The dispatching device may be a top of rack (TOR) switch, in particular, an ECMP device in the TOR switch, or may be other devices, which is not limited in this application. After the first network element shields the service address of the first network element, the scheduling device determines that the network state of the first network element is an unreachable state, the network service can not be normally provided any more, and subsequently, the service message is not scheduled to the first network element, but is scheduled to other network elements of the network element cluster for processing, so that the normal operation of the network service is ensured, and the network cannot be interrupted.

In a possible implementation manner, a first network element receives at least one detection message periodically sent by a scheduling device, where each detection message is used to obtain a service address of the first network element; the first network element discards the at least one probe packet.

Specifically, each network element establishes network connection with a scheduling device, and the scheduling device schedules the service packet to at least one network element in the network element cluster for processing. Meanwhile, the scheduling device also can periodically send a detection message to each network element, and the detection message is used for acquiring the network element state of each network element and the service address of each network element. And if the response message of the first network element for the detection message is not acquired after the preset time, the scheduling equipment determines that the network state of the first network element is an unreachable state. Therefore, after the first network element receives the upgrade message, the first network element discards the detection message sent by the scheduling device, so that the scheduling device cannot receive the response message of the first network element, and determines that the network element state of the first network element is in an unreachable state.

Further, before the first network element determines that the first network element is successfully switched to the unreachable state, the first network element receives a service packet sent to the first network element based on the service address, and provides a network service for the service packet.

It should be appreciated that although the first network element discards the received probe message, the scheduling apparatus does not immediately perceive that the first network element has switched to the unreachable state, i.e. it takes a while until the scheduling apparatus determines that the first network element is in the unreachable state, the first network element is switched to the unreachable state. Therefore, even if the first network element discards the detection message sent by the scheduling device, the scheduling device will still schedule the service message to the first network element, and the first network element processes the service message and monitors whether the first network element responds to the detection message. It should be noted that the scheduling device periodically sends the detection message, and can send a plurality of detection messages at a time, so as to avoid that the network element cannot normally receive the detection message due to network connection fluctuation and the like, and reduce the false judgment. In addition, in order to further reduce the false positive rate, when the response packet sent by the first network element is not received within a period, the scheduling device will continue to send the probe packet to the first network element until the response packet sent by the first network element is still not received within a preset time (for example, within three consecutive periods), and then the scheduling device will determine that the first network element is in an unreachable state, and will stop scheduling the service packet to the first network element. But the service message will still be dispatched to the first network element during the period of time before the dispatch device determines.

The first network element switches to the unreachable state after receiving the upgrade message sent by the upgrade manager, that is, discards the probe packet sent by the scheduling device, but still processes the received service packet to provide the network service. If the first network element does not receive the service message within the preset time, the first network element may determine that the first network element has successfully switched to the unreachable state, that is, the service address of the first network element has been determined to be shielded, the subsequent scheduling device may not schedule the service message to the first network element, and the first network element may be upgraded without affecting the normal operation of the network service. The preset time can be set according to actual needs, and the present application is not limited to this.

It should be noted that each network element has an Internet Protocol (IP) address, and the first network element can distinguish the message according to the IP address in the received message, that is, determine whether the received message is a probe message or a service message. Optionally, the first network element may further distinguish different types of messages according to the service port number, and it should be understood that the first network element has multiple service ports, and the first network element receives corresponding messages through the different service ports, so that the first network element may determine whether a received probe message or a received service message is a probe message or a service message according to the service port number.

In a possible implementation manner, after receiving an upgrade message sent by an upgrade manager, a first network element sends a first status switching message to a second network element, where the second network element and the first network element may be network elements in the same network element cluster or network elements in different network element clusters, the second network element switches to an unreachable status according to the first status switching message, the second network element does not provide network services when in the unreachable status, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance.

Optionally, the first network element and the second network element are deployed on the same instance (for example, a physical machine or a virtual machine), and respectively belong to different network element clusters, so as to provide different network services. Before upgrading, the first network element needs to send a status switching message to the second network element to enable the second network element to switch to an unreachable status.

It is easy to understand that since the first network element needs to restart the instance during the upgrade process, both the first network element and the second network element will not be able to provide network services at the time of the instance. If the first network element does not send the first status switching message to the second network element so that the second network element completes status switching, the scheduling device cannot timely sense that the second network element cannot process the service packet to provide the network service (i.e., is in an unreachable state), and therefore, the scheduling device will continue to schedule the service packet to the second network element for processing before determining that the second network element is in the unreachable state, and actually, the second network element cannot process the service packet, which will cause the network service to fail to operate normally, and affect the stability and reliability of the network service.

Therefore, the first network element needs to send the first status switching message to the second network element, and the second network element switches to the unreachable status according to the first switching message. At this time, although the second network element completes the state switching and discards the detection message sent by the scheduling device, the service message sent by the scheduling device is processed continuously to provide the network service, so as to ensure the normal operation of the network service, after the service message sent by the scheduling device is not received within the preset time, the second network element can determine that the switching to the unreachable state is successfully performed, the second network element can send a state switching completion message to the first network element to notify the first network element, and after the first network element receives the notification message, the subsequent upgrading process can be continuously completed.

It can be seen that, in a physical machine or a virtual machine in which multiple types of network elements are deployed, before restarting an instance, state switching needs to be synchronously completed for the multiple types of network elements deployed therein, and the state is switched to an unreachable state. Therefore, the method and the device can ensure that other network elements cannot be influenced in the upgrading process of a certain type or certain types of network elements, and ensure that network services corresponding to other network elements can normally run.

In a possible implementation manner, before the first network element switches to the unreachable state according to the upgrade message, the first network element records the configuration of the network service of the first network element.

Specifically, if the first network element wants to provide the network service, it needs to rely on the configuration corresponding to the network service. During the upgrade process of the first network element, the first network element will no longer provide the network service, and the configuration corresponding to the network service will also be reset. Therefore, if the first network element wants to continue to provide the network service after the upgrade, it must record the configuration corresponding to the currently provided network service before switching to the unreachable state, so as to facilitate subsequent recovery.

S405: and the first network element is upgraded.

Specifically, the first network element acquires (downloads) a corresponding network element upgrade package according to address information carried in the upgrade message, or directly receives the upgrade package, and performs upgrade after acquiring the network element upgrade package, that is, the network element version is replaced, and the high-version network element replaces the low-version network element.

Further, if the first network element needs to be upgraded to take effect, the instance in which the first network element is deployed needs to be restarted, and the upgrade will take effect after the instance is restarted successfully, in other words, the first network element will complete successful upgrade in the true sense after the instance is restarted successfully.

S406: the first network element determines that a configuration corresponding to the network service has been restored.

Specifically, the first network element needs to provide the network service again after being successfully upgraded, the first network element needs to rely on the configuration corresponding to the network service to provide the network service, and the first network element records the configuration corresponding to the network service before switching the state of the network element to the unreachable state, so that the first network element can recover according to the recorded configuration corresponding to the network service, and after recovering the configuration, the first network element can provide the network service again.

S407: the first network element switches to the reachable state.

Specifically, the first network element may provide network services again after the successful upgrade and the configuration are restored, so that the service packet sent by the scheduling device needs to be received again. And the first network element switches the network element state to the unreachable state in the previous upgrading process, so that the first network element needs to switch from the unreachable state to the reachable state, that is, the first network element needs to recover the service address of the first network element, so that the scheduling device can obtain the service address of the first network element, and the scheduling device can schedule the service message to the first network element for processing after obtaining the service address of the first network element.

In a possible implementation manner, the first network element responds to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device.

Specifically, the scheduling device may periodically send a probe packet to the first network element, regardless of whether the first network element is in an unreachable state or a reachable state. The first network element discards the detection message sent by the scheduling device in the upgrading process, and after the first network element completes upgrading, the first network element does not discard the received detection message any more but responds, that is, the first network element sends a response message to the scheduling device, wherein the response message carries the service address of the first network element. After receiving the response message sent by the first network element, the scheduling device may determine that the first network element is in the reachable state and may process the service message to provide the network service, and therefore, the scheduling device may reschedule the service message to the first network element for processing.

In a possible implementation manner, if the first network element sends the first status switching message to the second network element after receiving the upgrade message, the first network element sends the second status switching message to the second network element after performing upgrade, the second network element switches from the unreachable state to the reachable state according to the second status switching message, the second network element provides a network service when being in the reachable state, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance.

Specifically, after the instance in which the first network element and the second network element are deployed is restarted, the first network element sends a second status switching message to the second network element, so that the second network element is switched from the unreachable status to the reachable status.

Further, after receiving the second state switching message sent by the first network element, the second network element does not discard the detection message periodically sent by the scheduling device, but responds to the detection message, that is, the second network element sends a response message to the scheduling device, where the response message carries the service address of the second network element. After receiving the response message sent by the second network element, the scheduling device may determine that the second network element is in the reachable state and may process the service message to provide the network service, and the scheduling device reschedules the service message to the second network element for processing.

It can be understood that, after the first network element completes the upgrade, the first network element sends the second status switching message to the second network element to switch the second network element from the unreachable status to the reachable status, so that the second network element can process the service packet in time to provide the network service, and the high performance of the network service corresponding to the second network element is improved. Moreover, the influence on the second network element during the restart of the instance can be reduced, and the normal operation of the network service corresponding to the second network element can be ensured.

S408: and the first network element returns an upgrade success message to the upgrade manager.

Specifically, the first network element sends an upgrade success message to the upgrade manager after switching to the reachable state, and the upgrade manager continues to send an upgrade message to the network element of the next batch after receiving the message, so that the network element of the next batch can be upgraded according to the upgrade steps and principles of the first network element described in the foregoing S404-S407 after receiving the upgrade message.

It can be understood that the upgrade manager, through upgrade orchestration, makes multiple network elements in the same network element cluster upgrade in batches, so as to ensure that, in part of the network element upgrade processes, network services can be provided by network elements of the network element cluster that have not started to be upgraded, and after part of the network elements are upgraded successfully, network services are provided by using the network elements that have been upgraded successfully, so as to upgrade the network elements that have not been upgraded, and finally, it is ensured that all the network elements in the network element cluster are upgraded successfully. Moreover, the high reliability and the high performance of the operation of the network service can be ensured in the whole process.

Referring to fig. 5, fig. 5 is a schematic flowchart of another network element upgrading method provided in the embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 5, the method includes, but is not limited to, the following steps:

s501: and the first network element is switched to an unreachable state according to the upgrading instruction.

In this application, the first network element may be any one network element in a network element cluster. The upgrade instruction may be sent to the first network element by the upgrade manager, or may be generated after the first network element detects a higher version of the network element.

Specifically, after the first network element switches the network element state to the unreachable state, the first network element shields the service address of the first network element, and the scheduling device cannot acquire the service address of the first network element, so that the service packet cannot be allocated to the first network element, and the first network element cannot provide network services.

Further, the first network element discards at least one detection message periodically sent by the scheduling device, so as to shield the service address, and if the scheduling device does not receive a response message of the first network element within a preset time, it will determine that the first network element is in an unreachable state, and no service message is distributed to the first network element, and the first network element determines that the first network element has been switched to the unreachable state, so that the first network element can be upgraded.

It should be noted that, for how the first network element specifically performs the switching of the network element status, reference may be made to the related description in S404, and details are not described herein for brevity.

S502: and the first network element is upgraded.

Specifically, the first network element may directly receive an upgrade package generated by the upgrade manager, and complete the upgrade according to the upgrade package. Or, the first network element acquires the address of the upgrade package, and acquires the upgrade package according to the address, thereby completing the upgrade.

Further, the first network element records the configuration corresponding to the network service before upgrading, and restores the configuration after upgrading to provide the network service again.

Optionally, the first network element completes the switching of the network element state by responding to at least one detection message periodically sent by the scheduling device, that is, the first network element switches from the unreachable state to the reachable state, and after the first network element switches to the reachable state, the scheduling device may obtain the service address of the first network element, so that the service message may be allocated to the first network element for processing, and the first network element may provide network service again.

It should be noted that, for how to specifically upgrade the first network element, reference may be made to the relevant description in S406-S408, and details are not described again for brevity.

The method of the embodiments of the present application is described in detail above, and in order to better implement the above-mentioned aspects of the embodiments of the present application, correspondingly, the following also provides related equipment for implementing the above-mentioned aspects in a matching manner.

Referring to fig. 6, fig. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of a first network element according to an embodiment of the present application. The first network element may be the first network element in the method embodiments described in fig. 4 and fig. 5, and may perform the method and steps in the network element upgrading method embodiments described in fig. 4 and fig. 5, which take the first network element as an execution subject. As shown in fig. 6, the first network element 600 includes a receiving module 610, a switching module 620, and a processing module 630. Wherein,

a receiving module 610, configured to receive an upgrade instruction;

a switching module 620, configured to switch a network element state to an unreachable state according to the upgrade instruction received by the receiving module 610, where the first network element 600 does not provide a network service when in the unreachable state;

a processing module 630, configured to perform an upgrade after determining to switch the network element status to an unreachable status.

As an embodiment, the switching module 620 is specifically configured to: shielding the service address of the first network element 600, so that the service address of the first network element 600 is not obtained by a scheduling device of a network element cluster, wherein the scheduling device is configured to schedule a service packet in the network element cluster according to the service address of each network element of the network element cluster; the service address of the first network element 600 is determined to be masked.

As an embodiment, the receiving module 610 is further configured to receive a service packet sent based on a service address of the first network element 600 before the switching module 620 determines to mask the service address; the processing module 630 is further configured to provide the network service for the received service packet.

As an embodiment, the receiving module 610 is further configured to receive at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling apparatus, where each detection packet is used to obtain a service address of the first network element 600; the switching module 620 is further configured to discard the at least one detection packet.

As an embodiment, the switching module 620 is further configured to recover the service address of the first network element 600, so that the scheduling device of the network element cluster obtains the service address of the first network element 600.

As an embodiment, the first network element 600 further includes a sending module 640, where the sending module 640 is configured to respond to at least one probe packet periodically sent by the scheduling apparatus.

As an embodiment, the processing module 630 is further configured to record the configuration of the network service of the first network element 600 before the switching module 620 switches the network element status to the unreachable status; the processing module 630 is further configured to, before the switching module 620 switches the network element status from the unreachable status to a reachable status, recover the network service according to the recorded configuration.

As an embodiment, the sending module 640 is further configured to send a first status switching message to a second network element after the receiving module receives the upgrade instruction, where the first status switching message is used to indicate that the second network element is switched to an unreachable state, the second network element does not provide network service when in the unreachable state, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance; the sending module 640 is further configured to send a second status switching message to the second network element after the processing module 630 performs the upgrade, where the second status switching message is used to indicate that the second network element is switched from a non-reachable status to a reachable status, and the second network element provides the network service when the second network element is in the reachable status.

It is understood that the receiving module 610 and the sending module 640 in the embodiments of the present application may be implemented by a transceiver or transceiver-related circuit components, and the switching module 620 and the processing module 630 may be implemented by a processor or processor-related circuit components.

It should be noted that the structure of the first network element is merely an example, and should not be specifically limited, and the modules in the first network element may be added, reduced, or combined as needed. In addition, for the sake of brevity, the operations and/or functions of the modules in the first network element are not described again in order to implement the corresponding flows of the methods described in fig. 4 and fig. 5.

Referring to fig. 7, fig. 7 is a schematic structural diagram of a computing device according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 7, the computing device 700 includes: a processor 710, a communication interface 720 and a memory 730, said processor 710, communication interface 720 and memory 730 being interconnected by an internal bus 740. It should be understood that the computing device 700 may be a computing device in cloud computing, or a computing device in an edge environment.

The processor 710 may be formed of one or more general-purpose processors, such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU), or a combination of a CPU and a hardware chip. The hardware chip may be an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a Programmable Logic Device (PLD), or a combination thereof. The PLD may be a Complex Programmable Logic Device (CPLD), a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a General Array Logic (GAL), or any combination thereof.

The bus 740 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, an Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) bus, or the like. The bus 740 may be divided into an address bus, a data bus, a control bus, and the like. For ease of illustration, only one thick line is shown in FIG. 7, but not only one bus or type of bus.

Memory 730 may include volatile memory (volatile memory), such as Random Access Memory (RAM); the memory 730 may also include a non-volatile memory (non-volatile memory), such as a read-only memory (ROM), a flash memory (flash memory), a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), or a solid-state drive (SSD); memory 730 may also include combinations of the above. Memory 730 may be used to store programs and data to facilitate processor 710 in invoking program code stored in memory 730 to implement the network element upgrade method described above. The program code may be functional modules for implementing the first network element shown in fig. 6, or for implementing the method steps executed by the first network element in the method embodiments shown in fig. 4 and fig. 5.

The present application also provides a computer-readable storage medium, wherein the computer-readable storage medium stores a computer program, and when the computer program is executed by a processor, the computer program can implement part or all of the steps of any one of the above method embodiments.

An embodiment of the present invention further provides a computer program, where the computer program includes instructions, and when the computer program is executed by a computer, the computer may perform part or all of the steps of any network element upgrading method.

In the above embodiments, the descriptions of the respective embodiments have respective emphasis, and for parts that are not described in detail in a certain embodiment, reference may be made to related descriptions of other embodiments.

It should be noted that, for simplicity of description, the above-mentioned method embodiments are described as a series of acts or combination of acts, but those skilled in the art will recognize that the present application is not limited by the order of acts described, as some steps may occur in other orders or concurrently depending on the application. Further, those skilled in the art should also appreciate that the embodiments described in the specification are preferred embodiments and that the acts and modules referred to are not necessarily required in this application.

In the embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed apparatus may be implemented in other manners. For example, the above-described embodiments of the apparatus are merely illustrative, and for example, the above-described division of the units is only one type of division of logical functions, and other divisions may be realized in practice, for example, a plurality of units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted, or not executed. In addition, the shown or discussed coupling or direct coupling or communication connection between each other may be through some interfaces, indirect coupling or communication connection between devices or units, and may be in an electrical or other form.

The units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. Some or all of the units can be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of the embodiment.

In addition, functional units in the embodiments of the present application may be integrated into one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units are integrated into one unit. The integrated unit can be realized in a form of hardware, and can also be realized in a form of a software functional unit.

Claims (13)

1. A method for upgrading a network element, comprising:

a first network element in a network element cluster receives an upgrade instruction, wherein each network element in the network element cluster is used for providing the same network service;

the first network element receives at least one detection message periodically sent by scheduling equipment, wherein each detection message is used for acquiring a service address of the first network element, and the scheduling equipment is used for scheduling service messages in the network element cluster;

the first network element discards the at least one detection message, so that the service address of the first network element is not acquired by the scheduling device;

and after determining that the service message is not received within the preset time, the first network element carries out upgrading.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

and before the first network element determines that the service message is not received within the preset time, the first network element receives the service message sent to the first network element based on the service address, and provides the network service for the service message.

3. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein after the first network element is upgraded, the method further comprises:

and the first network element recovers the service address of the first network element, so that the scheduling equipment of the network element cluster acquires the service address of the first network element.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3, wherein the recovering, by the first network element, the service address of the first network element specifically comprises:

and the first network element responds to at least one detection message periodically sent by the scheduling equipment.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein before the first network element is upgraded according to the upgrade instructions, the method further comprises:

the first network element records the configuration of the network service of the first network element;

before the first network element responds to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, the method further includes:

and the first network element recovers the network service according to the recorded configuration.

6. The method of claim 1 or 2,

after the first network element receives the upgrade instruction, the method further comprises:

the first network element sends a first status switching message to a second network element in the network element cluster, where the first status switching message is used to instruct the second network element to discard at least one probe packet periodically sent by a scheduling device, so that a service address of the second network element is not acquired by the scheduling device, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance;

after the first network element is upgraded, the method further includes:

and the first network element sends a second status switching message to the second network element, where the second status switching message is used to instruct the second network element to respond to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device.

7. A first network element, comprising:

the receiving module is used for receiving an upgrading instruction;

the receiving module is further configured to receive at least one detection packet periodically sent by a scheduling device, where each detection packet is used to obtain a service address of the first network element, and the scheduling device is used to schedule service packets in the network element cluster;

a discarding module, configured to discard the at least one probe packet, so that the service address of the first network element is not obtained by the scheduling device;

and the processing module is used for upgrading after determining that the service message is not received within the preset time.

8. The first network element of claim 7,

the receiving module is further configured to receive a service packet sent based on the service address before determining that the service packet is not received within a preset time;

the processing module is further configured to provide the network service for the received service packet.

9. The first network element of claim 7 or 8,

the processing module is further configured to recover the service address of the first network element, so that the scheduling device of the network element cluster obtains the service address of the first network element.

10. The first network element of claim 9, wherein the first network element further comprises a sending module,

the sending module is configured to respond to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device.

11. The first network element of claim 10,

the processing module is further configured to record a configuration of a network service of the first network element before the discarding module discards the at least one probe packet;

the processing module is further configured to recover the network service according to the recorded configuration.

12. The first network element of claim 7 or 8,

the sending module is further configured to send a first status switching message to a second network element after the receiving module receives the upgrade instruction, where the first status switching message is used to instruct the second network element to discard at least one probe packet periodically sent by the scheduling device, so that a service address of the second network element is not acquired by the scheduling device, and the first network element and the second network element are in the same instance;

the sending module is further configured to send a second status switching message to the second network element after the processing module performs the upgrade, where the second status switching message is used to instruct the second network element to respond to at least one detection packet periodically sent by the scheduling device.

13. A computing device, comprising at least one memory unit to store at least one instruction and at least one processor to execute the at least one instruction to implement the method of any one of claims 1-6.

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