CN116746136A - Synchronizing communication channel state information to achieve high traffic availability - Google Patents

Abstract

For a communication channel having a first endpoint in a customer locally deployed network and a second endpoint on a primary host machine in a cloud service provider infrastructure, the primary host machine determines a change in status information of the communication channel and identifies a backup host machine for the communication channel. The primary host machine causes the change in state information to be copied to the backup host machine, wherein the copied state information stored by the backup host machine is made available to the backup host machine after the failover causes the backup host machine to become the second endpoint of the communication channel.

Description

Synchronizing communication channel state information to achieve high traffic availability

Cross Reference to Related Applications

The present application claims the benefits and priority of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 63/132,036 filed on 12, 30, 2020 and U.S. non-provisional application Ser. No. 17/556,540 filed on 20, 12, 2021 in 35USC 119 (e). The entire contents of the above-mentioned applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety for all purposes.

Background

The demand for cloud-based services continues to grow rapidly. The term cloud service is generally used to refer to a service that is made available to a user or customer on demand (e.g., via a subscription mode) using systems and infrastructure (cloud infrastructure) provided by a cloud service provider. Typically, the servers and systems that make up the infrastructure of the cloud service provider are separate from the clients' own locally deployed servers and systems. Thus, the customer may utilize the cloud service provided by the cloud service provider himself without purchasing separate hardware and software resources for the service. There are various different types of cloud services including software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and the like.

In the IaaS model, cloud service providers provide infrastructure resources (e.g., computing resources, memory resources, network resources, such as servers, storage devices, etc.) that customers can use to build their own resources and virtual networks. The infrastructure provided by the IaaS cloud service provider, including interconnected high performance computers, memory, and network resources or components, forms a physical network (also referred to as a base layer network or an underlying network). The physical network provides an underlying foundation for creating a virtual network (also referred to as an overlay network) of customers over the physical network.

Cloud service providers typically provide a wide range of applications, services, and APIs that enable customers (e.g., enterprises) to efficiently build these virtual networks and deploy and manage various virtual workloads (e.g., virtual machines, containers, applications) in these virtual networks in a highly available distributed environment. Customers can typically manage their cloud-based workload in the same manner as customers manage locally deployed workload and obtain all the benefits of high performance computing and network capabilities, as well as the same control, isolation, security, and predictable performance as their locally deployed network.

Clients typically deploy one or more client locally deployed networks and one or more virtual networks in the cloud using infrastructure provided by a cloud service provider. Various different communication mechanisms may be provided to enable the customer's locally deployed network to communicate with the customer's virtual cloud network. To establish such communications, devices or equipment in the customer's locally deployed network need to be configured to be able to participate in these communications. For example, customer local equipment (Customer Premise Equipment, CPE) that is one endpoint of a communication channel between a customer local deployment network and a host machine that is the other endpoint within a customer's virtual network hosted cloud services infrastructure (CSPI) needs to be properly configured. An internet protocol security (IPsec) tunnel may be configured to securely handle traffic between CPE and CSPI endpoints.

Customers expect these cloud services to have high availability with minimal downtime even if the underlying infrastructure is out of order (e.g., host machine downtime, wiring problems, etc.). To achieve this goal, cloud service providers build redundancy in their infrastructure. For example, for a host machine that is processing network packets, one or more backup systems (backup host machines) are specified such that if the host machine presents any problem that causes the host machine to fail to process the packet, one of the backup host machines takes over the processing of the packet so that the customer sees minimal interruption (if any). Typically, when a host machine is down, the communication channel associated with that host machine will also be down and all traffic in both directions will be discarded.

Thus, if an endpoint or host machine within a customer's virtual network is down, the backup system may take a long time (e.g., seconds to minutes) to negotiate a new communication channel. If a customer's virtual cloud network is equipped with a backup communication channel to process packets after an endpoint fails, setting up the backup channel and dynamically routing packets to the backup channel during failover is a fairly complex and time-consuming solution, especially when the solution must be extended throughout the distributed environment.

Disclosure of Invention

The present disclosure relates generally to techniques for improving the availability of cloud services, and more particularly to techniques for maintaining and replicating state information related to communication channels across multiple host machines. Various embodiments are described herein, including methods, systems, non-transitory computer-readable storage media storing programs, code, or instructions executable by one or more processors, and the like.

An aspect of the present disclosure provides a method comprising: for a communication channel having a first endpoint in a customer locally deployed network and a second endpoint on a primary host machine in a cloud service provider infrastructure, determining, by the primary host machine, a change in status information of the communication channel; identifying, by the primary host machine, a backup host machine for the communication channel; and causing, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to be copied to the backup host machine, wherein the copied state information stored by the backup host machine is usable by the backup host machine after failover causes the backup host machine to become the second endpoint of the communication channel.

Another aspect of the present disclosure provides a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a processor of a computer system to perform a method comprising: for a communication channel having a first endpoint in a customer locally deployed network and a second endpoint on a primary host machine in a cloud service provider infrastructure, determining, by the primary host machine, a change in status information of the communication channel; identifying, by the primary host machine, a backup host machine for the communication channel; and causing, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to be copied to the backup host machine, wherein the copied state information stored by the backup host machine is usable by the backup host machine after failover causes the backup host machine to become the second endpoint of the communication channel.

Various embodiments are described herein, including methods, systems, non-transitory computer-readable storage media storing programs, code, or instructions executable by one or more processors, and the like. These illustrative embodiments are not mentioned to limit or define the disclosure, but rather to provide examples to aid understanding thereof. Additional examples are discussed in the detailed description and further description is provided herein.

Drawings

The features, embodiments, and advantages of the present disclosure will be better understood when the following detailed description is read with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment, illustrating a virtual or overlay cloud network hosted by a cloud service provider infrastructure, according to some embodiments.

Fig. 2 depicts a simplified architectural diagram of physical components in a physical network within a CSPI, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example arrangement within a CSPI in which a host machine is connected to multiple Network Virtualization Devices (NVDs), in accordance with certain embodiments.

FIG. 4 depicts connectivity between a host machine and an NVD for providing I/O virtualization to support multi-tenancy (NVD) in accordance with certain embodiments.

Fig. 5 depicts a simplified block diagram of a physical network provided by a CSPI, in accordance with some embodiments.

Fig. 6 depicts a simplified block diagram of a distributed environment in conjunction with an exemplary embodiment for performing communication channel related state information replication, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 7A depicts an example of a block diagram showing multiple host machines within a replication chain, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 7B depicts another example block diagram that shows multiple host machines within a replication chain, in accordance with some embodiments.

Fig. 8 depicts a simplified flowchart describing a method for copying communication channel-related state information to a backup host machine in accordance with some embodiments.

Fig. 9 depicts a simplified flow chart depicting replication of communication channel related status information by a replication channel in accordance with certain embodiments.

Fig. 10 depicts a simplified flowchart that depicts detailed processing performed for copying communication channel related state information by a primary host machine, in accordance with some embodiments.

Fig. 11 illustrates a simplified flowchart depicting steps performed during failover of a primary host machine to handle packet processing in accordance with certain embodiments.

Fig. 12 is a block diagram illustrating one mode for implementing cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment.

Fig. 13 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment.

Fig. 14 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment.

Fig. 15 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment.

FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating an example computer system in accordance with at least one embodiment.

Detailed Description

In the following description, for purposes of explanation, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of certain embodiments. It may be evident, however, that the various embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. The drawings and description are not intended to be limiting. The word "exemplary" is used herein to mean "serving as an example, instance, or illustration. Any embodiment or design described herein as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments or designs.

The present disclosure describes techniques for synchronizing state information of communication channels within a host machine cluster hosted by a Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) to enable high traffic availability. More particularly, techniques are described for synchronizing communication channel processing traffic status information between endpoints in a customer's locally deployed network and endpoints in a virtual network hosted on a Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI).

Clients subscribe to one or more cloud services provided by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) using CSPI. The communication channel (e.g., IPsec tunnel) may be configured to securely transport packets between customer's local equipment (CPE), which is a communication endpoint in the customer's locally deployed network, and a host machine, which is a primary endpoint in the customer's virtual network for cloud services infrastructure (CSPI). The two endpoints negotiate with each other to establish a communication channel. In particular, a series of messages about encryption and authentication may be sent back and forth between two endpoints to negotiate a protocol involving encryption and authentication related parameters for communication. After negotiation, a Security Association (SA) between the two endpoints is determined, wherein the SA specifies security characteristics agreed and approved by the communication endpoint. A single SA may protect data in one direction. The SA provides details to the two endpoints about how to encrypt and decrypt packets for communication between the two endpoints.

Typically, if an endpoint receiving traffic is down for some reason (e.g., a failover event or maintenance activity), then the communication channel or tunnel is also down and all traffic in both directions is discarded. When an endpoint within a cloud infrastructure (CSPI) is down, the infrastructure may provide a backup system to take over the processing of traffic set between CPE and CSPI endpoints. However, the backup system may need to negotiate a new tunnel with the CPE's endpoint to send and receive traffic on the backup system, which may be complex and time consuming.

Setting up a new tunnel in the event of a failure may require a series of negotiations and configurations between endpoints, which may take several minutes. During the process of setting up the backup tunnel, applications using certain connection types (such as TCP connections) may timeout, which may be unacceptable to the client. For example, if an online shopper is shopping on a website whose database is located on a cloud network provided by a service provider, a shopping transaction may fail or a shopping cart may timeout if a fault is detected on an endpoint within the cloud network that manages the database. This behavior is not acceptable to clients of the cloud service. Some service providers may provide backup tunnels to handle traffic between CPE endpoints and backup systems in case of failure within a primary endpoint hosted on a CSPI. However, processing traffic using backup tunnels to backup the system may require setting up backup tunnels and dynamically routing traffic to backup tunnels each time the primary endpoint is down. These solutions are complex and time consuming to implement in a cloud computing environment, where systems within the CSPI handle a large number of clients communicating using layer 3 protocols.

The present disclosure discusses a method of handling network traffic using the same communication channel to a backup endpoint that is used to handle packets between an endpoint of a CPE and a primary endpoint within a CSPI. The method provides a highly available tunnel that allows traffic to be handled to different endpoints while avoiding the complexity of having two tunnels and the risk of losing a connection when negotiating a new connection for a backup tunnel.

The term cloud service is generally used to refer to services provided by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to users or customers on demand (e.g., via a subscription model) using systems and infrastructure (cloud infrastructure) provided by the CSP. Typically, the servers and systems that make up the CSP infrastructure are separate from the clients' own locally deployed servers and systems. Thus, the customer may themselves utilize the cloud services provided by the CSP without purchasing separate hardware and software resources for the services. Cloud services are designed to provide subscribing clients with simple, extensible access to applications and computing resources without requiring the clients to invest in the infrastructure for providing the services.

There are several cloud service providers that offer various types of cloud services. There are various different types or models of cloud services, including software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and the like.

A customer may subscribe to one or more cloud services provided by the CSP. The customer may be any entity, such as an individual, organization, business, etc. When a customer subscribes to or registers for a service provided by the CSP, a lease or account will be created for the customer. The customer may then access one or more cloud resources of the subscription associated with the account via this account.

As described above, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a specific type of cloud computing service. In the IaaS model, CSPs provide infrastructure (referred to as cloud service provider infrastructure or CSPI) that can be used by customers to build their own customizable networks and deploy customer resources. Thus, the customer's resources and network are hosted in a distributed environment by the CSP's provided infrastructure. This is in contrast to traditional computing, where the customer's resources and network are hosted by the customer's provided infrastructure.

The CSPI may include high performance computing resources, including various host machines, memory resources, and network resources, that form an interconnection of a physical network, also referred to as a baseboard network or an underlay network. Resources in the CSPI may be spread over one or more data centers, which may be geographically spread over one or more geographic regions. Virtualization software may be executed by these physical resources to provide a virtualized distributed environment. Virtualization creates an overlay network (also referred to as a software-based network, a software-defined network, or a virtual network) on a physical network. The CSPI physical network provides an underlying foundation for creating one or more overlay or virtual networks over the physical network. The virtual or overlay network may include one or more Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs). Virtual networks are implemented using software virtualization techniques (e.g., a hypervisor, functions performed by a Network Virtualization Device (NVD) (e.g., a smartNIC), a top-of-rack (TOR) switch, a smart TOR that implements one or more functions performed by the NVD, and other mechanisms) to create a layer of network abstraction that can run over a physical network. Virtual networks may take many forms, including peer-to-peer networks, IP networks, and the like. The virtual network is typically a layer 3IP network or a layer 2VLAN. This method of virtual or overlay networking is often referred to as virtual or overlay 3 networking. Examples of protocols developed for virtual networks include IP-in-IP (or Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)), virtual extensible local area networks (VXLAN-IETF RFC 7348), virtual Private Networks (VPNs) (e.g., MPLS layer 3 virtual private networks (RFC 4364)), NSX of VMware, GENEVE, and the like.

For IaaS, the infrastructure provided by CSP (CSPI) may be configured to provide virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the internet). In the IaaS model, cloud computing service providers may host infrastructure components (e.g., servers, storage devices, network nodes (e.g., hardware), deployment software, platform virtualization (e.g., hypervisor layer), etc.). In some cases, the IaaS provider may also offer various services to accompany these infrastructure components (e.g., billing, monitoring, logging, security, load balancing, clustering, etc.). Thus, as these services may be policy driven, iaaS users may be able to implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance. CSPI provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available hosted distributed environment. CSPI provides high performance computing resources and capabilities as well as storage capacity in flexible virtual networks that are securely accessible from various networking locations, such as from a customer's locally deployed network. When a customer subscribes to or registers for an IaaS service provided by the CSP, the lease created for that customer is a secure and sequestered partition within the CSPI in which the customer can create, organize and manage their cloud resources.

Customers may build their own virtual network using the computing, memory, and networking resources provided by the CSPI. One or more customer resources or workloads, such as computing instances, may be deployed on these virtual networks. For example, a customer may use resources provided by the CSPI to build one or more customizable and private virtual networks, referred to as Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs). A customer may deploy one or more customer resources, such as computing instances, on a customer VCN. The computing instances may take the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, and the like. Thus, CSPI provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available virtual hosted environment. Clients do not manage or control the underlying physical resources provided by the CSPI, but may control the operating system, storage devices, and deployed applications; and may have limited control over selected networking components (e.g., firewalls).

CSP may provide a console that enables clients and network administrators to use CSPI resources to configure, access, and manage resources deployed in the cloud. In some embodiments, the console provides a web-based user interface that may be used to access and manage the CSPI. In some implementations, the console is a web-based application provided by the CSP.

The CSPI may support single-lease or multi-lease architectures. In a single tenancy architecture, software (e.g., applications, databases) or hardware components (e.g., host machines or servers) serve a single customer or tenant. In a multi-tenancy architecture, software or hardware components serve multiple customers or tenants. Thus, in a multi-tenancy architecture, the CSPI resources are shared among multiple customers or tenants. In the multi-tenancy case, precautions are taken and safeguards are implemented within the CSPI to ensure that each tenant's data is isolated and remains invisible to other tenants.

In a physical network, a network endpoint ("endpoint") refers to a computing device or system that connects to and communicates back and forth with the network to which it is connected. Network endpoints in a physical network may be connected to a Local Area Network (LAN), wide Area Network (WAN), or other type of physical network. Examples of traditional endpoints in a physical network include modems, hubs, bridges, switches, routers and other networking devices, physical computers (or host machines), and the like. Each physical device in the physical network has a fixed network address that can be used to communicate with the device. This fixed network address may be a layer 2 address (e.g., MAC address), a fixed layer 3 address (e.g., IP address), etc. In a virtualized environment or virtual network, endpoints may include various virtual endpoints, such as virtual machines hosted by components of a physical network (e.g., by physical host machines). These endpoints in the virtual network are addressed by overlay addresses, such as overlay 2 addresses (e.g., overlay MAC addresses) and overlay 3 addresses (e.g., overlay IP addresses). Network coverage enables flexibility by allowing a network administrator to move around an overlay address associated with a network endpoint using software management (e.g., via software implementing a control plane for a virtual network). Thus, unlike a physical network, in a virtual network, an overlay address (e.g., an overlay IP address) may be moved from one endpoint to another endpoint using network management software. Because the virtual network builds on top of the physical network, communication between components in the virtual network involves both the virtual network and the underlying physical network. To facilitate such communications, components of the CSPI are configured to learn and store mappings that map overlay addresses in the virtual network to actual physical addresses in the baseboard network, and vice versa. These mappings are then used to facilitate communications. Customer traffic is encapsulated to facilitate routing in the virtual network.

Thus, a physical address (e.g., a physical IP address) is associated with a component in the physical network, and an overlay address (e.g., an overlay IP address) is associated with an entity in the virtual network. Both the physical IP address and the overlay IP address are types of real IP addresses. These are separate from the virtual IP addresses, which map to multiple real IP addresses. The virtual IP address provides a one-to-many mapping between the virtual IP address and a plurality of real IP addresses.

The cloud infrastructure or CSPI is physically hosted in one or more data centers in one or more regions of the world. The CSPI may include components in a physical or substrate network and virtualized components located in a virtual network built upon the physical network components (e.g., virtual networks, computing instances, virtual machines, etc.). In certain embodiments, the CSPI is organized and hosted in a domain (realm), region (region), and availability domain (availability domain). A region is typically a localized geographic area containing one or more data centers. Regions are generally independent of each other and can be far apart, e.g., across countries or even continents. For example, a first region may be in australia, another in japan, yet another in india, etc. The CSPI resources are divided between regions such that each region has its own independent subset of CSPI resources. Each region may provide a set of core infrastructure services and resources, such as computing resources (e.g., bare machine servers, virtual machines, containers, and related infrastructure, etc.); storage resources (e.g., block volume storage, file storage, object storage, archive storage); networking resources (e.g., virtual Cloud Network (VCN), load balancing resources, connections to locally deployed networks), database resources; edge networking resources (e.g., DNS); and access to management and monitoring resources, etc. Each region typically has multiple paths connecting it to other regions in the field.

In general, an application is deployed in an area where it is most frequently used (i.e., on the infrastructure associated with the area) because resources in the vicinity are used faster than resources in the distance. Applications may also be deployed in different areas for various reasons, such as redundancy to mitigate risk of regional-wide events (such as large weather systems or earthquakes) to meet different requirements of legal jurisdictions, tax domains, and other business or social standards, and so forth.

Data centers within a region may be further organized and subdivided into Availability Domains (ADs). The availability domain may correspond to one or more data centers located within the region. A region may be comprised of one or more availability domains. In such a distributed environment, the CSPI resources are either region-specific (such as Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs)) or availability domain-specific (such as computing instances).

ADs within a region are isolated from each other, have fault tolerance capability, and are configured such that they are highly unlikely to fail simultaneously. This is achieved by the ADs not sharing critical infrastructure resources (such as networking, physical cables, cable paths, cable entry points, etc.) so that a failure at one AD within a region is less likely to affect the availability of other ADs within the same region. ADs within the same region may be connected to each other through low latency, high bandwidth networks, which makes it possible to provide high availability connections for other networks (e.g., the internet, a customer's locally deployed network, etc.) and build replication systems in multiple ADs to achieve high availability and disaster recovery. Cloud services use multiple ADs to ensure high availability and prevent resource failures. As the infrastructure provided by IaaS providers grows, more regions and ADs and additional capacity can be added. Traffic between availability domains is typically encrypted.

In some embodiments, regions are grouped into domains. A domain is a logical collection of regions. The domains are isolated from each other and do not share any data. Regions in the same domain may communicate with each other, but regions in different domains may not. The customer's lease or account with the CSP exists in a single area and may be spread across one or more regions belonging to that area. Typically, when a customer subscribes to an IaaS service, a lease or account is created for the customer in a region designated by the customer in the domain (referred to as the "home" region). The customer may extend the customer's lease to one or more other areas within the domain. The customer cannot access areas that are not in the area of the customer's rental agency.

The IaaS provider may offer multiple domains, each domain catering to a particular set of customers or users. For example, business fields may be provided for business clients. As another example, a domain may be provided for a particular country for clients within that country. As yet another example, government fields may be provided for governments and the like. For example, a government domain may cater to a particular government and may have a higher level of security than a business domain. For example, oracle cloud infrastructure (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OCI) currently provides a field for commercial regions, and two fields (e.g., fedwamp-authorized and IL 5-authorized) for government cloud regions.

In some embodiments, an AD may be subdivided into one or more fault domains. A fault domain is a grouping of infrastructure resources within an AD to provide counteraffinity. The failure domain allows for the distribution of computing instances such that they are not located on the same physical hardware within a single AD. This is called counteraffinity. A failure domain refers to a collection of hardware components (computers, switches, etc.) that share a single point of failure. The computing pool is logically divided into fault domains. Thus, a hardware failure or computing hardware maintenance event affecting one failure domain does not affect instances in other failure domains. The number of fault domains for each AD may vary depending on the embodiment. For example, in some embodiments, each AD contains three fault domains. The failure domain acts as a logical data center within the AD.

When a customer subscribes to the IaaS service, resources from the CSPI are provisioned to the customer and associated with the customer's lease. Clients can use these provisioned resources to build private networks and deploy resources on these networks. Customer networks hosted in the cloud by CSPI are referred to as Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs). A customer may set up one or more Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs) using CSPI resources allocated for the customer. VCNs are virtual or software defined private networks. Customer resources deployed in a customer's VCN may include computing instances (e.g., virtual machines, bare metal instances) and other resources. These computing instances may represent various customer workloads, such as applications, load balancers, databases, and the like. Computing instances deployed on a VCN may communicate with publicly accessible endpoints ("public endpoints"), with other instances in the same VCN or other VCNs (e.g., other VCNs of the customer or VCNs not belonging to the customer), with locally deployed data centers or networks of the customer, and with service endpoints and other types of endpoints through a public network such as the internet.

CSP may use CSPI to provide various services. In some cases, the customers of the CSPI may themselves act like service providers and use the CSPI resources to provide services. The service provider may expose a service endpoint that features identification information (e.g., IP address, DNS name, and port). The customer's resources (e.g., computing instances) may consume a particular service by accessing the service endpoints exposed by the service for that particular service. These service endpoints are typically endpoints that are publicly accessible to users via a public communication network, such as the internet, using a public IP address associated with the endpoint. Publicly accessible network endpoints are sometimes referred to as public endpoints.

In some embodiments, a service provider may expose a service via an endpoint for the service (sometimes referred to as a service endpoint). The customer of the service may then use this service endpoint to access the service. In some embodiments, a service endpoint that provides a service may be accessed by multiple clients that intend to consume the service. In other embodiments, a dedicated service endpoint may be provided for a customer such that only the customer may use the dedicated service endpoint to access a service.

In some embodiments, when the VCN is created, it is associated with a private overlay classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) address space, which is a series of private overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0/16) assigned to the VCN. The VCN includes associated subnets, routing tables, and gateways. The VCNs reside within a single region, but may span one or more or all of the availability domains of the region. A gateway is a virtual interface configured for a VCN and enables communication of traffic to or from the VCN to one or more endpoints external to the VCN. One or more different types of gateways may be configured for the VCN to enable communications to and from different types of endpoints.

The VCN may be subdivided into one or more subnetworks, such as one or more subnetworks. Thus, a subnet is a configured unit or subdivision that can be created within a VCN. The VCN may have one or more subnets. Each subnet within a VCN is associated with a contiguous range of overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24) that do not overlap with other subnets in the VCN and represent a subset of the address space within the address space of the VCN.

Each computing instance is associated with a Virtual Network Interface Card (VNIC), which enables the computing instance to participate in a subnet of the VCN. VNICs are logical representations of physical Network Interface Cards (NICs). Generally, a VNIC is an interface between an entity (e.g., a computing instance, a service) and a virtual network. The VNICs exist in a subnet with one or more associated IP addresses and associated security rules or policies. The VNICs correspond to layer 2 ports on the switch. The VNICs are attached to the computing instance and to a subnet within the VCN. The VNICs associated with the computing instance enable the computing instance to be part of a subnet of the VCN and enable the computing instance to communicate (e.g., send and receive packets) with endpoints that are on the same subnet as the computing instance, with endpoints in different subnets in the VCN, or with endpoints that are external to the VCN. Thus, the VNICs associated with the computing instance determine how the computing instance connects with endpoints internal and external to the VCN. When a computing instance is created and added to a subnet within the VCN, a VNIC for the computing instance is created and associated with the computing instance. For a subnet that includes a set of computing instances, the subnet contains VNICs corresponding to the set of computing instances, each VNIC attached to a computing instance within the set of computing instances.

Each computing instance is assigned a private overlay IP address via the VNIC associated with the computing instance. This private overlay IP address is assigned to the VNIC associated with the computing instance when the computing instance is created and is used to route traffic to and from the computing instance. All VNICs in a given subnetwork use the same routing table, security list, and DHCP options. As described above, each subnet within a VCN is associated with a contiguous range of overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24) that do not overlap with other subnets in the VCN and represent a subset of the address space within the address space of the VCN. For a VNIC on a particular subnet of a VCN, the private overlay IP address assigned to that VNIC is an address from a contiguous range of overlay IP addresses allocated for the subnet.

In some embodiments, in addition to private overlay IP addresses, the computing instance may optionally be assigned additional overlay IP addresses, such as one or more public IP addresses, for example, in the case of a public subnet. These multiple addresses are assigned on the same VNIC or on multiple VNICs associated with the computing instance. However, each instance has a master VNIC that is created during instance startup and is associated with an overlay private IP address assigned to the instance—this master VNIC cannot be removed. An additional VNIC, referred to as a secondary VNIC, may be added to the existing instance in the same availability domain as the primary VNIC. All VNICs are in the same availability domain as this example. The secondary VNICs may be located in a subnet in the same VCN as the primary VNICs or in a different subnet in the same VCN or a different VCN.

If the computing instance is in a public subnet, it may optionally be assigned a public IP address. When creating a subnet, the subnet may be designated as a public subnet or a private subnet. A private subnet means that resources (e.g., compute instances) and associated VNICs in the subnet cannot have a public overlay IP address. A public subnet means that resources in a subnet and associated VNICs may have a public IP address. A customer may specify that a subnet exists in a single availability domain or across multiple availability domains in a region or domain.

As described above, the VCN may be subdivided into one or more subnets. In some embodiments, a Virtual Router (VR) configured for a VCN (referred to as a VCN VR or simply VR) enables communication between subnets of the VCN. For a subnet within a VCN, VR represents a logical gateway for that subnet that enables that subnet (i.e., the computing instance on that subnet) to communicate with endpoints on other subnets within the VCN as well as other endpoints outside the VCN. The VCN VR is a logical entity configured to route traffic between VNICs in the VCN and virtual gateways ("gateways") associated with the VCN. The gateway is further described below with respect to fig. 1. VCN VR is a layer 3/IP layer concept. In one embodiment, there is one VCN VR for the VCN, where the VCN VR has a potentially unlimited number of ports addressed by the IP address, one port for each subnet of the VCN. In this way, the VCN VR has a different IP address for each subnet in the VCN to which the VCN VR is attached. The VR is also connected to various gateways configured for the VCN. In some embodiments, a particular overlay IP address in the overlay IP address range for a subnet is reserved for a port of a VCN VR for that subnet. Consider, for example, that a VCN has two subnets, with associated address ranges of 10.0/16 and 10.1/16, respectively. For the first subnet in the VCN with an address range of 10.0/16, addresses within this range are reserved for ports of the VCN VR for that subnet. In some cases, the first IP address within range may be reserved for VCN VR. For example, for a subnet covering an IP address range of 10.0/16, an IP address of 10.0.0.1 may be reserved for ports of the VCN VR for that subnet. For a second subnet in the same VCN with an address range of 10.1/16, the VCN VR may have a port for the second subnet with an IP address of 10.1.0.1. The VCN VR has a different IP address for each subnet in the VCN.

In some other embodiments, each subnet within the VCN may have its own associated VR that is addressable by the subnet using a reserved or default IP address associated with the VR. For example, the reserved or default IP address may be the first IP address in the range of IP addresses associated with the subnet. The VNICs in the subnet may use this default or reserved IP address to communicate (e.g., send and receive packets) with the VR associated with the subnet. In such an embodiment, the VR is the entry/exit point of the subnet. The VR associated with a subnet within the VCN may communicate with other VRs associated with other subnets within the VCN. The VR may also communicate with a gateway associated with the VCN. The VR functions of the subnetwork are run on or performed by one or more NVDs that perform VNIC functions for VNICs in the subnetwork.

The VCN may be configured with routing tables, security rules, and DHCP options. The routing table is a virtual routing table for the VCN and includes rules for routing traffic from a subnet within the VCN to a destination outside the VCN through a gateway or a specially configured instance. The routing tables of the VCNs may be customized to control how packets are forwarded/routed to and from the VCNs. DHCP options refer to configuration information that is automatically provided to an instance at instance start-up.

The security rules configured for the VCN represent overlay firewall rules for the VCN. Security rules may include ingress and egress rules and specify the type of traffic (e.g., based on protocols and ports) that is allowed to enter and exit within the VCN instance. The client may choose whether a given rule is stateful or stateless. For example, a client may allow incoming SSH traffic from anywhere to a collection of instances by setting state entry rules with source CIDR0.0.0.0/0 and destination TCP port 22. The security rules may be implemented using a network security group or security list. A network security group consists of a set of security rules that apply only to the resources in the group. In another aspect, the security list includes rules applicable to all resources in any subnet that uses the security list. The VCN may be provided with a default security list with default security rules. Configuration information is provided for DHCP options configured for the VCN, which is automatically provided to instances in the VCN upon instance start-up.

In some embodiments, configuration information for the VCN is determined and stored by the VCN control plane. For example, configuration information for a VCN may include information about: address ranges associated with the VCN, subnets and associated information within the VCN, one or more VRs associated with the VCN, computing instances in the VCN and associated VNICs, NVDs (e.g., VNICs, VRs, gateways) that perform various virtualized network functions associated with the VCN, status information for the VCN, and other VCN related information. In certain embodiments, the VCN distribution service publishes configuration information stored by the VCN control plane or portion thereof to the NVD. The distributed information may be used to update information (e.g., forwarding tables, routing tables, etc.) stored and used by the NVD to forward packets to or from computing instances in the VCN.

In some embodiments, the creation of VCNs and subnets is handled by the VCN Control Plane (CP) and the launching of compute instances is handled by the compute control plane. The compute control plane is responsible for allocating physical resources for the compute instance and then invoking the VCN control plane to create and attach the VNICs to the compute instance. The VCN CP also sends the VCN data map to a VCN data plane configured to perform packet forwarding and routing functions. In some embodiments, the VCN CP provides a distribution service responsible for providing updates to the VCN data plane. Examples of VCN control planes are also depicted in fig. 12, 13, 14, and 15 (see reference numerals 1216, 1316, 1416, and 1516) and described below.

A customer may create one or more VCNs using resources hosted by the CSPI. Computing instances deployed on a client VCN may communicate with different endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by the CSPI and endpoints external to the CSPI.

Various different architectures for implementing cloud-based services using CSPI are depicted in fig. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, and 15 and described below. Fig. 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment 100, illustrating an overlay or customer VCN hosted by a CSPI, in accordance with certain embodiments. The distributed environment depicted in fig. 1 includes a plurality of components in an overlay network. The distributed environment 100 depicted in FIG. 1 is only an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some embodiments, the distributed environment depicted in fig. 1 may have more or fewer systems or components than those shown in fig. 1, may combine two or more systems, or may have a different system configuration or arrangement.

As shown in the example depicted in fig. 1, distributed environment 100 includes CSPI 101 that provides services and resources that customers can subscribe to and use to build their Virtual Cloud Network (VCN). In some embodiments, CSPI 101 provisions IaaS services to subscribing clients. Data centers within CSPI 101 may be organized into one or more regions. An example zone "zone US"102 is shown in fig. 1. The customer has configured a customer VCN 104 for the region 102. A customer may deploy various computing instances on the VCN 104, where the computing instances may include virtual machine or bare machine instances. Examples of instances include applications, databases, load balancers, and the like.

In the embodiment depicted in fig. 1, customer VCN 104 includes two subnets, namely, "subnet-1" and "subnet-2," each having its own CIDR IP address range. In FIG. 1, the overlay IP address range for subnet-1 is 10.0/16 and the address range for subnet-2 is 10.1/16.VCN virtual router 105 represents a logical gateway for the VCN that enables communication between the subnetworks of VCN 104 and with other endpoints external to the VCN. The VCN VR 105 is configured to route traffic between the VNICs in the VCN 104 and gateways associated with the VCN 104. The VCN VR 105 provides a port for each subnet of the VCN 104. For example, VR 105 may provide a port for subnet-1 with IP address 10.0.0.1 and a port for subnet-2 with IP address 10.1.0.1.

Multiple computing instances may be deployed on each subnet, where the computing instances may be virtual machine instances and/or bare machine instances. Computing instances in a subnet may be hosted by one or more host machines within CSPI 101. The computing instance participates in the subnet via the VNIC associated with the computing instance. For example, as shown in fig. 1, computing instance C1 becomes part of subnet-1 via the VNIC associated with the computing instance. Likewise, computing instance C2 becomes part of subnet-1 via the VNIC associated with C2. In a similar manner, multiple computing instances (which may be virtual machine instances or bare machine instances) may be part of subnet-1. Each computing instance is assigned a private overlay IP address and a MAC address via its associated VNIC. For example, in fig. 1, the overlay IP address of computing instance C1 is 10.0.0.2, the mac address is M1, and the private overlay IP address of computing instance C2 is 10.0.0.3, the mac address is M2. Each compute instance in subnet-1 (including compute instance C1 and C2) has a default route to VCN VR 105 using an IP address of 10.0.0.1, which is the IP address for the port of VCN VR 105 of subnet-1.

Multiple computing instances may be deployed on subnet-2, including virtual machine instances and/or bare machine instances. For example, as shown in fig. 1, computing instances D1 and D2 become part of subnet-2 via VNICs associated with the respective computing instances. In the embodiment depicted in fig. 1, the overlay IP address of compute instance D1 is 10.1.0.2, the mac address is MM1, and the private overlay IP address of compute instance D2 is 10.1.0.3, the mac address is MM2. Each compute instance in subnet-2 (including compute instances D1 and D2) has a default route to VCN VR 105 using IP address 10.1.0.1, which is the IP address for the port of VCN VR 105 for subnet-2.

The VCN a 104 may also include one or more load balancers. For example, a load balancer may be provided for a subnet and may be configured to load balance traffic across multiple computing instances on the subnet. A load balancer may also be provided to load balance traffic across subnets in the VCN.

A particular computing instance deployed on VCN 104 may communicate with a variety of different endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 and endpoints external to CSPI 200. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 101 may include: endpoints on the same subnet as a particular computing instance (e.g., communications between two computing instances in subnet-1); endpoints located on different subnets but within the same VCN (e.g., communications between a compute instance in subnet-1 and a compute instance in subnet-2); endpoints in different VCNs in the same region (e.g., communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and an endpoint in VCN 106 or 110 in the same region, communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and an endpoint in service network 110 in the same region); or endpoints in VCNs in different regions (e.g., communications between computing instances in subnet-1 and endpoints in VCNs 108 in different regions). Computing instances in a subnet hosted by CSPI 101 may also communicate with endpoints that are not hosted by CSPI 101 (i.e., external to CSPI 101). These external endpoints include endpoints in the customer's locally deployed network 116, endpoints within other remote cloud-hosted networks 118, public endpoints 114 accessible via a public network such as the internet, and other endpoints.

Communication between computing instances on the same subnet is facilitated using VNICs associated with the source computing instance and the destination computing instance. For example, compute instance C1 in subnet-1 may want to send a packet to compute instance C2 in subnet-1. For a packet that originates from a source computing instance and whose destination is another computing instance in the same subnet, the packet is first processed by the VNIC associated with the source computing instance. The processing performed by the VNICs associated with the source computing instance may include determining destination information for the packet from the packet header, identifying any policies (e.g., security lists) configured for the VNICs associated with the source computing instance, determining a next hop for the packet, performing any packet encapsulation/decapsulation functions as needed, and then forwarding/routing the packet to the next hop for the purpose of facilitating communication of the packet to its intended destination. When the destination computing instance and the source computing instance are located in the same subnet, the VNIC associated with the source computing instance is configured to identify the VNIC associated with the destination computing instance and forward the packet to the VNIC for processing. The VNIC associated with the destination computing instance is then executed and the packet is forwarded to the destination computing instance.

For packets to be transmitted from computing instances in a subnet to endpoints in different subnets in the same VCN, communication is facilitated by VNICs associated with source and destination computing instances and VCN VR. For example, if computing instance C1 in subnet-1 in FIG. 1 wants to send a packet to computing instance D1 in subnet-2, then the packet is first processed by the VNIC associated with computing instance C1. The VNIC associated with computing instance C1 is configured to route packets to VCN VR 105 using a default route or port 10.0.0.1 of the VCN VR. The VCN VR 105 is configured to route packets to subnet-2 using port 10.1.0.1. The VNIC associated with D1 then receives and processes the packet and the VNIC forwards the packet to computing instance D1.

For packets to be communicated from a computing instance in VCN 104 to an endpoint external to VCN 104, communication is facilitated by a VNIC associated with the source computing instance, VCN VR 105, and a gateway associated with VCN 104. One or more types of gateways may be associated with VCN 104. A gateway is an interface between a VCN and another endpoint that is external to the VCN. The gateway is a layer 3/IP layer concept and enables the VCN to communicate with endpoints external to the VCN. Thus, the gateway facilitates traffic flow between the VCN and other VCNs or networks. Various different types of gateways may be configured for the VCN to facilitate different types of communications with different types of endpoints. Depending on the gateway, the communication may be through a public network (e.g., the internet) or through a private network. Various communication protocols may be used for these communications.

For example, computing instance C1 may want to communicate with endpoints external to VCN 104. The packet may be first processed by the VNIC associated with the source computing instance C1. The VNIC processing determines that the destination of the packet is outside of subnet-1 of C1. The VNIC associated with C1 may forward the packet to the VCN VR 105 for VCN 104. The VCN VR 105 then processes the packet and, as part of the processing, determines a particular gateway associated with the VCN 104 as the next hop for the packet based on the destination of the packet. The VCN VR 105 may then forward the packet to the particular identified gateway. For example, if the destination is an endpoint within a customer's locally deployed network, the packet may be forwarded by the VCN VR 105 to a Dynamic Routing Gateway (DRG) gateway 122 configured for the VCN 104. The packet may then be forwarded from the gateway to the next hop to facilitate delivery of the packet to its final intended destination.

Various different types of gateways may be configured for the VCN. An example of a gateway that may be configured for a VCN is depicted in fig. 1 and described below. Examples of gateways associated with VCNs are also depicted in fig. 12, 13, 14, and 15 (e.g., gateways referenced by reference numerals 1234, 1236, 1238, 1334, 1336, 1338, 1434, 1436, 1438, 1534, 1536, and 1538), and described below. As shown in the embodiment depicted in fig. 1, dynamic Routing Gateway (DRG) 122 may be added to or associated with customer VCN 104 and provide a path for private network traffic communications between customer VCN 104 and another endpoint, which may be customer's on-premise network 116, VCN 108 in a different region of CSPI 101, or other remote cloud network 118 not hosted by CSPI 101. Customer on-premise network 116 may be a customer network or customer data center built using customer's resources. Access to the customer locally deployed network 116 is typically very limited. For customers having both customer on-premise network 116 and one or more VCNs 104 deployed or hosted by CSPI 101 in the cloud, customers may want their on-premise network 116 and their cloud-based VCNs 104 to be able to communicate with each other. This enables customers to build an extended hybrid environment, including customers' VCNs 104 hosted by CSPI 101 and their on-premise network 116.DRG 122 enables such communication. To enable such communications, a communication channel 124 is provided in which one endpoint of the channel is located in customer on-premise network 116 and the other endpoint is located in CSPI 101 and connected to customer VCN 104. The communication channel 124 may be over a public communication network (such as the internet) or a private communication network. Various different communication protocols may be used, such as IPsec VPN technology on a public communication network (such as the internet), fastConnect technology using an Oracle of a private network instead of a public network, etc. The devices or equipment in the customer-premises deployment network 116 that form one endpoint of the communication channel 124 are referred to as customer-premises equipment (CPE), such as CPE 126 depicted in fig. 1. On the CSPI 101 side, the endpoint may be a host machine executing DRG 122.

In some embodiments, a remote peer-to-peer connection (RPC) may be added to the DRG, which allows a customer to peer one VCN with another VCN in a different locale. Using such RPCs, customer VCN 104 may connect with VCN 108 in another region using DRG 122. DRG 122 may also be used to communicate with other remote cloud networks 118 not hosted by CSPI 101, such as Microsoft Azure cloud, amazon AWS cloud, etc.

As shown in fig. 1, the customer VCN 104 may be configured with an Internet Gateway (IGW) 120 that enables computing instances on the VCN 104 to communicate with a public endpoint 114 accessible through a public network, such as the internet. IGW 1120 is a gateway that connects the VCN to a public network such as the internet. IGW 120 enables public subnets within a VCN, such as VCN 104, where resources in the public subnets have public overlay IP addresses, to directly access public endpoints 112 on public network 114, such as the internet. Using IGW 120, a connection may be initiated from a subnet within VCN 104 or from the internet.

Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 128 may be configured for the customer's VCN 104 and enable cloud resources in the customer's VCN that do not have a private public overlay IP address to access the internet and do so without exposing those resources to direct incoming internet connections (e.g., L4-L7 connections). This enables private subnets within the VCN (such as private subnet-1 in VCN 104) to privately access public endpoints on the internet. In NAT gateways, connections to the public internet can only be initiated from the private subnetwork, and not from the internet.

In some embodiments, a Serving Gateway (SGW) 126 may be configured for the customer VCN 104 and provide a path for private network traffic between the VCN 104 and service endpoints supported in the services network 110. In some embodiments, the services network 110 may be provided by a CSP and may provide various services. An example of such a service network is the Oracle service network, which provides various services available to customers. For example, a computing instance (e.g., database system) in a private subnet of the client VCN 104 may backup data to a service endpoint (e.g., object store) without requiring a public IP address or access to the internet. In some embodiments, the VCN may have only one SGW and the connection may be initiated only from a subnet within the VCN and not from the serving network 110. If the VCN is peer to peer with another, resources in the other VCN typically cannot access the SGW. Resources in a locally deployed network that Connect to a VCN with FastConnect or VPN Connect may also use a service gateway configured for that VCN.

In some embodiments, SGW 126 uses the concept of a service-generic-free inter-domain routing (CIDR) tag, which is a string that represents all regional public IP address ranges for a service or group of services of interest. Customers use the service CIDR tag when they configure the SGW and associated routing rules to control traffic to the service. If the public IP address of the service changes in the future, the customer may optionally use the service CIDR tag in configuring the security rules without having to adjust the security rules.

A local peer-to-peer gateway (LPG) 132 is a gateway that may be added to a customer VCN 104 and enable the VCN 104 to peer with another VCN in the same region. Peer-to-peer refers to the VCN communicating using a private IP address, traffic need not be routed through a public network (such as the internet) or through the customer's locally deployed network 116. In the preferred embodiment, the VCN has a separate LPG for each peer it establishes. Local peer-to-peer or VCN peer-to-peer is a common practice for establishing network connectivity between different applications or infrastructure management functions.

A service provider, such as a provider of services in the services network 110, may provide access to services using different access models. According to the public access model, services may be exposed as public endpoints publicly accessible by computing instances in the client VCN via a public network (such as the internet), and/or may be privately accessed via SGW 126. The service may be accessed as a private IP endpoint in a private subnet in the client's VCN according to a particular private access model. This is known as Private Endpoint (PE) access and enables a service provider to expose its services as instances in a customer's private network. The private endpoint resources represent services within the customer's VCN. Each PE appears as a VNIC (referred to as a PE-VNIC, having one or more private IPs) in a subnet selected by the customer in the customer's VCN. Thus, the PE provides a way to use the VNIC to present services in a private customer VCN subnet. Since the endpoints are exposed as VNICs, all features associated with the VNICs (such as routing rules, security lists, etc.) are now available to the PE VNICs.

Service providers may register their services to enable access through the PE. The provider may associate policies with the service that limit the visibility of the service to customer leases. A provider may register multiple services under a single virtual IP address (VIP), especially for multi-tenant services. There may be multiple such private endpoints (in multiple VCNs) representing the same service.

The computing instance in the private subnet may then access the service using the private IP address or service DNS name of the PE VNIC. The computing instance in the client VCN may access the service by sending the service to the private IP address of the PE in the client VCN. The Private Access Gateway (PAGW) 130 is a gateway resource that may be attached to a service provider VCN (e.g., a VCN in the service network 110) that serves as an ingress/egress point for all traffic from/to the customer subnet private endpoint. The PAGW 130 enables the provider to extend the number of PE connections without utilizing its internal IP address resources. The provider only needs to configure one PAGW for any number of services registered in a single VCN. A provider may represent a service as a private endpoint in multiple VCNs for one or more customers. From the customer's perspective, instead of attaching to the customer's instance, the PE VNIC appears to attach to a service with which the customer wishes to interact. Traffic destined for the private endpoint is routed to the service via the PAGW 130. These are called customer-to-service private connections (C2S connections).

The PE concept can also be used to extend private access for services to customer's locally deployed networks and data centers by allowing traffic to flow through the FastConnect/IPsec links and private endpoints in the customer's VCN. Private access to services can also be extended to the customer's peer-to-peer VCN by allowing traffic to flow between the LPG 132 and PEs in the customer's VCN.

The customer may control routing in the VCN at the subnet level, so the customer may specify which subnets in the customer's VCN (such as VCN 104) use each gateway. The routing table of the VCN is used to decide whether to allow traffic to leave the VCN through a particular gateway. For example, in a particular example, a routing table for a common subnet within customer VCN 104 may send non-native traffic through IGW 120. Routing tables for private subnets within the same customer VCN 104 may send traffic destined for CSP services through SGW 126. All remaining traffic may be sent via NAT gateway 128. The routing table only controls traffic flowing out of the VCN.

The security list associated with the VCN is used to control traffic entering the VCN via the gateway via the inbound connection. All resources in the subnetwork use the same routing table and security list. The security list may be used to control the particular type of traffic that is allowed to enter and exit instances in the sub-network of the VCN. Security list rules may include ingress (inbound) and egress (outbound) rules. For example, an ingress rule may specify an allowed source address range, while an egress rule may specify an allowed destination address range. The security rules may specify a particular protocol (e.g., TCP, ICMP), a particular port (e.g., 22 for SSH, 3389 for Windows RDP), etc. In some implementations, the instance's operating system may enforce its own firewall rules that conform to the security list rules. Rules may be stateful (e.g., track connections and automatically allow responses without explicit security list rules for response traffic) or stateless.

Accesses from a customer's VCN (i.e., through resources or computing instances deployed on the VCN 104) may be categorized as public, private, or private. Public access refers to an access model that uses public IP addresses or NATs to access public endpoints. Private access enables customer workloads in the VCN 104 (e.g., resources in a private subnet) with private IP addresses to access services without traversing a public network such as the internet. In some embodiments, CSPI 101 enables a customer VCN workload with a private IP address to access (the public service endpoint of) a service using a service gateway. Thus, the service gateway provisions the private access model by establishing a virtual link between the customer's VCN and the public endpoint of a service residing outside the customer's private network.

In addition, the CSPI may use technologies such as FastConnect public peering to provide private public access, where a customer locally deployed instance may use a FastConnect connection to access one or more services in a customer VCN without traversing a public network such as the internet. The CSPI may also use FastConnect private peering to provision private access, where a customer locally deployed instance with a private IP address may access the customer's VCN workload using FastConnect connection. FastConnect is a network connectivity alternative to connecting a customer's locally deployed network to the CSPI and its services using the public internet. FastConnect provides a simple, flexible, and economical way to create private and private connections with higher bandwidth options and a more reliable and consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

FIG. 1 and the accompanying description above describe various virtualized components in an example virtual network. As described above, the virtual network is built on an underlying physical or substrate network. Fig. 2 depicts a simplified architectural diagram of physical components in a physical network within CSPI 200 that provides an underlying layer for a virtual network, in accordance with some embodiments. As shown, CSPI 200 provides a distributed environment including components and resources (e.g., computing, memory, and networking resources) provided by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP). These components and resources are used to provide cloud services (e.g., iaaS services) to subscribing clients (i.e., clients that have subscribed to one or more services provided by CSPs). Clients are provisioned with a subset of the resources (e.g., computing, memory, and networking resources) of CSPI 200 based on the services subscribed to by the clients. The customer may then build its own cloud-based (i.e., CSPI-hosted) customizable and private virtual network using the physical computing, memory, and networking resources provided by CSPI 200. As indicated previously, these customer networks are referred to as Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs). Clients may deploy one or more client resources, such as computing instances, on these client VCNs. The computing instance may be in the form of a virtual machine, a bare metal instance, or the like. CSPI 200 provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available hosted environment.

In the example embodiment depicted in fig. 2, the physical components of CSPI 200 include one or more physical host machines or physical servers (e.g., 202, 206, 208), network Virtualization Devices (NVDs) (e.g., 210, 212), top of rack (TOR) switches (e.g., 214, 216) and physical networks (e.g., 218), and switches in physical network 218. The physical host machine or server may host and execute various computing instances that participate in one or more subnets of the VCN. The computing instances may include virtual machine instances and bare machine instances. For example, the various computing instances depicted in fig. 1 may be hosted by the physical host machine depicted in fig. 2. The virtual machine computing instances in the VCN may be executed by one host machine or a plurality of different host machines. The physical host machine may also host a virtual host machine, a container-based host or function, or the like. The VNICs and VCN VRs depicted in fig. 1 may be performed by the NVD depicted in fig. 2. The gateway depicted in fig. 1 may be performed by the host machine and/or NVD depicted in fig. 2.

The host machine or server may execute a hypervisor (also referred to as a virtual machine monitor or VMM) that creates and enables a virtualized environment on the host machine. Virtualization or virtualized environments facilitate cloud-based computing. One or more computing instances may be created, executed, and managed on a host machine by a hypervisor on the host machine. The hypervisor on the host machine enables the physical computing resources (e.g., computing, memory, and networking resources) of the host machine to be shared among the various computing instances executed by the host machine.

For example, as depicted in FIG. 2, host machines 202 and 208 execute hypervisors 260 and 266, respectively. These hypervisors may be implemented using software, firmware, or hardware, or a combination thereof. Typically, a hypervisor is a process or software layer that sits on top of the Operating System (OS) of the host machine, which in turn executes on the hardware processor of the host machine. The hypervisor provides a virtualized environment by enabling physical computing resources of the host machine (e.g., processing resources such as processors/cores, memory resources, networking resources) to be shared among the various virtual machine computing instances executed by the host machine. For example, in fig. 2, the hypervisor 260 may be located above the OS of the host machine 202 and enable computing resources (e.g., processing, memory, and networking resources) of the host machine 202 to be shared among computing instances (e.g., virtual machines) executed by the host machine 202. The virtual machine may have its own operating system (referred to as a guest operating system), which may be the same as or different from the OS of the host machine. The operating system of a virtual machine executed by a host machine may be the same as or different from the operating system of another virtual machine executed by the same host machine. Thus, the hypervisor enables multiple operating systems to be executed simultaneously while sharing the same computing resources of the host machine. The host machines depicted in fig. 2 may have the same or different types of hypervisors.

The computing instance may be a virtual machine instance or a bare machine instance. In FIG. 2, computing instance 268 on host machine 202 and computing instance 274 on host machine 208 are examples of virtual machine instances. The host machine 206 is an example of a bare metal instance provided to a customer.

In some cases, an entire host machine may be provisioned to a single customer, and all of one or more computing instances (either virtual machines or bare metal instances) hosted by the host machine belong to the same customer. In other cases, the host machine may be shared among multiple guests (i.e., multiple tenants). In such a multi-tenancy scenario, the host machine may host virtual machine computing instances belonging to different guests. These computing instances may be members of different VCNs for different customers. In some embodiments, bare metal computing instances are hosted by bare metal servers without hypervisors. When supplying a bare metal computing instance, a single customer or tenant maintains control of the physical CPU, memory, and network interfaces of the host machine hosting the bare metal instance, and the host machine is not shared with other customers or tenants.

As previously described, each computing instance that is part of a VCN is associated with a VNIC that enables the computing instance to be a member of a subnet of the VCN. The VNICs associated with the computing instances facilitate communication of packets or frames to and from the computing instances. The VNIC is associated with a computing instance when the computing instance is created. In some embodiments, for a computing instance executed by a host machine, a VNIC associated with the computing instance is executed by an NVD connected to the host machine. For example, in fig. 2, host machine 202 executes virtual machine computing instance 268 associated with VNIC 276, and VNIC 276 is executed by NVD 210 connected to host machine 202. As another example, bare metal instances 272 hosted by host machine 206 are associated with VNICs 280 that are executed by NVDs 212 connected to host machine 206. As yet another example, the VNICs 284 are associated with computing instances 274 that are executed by the host machine 208, and the VNICs 284 are executed by NVDs 212 connected to the host machine 208.

For a computing instance hosted by a host machine, an NVD connected to the host machine also executes a VCN VR corresponding to the VCN of which the computing instance is a member. For example, in the embodiment depicted in fig. 2, NVD 210 executes VCN VR 277 corresponding to the VCN of which computing instance 268 is a member. NVD 212 may also execute one or more VCN VRs 283 corresponding to VCNs corresponding to computing instances hosted by host machines 206 and 208.

The host machine may include one or more Network Interface Cards (NICs) that enable the host machine to connect to other devices. A NIC on a host machine may provide one or more ports (or interfaces) that enable the host machine to communicatively connect to another device. For example, the host machine may connect to the NVD using one or more ports (or interfaces) provided on the host machine and on the NVD. The host machine may also be connected to other devices (such as another host machine).

For example, in fig. 2, host machine 202 is connected to NVD 210 using link 220, link 220 extending between port 234 provided by NIC 232 of host machine 202 and port 236 of NVD 210. The host machine 206 is connected to the NVD 212 using a link 224, the link 224 extending between a port 246 provided by the NIC 244 of the host machine 206 and a port 248 of the NVD 212. Host machine 208 is connected to NVD 212 using link 226, link 226 extending between port 252 provided by NIC 250 of host machine 208 and port 254 of NVD 212.

The NVD in turn is connected via communication links to top of rack (TOR) switches that are connected to a physical network 218 (also referred to as a switch fabric). In certain embodiments, the links between the host machine and the NVD and between the NVD and the TOR switch are Ethernet links. For example, in fig. 2, NVDs 210 and 212 are connected to TOR switches 214 and 216 using links 228 and 230, respectively. In some embodiments, links 220, 224, 226, 228, and 230 are ethernet links. The collection of host machines and NVDs connected to TOR is sometimes referred to as a rack (rack).

The physical network 218 provides a communication architecture that enables TOR switches to communicate with each other. The physical network 218 may be a multi-layer network. In some embodiments, the physical network 218 is a multi-layer Clos network of switches, where TOR switches 214 and 216 represent leaf level nodes of the multi-layer and multi-node physical switching network 218. Different Clos network configurations are possible, including but not limited to layer 2 networks, layer 3 networks, layer 4 networks, layer 5 networks, and general "n" layer networks. An example of a Clos network is depicted in fig. 5 and described below.

There may be a variety of different connection configurations between the host machine and the NVD, such as a one-to-one configuration, a many-to-one configuration, a one-to-many configuration, and the like. In one-to-one configuration implementations, each host machine is connected to its own separate NVD. For example, in fig. 2, host machine 202 is connected to NVD 210 via NIC 232 of host machine 202. In a many-to-one configuration, multiple host machines are connected to one NVD. For example, in fig. 2, host machines 206 and 208 are connected to the same NVD 212 via NICs 244 and 250, respectively.

In a one-to-many configuration, one host machine is connected to multiple NVDs. FIG. 3 shows an example within CSPI 300 where a host machine is connected to multiple NVDs. As shown in fig. 3, host machine 302 includes a Network Interface Card (NIC) 304 that includes a plurality of ports 306 and 308. Host machine 300 is connected to first NVD 310 via port 306 and link 320, and to second NVD312 via port 308 and link 322. Ports 306 and 308 may be ethernet ports and links 320 and 322 between host machine 302 and NVDs 310 and 312 may be ethernet links. The NVD 310 is in turn connected to a first TOR switch 314 and the NVD312 is connected to a second TOR switch 316. The links between NVDs 310 and 312 and TOR switches 314 and 316 may be ethernet links. TOR switches 314 and 316 represent layer 0 switching devices in a multi-layer physical network 318.

The arrangement depicted in fig. 3 provides two separate physical network paths between the physical switch network 318 and the host machine 302: the first path passes through TOR switch 314 to NVD 310 to host machine 302 and the second path passes through TOR switch 316 to NVD312 to host machine 302. The separate path provides enhanced availability (referred to as high availability) of the host machine 302. If one of the paths (e.g., link down in one of the paths) or the devices (e.g., a particular NVD is not running) is problematic, the other path may be used for communication to/from the host machine 302.

In the configuration depicted in fig. 3, the host machine connects to two different NVDs using two different ports provided by the NIC of the host machine. In other embodiments, the host machine may include multiple NICs that enable the host machine to connect to multiple NVDs.

Referring back to fig. 2, an nvd is a physical device or component that performs one or more network and/or storage virtualization functions. The NVD may be any device having one or more processing units (e.g., CPU, network Processing Unit (NPU), FPGA, packet processing pipeline, etc.), memory (including cache), and ports. Various virtualization functions may be performed by software/firmware executed by one or more processing units of the NVD.

NVD may be implemented in a variety of different forms. For example, in certain embodiments, the NVD is implemented as an interface card called a smart NIC or a smart NIC with an on-board embedded processor. A smart NIC is a device independent of the NIC on the host machine. In fig. 2, NVDs 210 and 212 may be implemented as smart nics connected to host machine 202 and host machines 206 and 208, respectively.

However, the smart nic is only one example of an NVD implementation. Various other implementations are possible. For example, in some other implementations, the NVD or one or more functions performed by the NVD may be incorporated into or performed by one or more host machines, one or more TOR switches, and other components of CSPI 200. For example, the NVD may be implemented in a host machine, where the functions performed by the NVD are performed by the host machine. As another example, the NVD may be part of a TOR switch, or the TOR switch may be configured to perform functions performed by the NVD, which enables the TOR switch to perform various complex packet conversions for the public cloud. TOR performing the function of NVD is sometimes referred to as intelligent TOR. In other embodiments where a Virtual Machine (VM) instance is provided to the client instead of a Bare Metal (BM) instance, the functions performed by the NVD may be implemented within the hypervisor of the host machine. In some other implementations, some of the functionality of the NVD may be offloaded to a centralized service running on a set of host machines.

In some embodiments, such as when implemented as a smart nic as shown in fig. 2, the NVD may include a plurality of physical ports that enable it to connect to one or more host machines and one or more TOR switches. Ports on NVD may be classified as host-oriented ports (also referred to as "south ports") or network-oriented or TOR-oriented ports (also referred to as "north ports"). The host-facing port of the NVD is a port for connecting the NVD to a host machine. Examples of host-facing ports in fig. 2 include port 236 on NVD 210 and ports 248 and 254 on NVD 212. The network-facing port of the NVD is a port for connecting the NVD to the TOR switch. Examples of network-facing ports in fig. 2 include port 256 on NVD 210 and port 258 on NVD 212. As shown in fig. 2, NVD 210 connects to TOR switch 214 using link 228 extending from port 256 of NVD 210 to TOR switch 214. Similarly, NVD 212 connects to TOR switch 216 using link 230 extending from port 258 of NVD 212 to TOR switch 216.

The NVD receives packets and frames (e.g., packets and frames generated by computing instances hosted by the host machine) from the host machine via the host-oriented ports, and after performing the necessary packet processing, the packets and frames may be forwarded to the TOR switch via the network-oriented ports of the NVD. The NVD may receive packets and frames from the TOR switch via the network-oriented ports of the NVD, and after performing the necessary packet processing, may forward the packets and frames to the host machine via the host-oriented ports of the NVD.

In some embodiments, there may be multiple ports and associated links between the NVD and the TOR switch. These ports and links may be aggregated to form a link aggregation group (referred to as LAG) of multiple ports or links. Link aggregation allows multiple physical links between two endpoints (e.g., between NVD and TOR switches) to be considered a single logical link. All physical links in a given LAG may operate in full duplex mode at the same speed. LAG helps to increase the bandwidth and reliability of the connection between two endpoints. If one of the physical links in the LAG fails, traffic will be dynamically and transparently reassigned to one of the other physical links in the LAG. The aggregated physical link delivers a higher bandwidth than each individual link. The multiple ports associated with the LAG are considered to be a single logical port. Traffic may be load balanced among the multiple physical links of the LAG. One or more LAGs may be configured between the two endpoints. The two endpoints may be located between the NVD and TOR switches, between the host machine and the NVD, and so on.

The NVD implements or performs network virtualization functions. These functions are performed by software/firmware executed by the NVD. Examples of network virtualization functions include, but are not limited to: packet encapsulation and decapsulation functions; a function for creating a VCN network; a function for implementing network policies, such as a VCN security list (firewall) function; facilitating routing and forwarding of packets to and from computing instances in the VCN, and the like. In some embodiments, upon receiving a packet, the NVD is configured to execute a packet processing pipeline to process the packet and determine how to forward or route the packet. As part of this packet processing pipeline, the NVD may perform one or more virtual functions associated with the overlay network, such as executing a VNIC associated with a computing instance in the VCN, executing a Virtual Router (VR) associated with the VCN, encapsulation and decapsulation of packets to facilitate forwarding or routing in the virtual network, execution of certain gateways (e.g., local peer gateways), implementation of security lists, network security groups, network Address Translation (NAT) functionality (e.g., translating public IP to private IP on a host-by-host basis), throttling functions, and other functions.

In some embodiments, the packet processing data path in the NVD may include multiple packet pipelines, each consisting of a series of packet transform stages (stages). In some embodiments, after receiving a packet, the packet is parsed and classified into a single pipeline. The packets are then processed in a linear fashion, stage by stage, until the packets are dropped or sent out over the NVD interface. These stages provide basic functional packet processing building blocks (e.g., validate headers, force throttling, insert new layer 2 headers, force L4 firewalls, VCN encapsulation/decapsulation, etc.) so that new pipelines can be built by combining existing stages and new functions can be added by creating new stages and inserting them into existing pipelines.

The NVD may perform both control plane functions and data plane functions corresponding to the control plane and data plane of the VCN. Examples of VCN control planes are also depicted in fig. 12, 13, 14, and 15 (see reference numerals 1216, 1316, 1416, and 1516) and described below. Examples of VCN data planes are depicted in fig. 12, 13, 14, and 15 (see reference numerals 1218, 1318, 1418, and 1518) and described below. The control plane functions include functions for configuring the network (e.g., setting up routing and routing tables, configuring VNICs, etc.) that control how data is forwarded. In some embodiments, a VCN control plane is provided that centrally computes all overlay-to-baseboard mappings and publishes them to NVDs and virtual network edge devices (such as various gateways, such as DRG, SGW, IGW, etc.). Firewall rules may also be published using the same mechanism. In certain embodiments, the NVD only obtains a mapping related to the NVD. The data plane functions include functions to actually route/forward packets based on a configuration using control plane settings. The VCN data plane is implemented by encapsulating the customer's network packets before they traverse the baseboard network. The encapsulation/decapsulation functionality is implemented on the NVD. In certain embodiments, the NVD is configured to intercept all network packets in and out of the host machine and perform network virtualization functions.

As indicated above, the NVD performs various virtualization functions, including VNICs and VCN VR. The NVD may execute a VNIC associated with a computing instance hosted by one or more host machines connected to the VNIC. For example, as depicted in fig. 2, NVD 210 performs the functions of VNIC 276 associated with computing instance 268 hosted by host machine 202 connected to NVD 210. As another example, NVD 212 executes VNICs 280 associated with bare metal computing instances 272 hosted by host machine 206 and executes VNICs 284 associated with computing instances 274 hosted by host machine 208. The host machine may host computing instances belonging to different VCNs (belonging to different customers), and an NVD connected to the host machine may execute a VNIC corresponding to the computing instance (i.e., perform VNIC related functions).

The NVD also executes a VCN virtual router corresponding to the VCN of the computing instance. For example, in the embodiment depicted in fig. 2, NVD 210 executes VCN VR 277 corresponding to the VCN to which computing instance 268 belongs. NVD 212 executes one or more VCN VRs 283 corresponding to one or more VCNs to which computing instances hosted by host machines 206 and 208 belong. In some embodiments, the VCN VR corresponding to the VCN is executed by all NVDs connected to a host machine hosting at least one computing instance belonging to the VCN. If a host machine hosts computing instances belonging to different VCNs, an NVD connected to the host machine may execute VCN VR corresponding to the different VCNs.

In addition to the VNICs and VCN VRs, the NVD may execute various software (e.g., daemons) and include one or more hardware components that facilitate various network virtualization functions performed by the NVD. For simplicity, these various components are grouped together as a "packet processing component" shown in fig. 2. For example, NVD 210 includes a packet processing component 286 and NVD 212 includes a packet processing component 288. For example, a packet processing component for an NVD may include a packet processor configured to interact with ports and hardware interfaces of the NVD to monitor all packets received by and transmitted using the NVD and store network information. The network information may include, for example, network flow information and per-flow information (e.g., per-flow statistics) identifying different network flows handled by the NVD. In some embodiments, network flow information may be stored on a per VNIC basis. The packet processor may perform packet-by-packet manipulation and implement stateful NAT and L4 Firewalls (FWs). As another example, the packet processing component may include a replication agent configured to replicate information stored by the NVD to one or more different replication target repositories. As yet another example, the packet processing component may include a logging agent configured to perform a logging function of the NVD. The packet processing component may also include software for monitoring the performance and health of the NVD and possibly also the status and health of other components connected to the NVD.

FIG. 1 illustrates components of an example virtual or overlay network, including a VCN, a subnet within the VCN, a computing instance deployed on the subnet, a VNIC associated with the computing instance, a VR for the VCN, and a set of gateways configured for the VCN. The overlay component depicted in fig. 1 may be executed or hosted by one or more of the physical components depicted in fig. 2. For example, computing instances in a VCN may be executed or hosted by one or more host machines depicted in fig. 2. For a computing instance hosted by a host machine, a VNIC associated with the computing instance is typically executed by an NVD connected to the host machine (i.e., VNIC functionality is provided by an NVD connected to the host machine). The VCN VR functions for a VCN are performed by all NVDs connected to a host machine that hosts or executes computing instances that are part of the VCN. The gateway associated with the VCN may be implemented by one or more different types of NVDs. For example, some gateways may be implemented by a smart nic, while other gateways may be implemented by one or more host machines or other implementations of NVDs.

As described above, the computing instances in the client VCN may communicate with various different endpoints (where endpoints may be within the same subnet as the source computing instance, in different subnets as the source computing instance but within the same VCN), or endpoints external to the VCN of the source computing instance. These communications are facilitated using a VNIC associated with the computing instance, a VCN VR, and a gateway associated with the VCN.

For communication between two computing instances on the same subnet in a VCN, the VNICs associated with the source and destination computing instances are used to facilitate the communication. The source and destination computing instances may be hosted by the same host machine or by different host machines. Packets originating from a source computing instance may be forwarded from a host machine hosting the source computing instance to an NVD connected to the host machine. On NVD, packets are processed using a packet processing pipeline, which may include execution of VNICs associated with source computing instances. Because the destination endpoints for the packets are located within the same subnet, execution of the VNICs associated with the source computing instance causes the packets to be forwarded to the NVD executing the VNICs associated with the destination computing instance, which then processes the packets and forwards them to the destination computing instance. VNICs associated with source and destination computing instances may execute on the same NVD (e.g., when both source and destination computing instances are hosted by the same host machine) or on different NVDs (e.g., when source and destination computing instances are hosted by different host machines connected to different NVDs). The VNIC may use the routing/forwarding table stored by the NVD to determine the next hop for the packet.

For packets to be transferred from a computing instance in a subnet to an endpoint in a different subnet in the same VCN, packets originating from a source computing instance are transferred from a host machine hosting the source computing instance to an NVD connected to the host machine. On NVD, packets are processed using a packet processing pipeline, which may include execution of one or more VNICs and VR associated with the VCN. For example, as part of a packet processing pipeline, the NVD performs or invokes a function associated with a VNIC associated with a source computing instance (also referred to as an executing VNIC). The functions performed by the VNICs may include looking at VLAN tags on the packets. The VCN VR functions are next invoked and performed by the NVD because the destination of the packet is outside the subnet. The VCN VR then routes the packet to an NVD that executes the VNIC associated with the destination computing instance. The VNIC associated with the destination computing instance then processes the packet and forwards the packet to the destination computing instance. VNICs associated with source and destination computing instances may execute on the same NVD (e.g., when both source and destination computing instances are hosted by the same host machine) or on different NVDs (e.g., when source and destination computing instances are hosted by different host machines connected to different NVDs).

If the destination for the packet is outside of the VCN of the source computing instance, the packet originating from the source computing instance is transmitted from the host machine hosting the source computing instance to an NVD connected to the host machine. The NVD executes the VNIC associated with the source computing instance. Since the packet's destination endpoint is outside the VCN, the packet is then processed by the VCN VR of that VCN. The NVD invokes VCN VR functions that may cause the packet to be forwarded to the NVD executing the appropriate gateway associated with the VCN. For example, if the destination is an endpoint within a customer's locally deployed network, the packet may be forwarded by the VCN VR to the NVD executing a DRG gateway configured for the VCN. The VCN VR may be executed on the same NVD as the NVD executing the VNIC associated with the source computing instance, or by a different NVD. The gateway may be implemented by an NVD, which may be a smart NIC, a host machine, or other NVD implementation. The packet is then processed by the gateway and forwarded to the next hop, which facilitates delivery of the packet to its intended destination endpoint. For example, in the embodiment depicted in fig. 2, packets originating from computing instance 268 may be transmitted from host machine 202 to NVD 210 over link 220 (using NIC 232). On NVD 210, VNIC 276 is invoked because it is the VNIC associated with source computing instance 268. VNIC 276 is configured to examine the information encapsulated in the packet and determine the next hop for forwarding the packet in order to facilitate delivery of the packet to its intended destination endpoint, and then forward the packet to the determined next hop.

Computing instances deployed on a VCN may communicate with a variety of different endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 and endpoints external to CSPI 200. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 may include instances in the same VCN or other VCNs, which may be customer VCNs or VCNs that do not belong to customers. Communication between endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 may be performed through physical network 218. Computing instances may also communicate with endpoints that are not hosted by CSPI 200 or endpoints external to CSPI 200. Examples of such endpoints include endpoints within a customer's locally deployed network or data center, or public endpoints accessible through a public network such as the internet. Communication with endpoints external to CSPI 200 may be performed over a public network (e.g., the internet) (not shown in fig. 2) or a private network (not shown in fig. 2) using various communication protocols.

The architecture of CSPI 200 depicted in fig. 2 is merely an example and is not intended to be limiting. In alternative embodiments, variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some embodiments, CSPI 200 may have more or fewer systems or components than those shown in fig. 2, may combine two or more systems, or may have different system configurations or arrangements. The systems, subsystems, and other components depicted in fig. 2 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, using hardware, or according to a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., on a memory device).

FIG. 4 depicts a connection between a host machine and an NVD for providing I/O virtualization to support multi-tenancy in accordance with certain embodiments. As depicted in fig. 4, host machine 402 executes hypervisor 404 that provides a virtualized environment. The host machine 402 executes two virtual machine instances: VM1 406 belonging to guest/tenant #1 and VM2 408 belonging to guest/tenant # 2. Host machine 402 includes a physical NIC 410 connected to NVD 412 via link 414. Each computing instance is attached to a VNIC executed by NVD 412. In the embodiment in FIG. 4, VM1 406 is attached to VNIC-VM1 420 and VM2 408 is attached to VNIC-VM2 422.

As shown in fig. 4, NIC 410 includes two logical NICs: logical NIC a 416 and logical NIC B418. Each virtual machine is attached to its own logical NIC and is configured to work with its own logical NIC. For example, VM1 406 is attached to logical NIC A416 and VM2 408 is attached to logical NIC B418. Although the host machine 402 includes only one physical NIC 410 shared by multiple tenants, each tenant's virtual machine believes that they have their own host machine and network card due to the logical NIC.

In some embodiments, each logical NIC is assigned its own VLAN ID. Thus, a specific VLAN ID is assigned to logical NIC a 416 for tenant #1, and a separate VLAN ID is assigned to logical NIC B418 for tenant # 2. When a packet is transferred from VM1 406, a tag (tag) assigned to tenant #1 is attached to the packet by the hypervisor, which is then transferred from host machine 402 to NVD 412 over link 414. In a similar manner, when a packet is transmitted from VM2 408, the label assigned to tenant #2 is attached to the packet by the hypervisor, and the packet is then transmitted from host machine 402 to NVD 412 over link 414. Thus, packets 424 transmitted from host machine 402 to NVD 412 have associated indicia 426 identifying the particular tenant and associated VM. On the NVD, for a packet 424 received from host machine 402, a flag 426 associated with the packet is used to determine whether the packet is processed by VNIC-VM1 420 or VNIC-VM2 422. The packets are then processed by the corresponding VNICs. The configuration depicted in fig. 4 enables each tenant's computing instance to trust that they own its own host machine and NIC. The arrangement depicted in FIG. 4 provides I/O virtualization to support multi-tenancy.

Fig. 5 depicts a simplified block diagram of a physical network 500 according to some embodiments. The embodiment depicted in fig. 5 is structured as a Clos network. Clos networks are a specific type of network topology designed to provide connection redundancy while maintaining high split bandwidth and maximum resource utilization. Clos networks are a type of non-blocking, multi-stage or multi-layer switching network, where the number of stages or layers may be two, three, four, five, etc. The embodiment depicted in fig. 5 is a 3-layer network, including layer 1, layer 2, and layer 3.TOR switches 504 represent layer 0 switches in a Clos network. One or more NVDs are connected to the TOR switch. Layer 0 switches are also known as edge devices of a physical network. The layer 0 switch is connected to a layer 1 switch, also known as a leaf switch. In the embodiment depicted in fig. 5, a set of "n" layer 0TOR switches is connected to a set of "n" layer 1 switches and together form a group (pod). Each layer 0 switch in a cluster is interconnected to all layer 1 switches in the cluster, but there is no connectivity of switches between clusters. In some embodiments, two clusters are referred to as blocks. Each block is serviced by or connected to a set of "n" layer 2 switches (sometimes referred to as backbone switches). There may be several blocks in the physical network topology. The layer 2 switches are in turn connected to "n" layer 3 switches (sometimes referred to as super trunk switches). Communication of packets over the physical network 500 is typically performed using one or more layer 3 communication protocols. Typically, all layers of the physical network (except the TOR layer) are n-way redundant, thus allowing for high availability. Policies may be specified for the clusters and blocks to control the visibility of switches to each other in the physical network, enabling extension (scale) of the physical network.

The Clos network is characterized by a fixed maximum number of hops from one layer 0 switch to another layer 0 switch (or from an NVD connected to a layer 0 switch to another NVD connected to a layer 0 switch). For example, in a 3-layer Clos network, a maximum of seven hops are required for packets to reach from one NVD to another, with the source and target NVDs connected to the leaf layers of the Clos network. Also, in a 4-layer Clos network, a maximum of nine hops are required for packets to reach from one NVD to another, with the source and target NVDs connected to the leaf layers of the Clos network. Thus, the Clos network architecture maintains consistent latency throughout the network, which is important for communication between and within the data center. The Clos topology scales horizontally and is cost-effective. The bandwidth/throughput capacity of the network can be easily increased by adding more switches (e.g., more leaf switches and backbone switches) at each layer and by increasing the number of links between switches at adjacent layers.

In some embodiments, each resource within the CSPI is assigned a unique identifier (referred to as a Cloud Identifier (CID)). This identifier is included as part of the information of the resource and may be used to manage the resource (e.g., via a console or through an API). An example syntax for CID is:

ocid1.<RESOURCE TYPE>.<REALM>.[REGION][.FUTURE USE].<UNIQUE ID>

Wherein, the liquid crystal display device comprises a liquid crystal display device,

ocid1: a text string indicating a version of the CID;

resource type: types of resources (e.g., instance, volume, VCN, subnet, user, group, etc.);

realm: the domain in which the resource is located. Example values are "c1" for the business domain, "c2" for the government cloud domain, or "c3" for the federal government cloud domain, etc. Each domain may have its own domain name;

region: the region where the resource is located. If the region is not suitable for the resource, then this portion may be empty;

future use: reserved for future use.

Unique ID: a unique portion of the ID. The format may vary depending on the type of resource or service.

Fig. 6 depicts a simplified block diagram of a distributed environment 600 incorporating exemplary embodiments for performing communication channel related state information replication, in accordance with certain embodiments.

Distributed environment 600 may include multiple systems communicatively coupled to each other via a communication channel 616. For example, the embodiment in fig. 6 depicts various systems and networks including a customer on-premise network 602 and a Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) 660. These systems may be communicatively coupled to each other via a communication channel 616. The distributed environment 600 depicted in fig. 6 is merely an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some implementations, distributed environment 600 may have more or fewer systems or components than those shown in fig. 6, may combine two or more systems, or may have different system configurations or arrangements. The systems, subsystems, and other components depicted in fig. 6 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, using hardware, or according to a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., on a memory device).

In an example embodiment, as depicted in fig. 6, a customer-on-premise network 602 may include Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) 608 and configuration information 607. Customer on-premise network 602 is a network of one or more customer resources, such as one or more customer data centers. Access to the customer locally deployed network 602 is typically very limited.

The devices or equipment in the customer-premises deployment network 602 that form one endpoint of the communication channel 616 are referred to as customer-premises equipment (CPE), such as CPE 608 depicted in fig. 6. CPE 608 must be properly configured using configuration information 607 to set up communication channel 616 and enable communication between customer premise network 602 and host machine or endpoint 620 within CSPI 660 using communication channel 616. In addition, the particular configuration information to be applied to CPE 608 may depend on various other factors, such as the particular CPE 608 device being used, the characteristics of the communication channel 616 being established (e.g., the type of channel, the protocol to be used for communication, etc.), the CSPI 660 equipment, the primary host machine 620 forming the other endpoint of the communication channel, and other criteria. CPE may come from different suppliers, may have different CPE platforms, have different versions, etc.

In an example embodiment, as depicted in fig. 6, cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) 660 may include Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) 640, primary host machine 620, and backup host machine 630. Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) 660 may be provided by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and used to provide one or more cloud services. A customer may subscribe to one or more of these cloud services provided by CSP using CSPI 660. A customer is any entity subscribing to a cloud service provided by a CSP. A customer may subscribe to one or more cloud services, including different types of services, including SaaS, paaS, iaaS and other types of cloud services. When a customer subscribes to or registers for a service provided by the CSP, a lease or account is created for the customer. The customer has access to this account and can use it to access cloud resources associated with the account.

In some embodiments, the CSP may provide services under the IaaS model, where the CSP provides infrastructure, such as CSPI 660, that customers may use to build their own network and deploy customer resources. In such embodiments, CSPI 660 may include interconnected high-performance computing resources, including various host machines (primary host machine 620 and backup host machine 630), memory resources, and network resources forming a physical network, referred to as a base layer network or an underlying network. CSPI 660 may comprise one or more computing systems. Resources in CSPI 660 may be distributed across one or more data centers, which may be geographically distributed across one or more areas.

The physical network provides an underlying basis for creating one or more virtual or overlay networks over the physical network. These virtual or overlay networks (also referred to as software-based or software-defined networks) are implemented using software virtualization techniques to create a network abstraction layer that can run over a physical network. The overlay network may take many forms. Overlay networks typically use layer 3IP addressing, with endpoints specified by their virtual IP addresses. This method of overlay networking is often referred to as virtual layer 3 networking. When a customer subscribes to or registers for an IaaS service provided by CSP, the lease created for that customer is a secure and sequestered partition within CSPI 660 in which the customer can create, organize, and manage their cloud resources.

Clients may build a network using resources provided by CSPI 660. One or more customer resources, such as computing instances, may be deployed on these networks. For example, a customer may use the resources provided by CSPI 660 to build one or more customizable private networks, referred to as virtual cloud networks or VCNs. For example, as depicted in FIG. 6, a customer configures customer VCN 640 using resources provided by CSPI 660. Clients may deploy one or more client resources, such as computing instances, on these client VCNs. The computing instances may take the form of virtual machines, containers, bare metal instances, and the like. Thus, CSPI 660 provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and service environments in a highly available hosted environment. Clients do not manage or control the underlying physical resources provided by CSPI 660, but may control the operating system, storage, and deployed applications; and may have limited control over selected networking components (e.g., firewalls).

For customers having both customer on-premise network 602 and one or more VCNs deployed or hosted in the cloud by CSPI 660, customers generally want their on-premise network 602 and cloud-based VCN network (such as VCN 640) to be able to communicate with each other. To enable communication between the customer-on-premise network 602 and the provider VCN 640, a communication channel 616 is provided, with one endpoint being located within the customer-on-premise network 602 (e.g., CPE 108) and the other endpoint of the communication channel being located within the VCN 640 (e.g., primary host machine 620). The communication channel 616 may traverse one or more communication networks 614, which may include a public network such as the internet. A variety of different communication protocols may be used to facilitate communication between the locally deployed network 602 and the VCN 640 using communication channels 616, such as MPLS circuitry, virtual Private Networks (VPNs) (e.g., internet protocol security (IPSec) VPNs), and the like.

The two endpoints (i.e., CPE 608 and primary host machine 620) may negotiate with each other to set up a communication channel. Specifically, between the two endpoints 608 and 620, a series of messages regarding encryption and authentication may be sent back and forth to negotiate a protocol involving the encryption and authentication related parameters to be used. After negotiation, a Security Association (SA) between the two endpoints specifies security features agreed to and approved by the communication endpoints 608 and 620. A single SA may protect data in one direction. The SA provides details to both endpoints about how to encrypt and decrypt data.

The particular configuration information 607 to be applied to the CPE 608 may depend on various other factors such as the particular CPE 608 device being used, the characteristics of the communication channel being established (e.g., the type of channel, the protocol to be used for communication, etc.), the CSPI device forming the other endpoint of the communication channel (primary host machine 620), and other criteria.

An Internet Key Exchange (IKE) daemon 650 within CSPI 660 manages encryption keys (e.g., encryption and decryption keys) for the communication channels. IKE daemon 650 may perform negotiations with endpoints within customer locally deployed network 602 to provide authenticated keying material for Security Association (SA) in a protected manner.

As shown, distributed environment 600 may include a backup host machine 630 connected to a primary host machine 620 within VCN 640. Both host machines are hosted by CSPI 660 within VCN 640. In some embodiments, primary host machine 620, backup host machine 630, and any additional backup host machines may form a replication chain (RC 650). The replication chain may include a cluster of host machines that manage and store state information of the communication channel 616 through a log-based storage system. Information identifying the replication chain and the backup host machine assigned to the particular host machine (620) may be stored on a disk-supported data storage device. Within the replication chain, the host machines are ordered linearly to form a chain, the principal host machines (620) of which are designated as the "head" or "master" of the chain. In the above example, the Replication Chain (RC) 650 includes two hosts (e.g., primary host machine 620 and backup host machine 630), where primary host machine 120 is the head of the chain and backup host machine 630 is the tail of RC 650.

The communication network 614 facilitates communication between the various systems and networks depicted in fig. 6. The communication network 614 may be of various types and may include one or more communication networks. Examples of communication network 614 include, but are not limited to, a public network such as the Internet, a Wide Area Network (WAN), a Local Area Network (LAN), ethernet, a public or private network, a wired network, a wireless network, and the like, and combinations thereof. Different communication protocols may be used to facilitate communications, including wired and wireless protocols, such as the IEEE 802.XX protocol suite, TCP/IP, IPX, SAN,And other protocols. In general, the communication network 614 may include a facilitation map6, and any infrastructure of communications between the various systems depicted in fig. 6.

FIG. 7A depicts an example of a block diagram showing multiple host machines within a replication chain, in accordance with some embodiments. In an example embodiment, as shown in fig. 7A, the primary host machine 620 may include various components or subsystems, including a Replication System (RS) 622 and a state information cache 624. Backup host machine 630 may include various components or subsystems, including a Replication System (RS) 632 and a replicated state information cache 634.

In an example embodiment, as depicted in fig. 7A, RS 622 is a software application within primary host machine 620 that performs a process associated with managing and replicating state information of communication channel 616 between CPE 608 and primary host machine 620 (as shown in fig. 6). Status information for communication channel 616 may be stored in status information cache 624. The state information cache 624 may be an in-memory key-value store to cache and manage state information for the communication channel 616.

In some implementations, RS 622 may provide a cache Application Programming Interface (API) that an RS client (e.g., a processor within a host machine that processes packets) may use to operate to manage state information of communication channel 616. For example, packets sent to an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the primary host machine 620 may be received at a packet processor within the primary host machine 620. The packet processor may hash the header of the packet and analyze the hashed data to determine any changes in the status information of the communication channel 616.

The hash of the header of the packet may identify the tuple field (e.g., packet identifier, source IP address, source port, destination IP address, destination port, and layer 4 protocol). The packet processor uses this information to identify status information (e.g., packet numbers) associated with the communication channel. The processor may also determine whether the status information has changed relative to the status information of the communication channel stored in the cache associated with the primary host machine. After determining the change in status information, the packet processor may forward the change in status information of the communication channel 616 to further store and replicate the change within the backup host machine. Thus, any information associated with communication channel 616 may be received and analyzed by a packet processor prior to being received by replication system 622.

In an alternative embodiment, RS 622 is a processor that receives and processes packets and performs operations to manage the caching of state information related to communication channel 616. Herein, an RS 622 within host machine 620 may receive the packet, identify status information regarding communication channel 616, and forward the status information to status information cache 624.RS 622, after obtaining the state information from the received packet, may perform the processing required to manage the state information on the backup host machine of the replication chain. In some embodiments, RS 622 may communicate with disk-supported data storage to retrieve information about backup host machines for the communication channel that are adjacent to the primary host machine within replication chain 650.

In an example embodiment, another host machine (630) may include another set of Replication Systems (RSs) 632 connected to a Replicated State Information (RSI) cache 634. In some implementations, each of the host machines (primary host machine 620 and backup host machine 630) has a separate replication system (622 and 632) configured to initiate and/or perform replication-related functions. The replication system 622 of the primary host machine 620 may communicate directly with the replication system 632 of the backup host machine to enable the replication system 632 to replicate the state information of the communication channel 616. Similarly, in some embodiments, if the Replication Chain (RC) 650 contains more than two host machines, a replication system from one host machine may communicate with a subsequent (successor) host machine within its chain to insert, update, or delete entries related to state information replicated by the chain over the communication channel 616.

Groups of replication systems may work cooperatively to replicate state information. In the above-described embodiments, each participating replication system in the group will fully understand the configuration of the chain, where the configuration information may identify the host machine participating in the chain, the chain head, the chain tail. Thus, each replication system may know where to send a request (e.g., a request to update an entry of a communication channel state or to invalidate a particular entry of a state). In some implementations, within RC 650, the primary host machine 620 actively processing packets for communication channel 616 may be the head of chain 650 and request the communication channel from an adjacent backup host machine (e.g., 630) to replicate the change in state information of the communication channel.

As depicted in fig. 6 and 7A, within chain RC 650, the primary host machine and the backup host machine are configured to store state information of communication channel 616. Thus, the primary host machine 620 is the head of the chain RC 650 and the backup host machine 630 is the tail of the chain 650. The state information stored in the primary host machine 620 is replicated in the backup host machine 630. Specifically, RS 622 may forward any changes in the status information to RS 632 of backup host machine 630. (the steps of replication are described below with reference to FIG. 10). RS 632 may store the state information in a Replicated State Information (RSI) cache 634.

The status information of the communication channel 616 may include various types of status information related to the communication channel. The state information cache 624 may include a state information table that may include a particular entry for a sequence number 701 of a packet received at the host machine 620, information 702 for encryption and decryption keys for the communication channel, border Gateway Protocol (BGP) state information 703, and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) state information 704 for the communication channel 616.

In some scenarios, status information (such as the sequence number of a packet) may be updated frequently because the sequence number of a packet may be different each time a packet is received at the primary host machine, indicating that the status information has changed. For example, each time a packet is received at primary host machine 620, the sequence number within the state information of the packet is incremented. Replication system 622 can identify the incremental number of the packet as a change in state information and communicate this change to its immediate successor (e.g., 630) within the chain.

In other scenarios, certain state information (such as encryption and decryption keys for the communication channel) may be updated less often, such as in the case where a communication channel connection needs to be established between two endpoints, or in the case where keys need to be renegotiated between endpoints (which is typically every 20 minutes to one hour). The state involved in the negotiation of the communication channel is referred to as IKE state. Each side has an IKE daemon that negotiates all parameters for the IPSEC SA and therefore there is a state associated with it that also needs to be replicated. Similar to the state associated with the encryption key, the IKE state does not change often.

Replicated state information cache 634 may include a copy of state information cache 624 depicted as sequence number 706 of a packet received at host machine 620, information for encryption and decryption keys 707 for the communication channels, border Gateway Protocol (BGP) state information 708, and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) state information 709.

In an example embodiment, after a failover occurs within primary host machine 620, a backup host machine that is the direct successor of the primary host machine within RC 650 may become the head of the chain. Within the replication chain 650, if the primary host machine 620 fails and it may be necessary to reconfigure the heads of the replication chain (RC 650), access to the chain may be blocked until a new head is reconfigured. In some scenarios, all replication systems within other host machines within the chain may eventually discover changes to the header. In other scenarios, replication system 622 within primary host machine 620 may only be aware of the immediate successor as a backup to the host machine, without any additional knowledge about the chain topology and all nodes within the chain. Failover events are further discussed in the description of FIG. 11.

Replication system 622 may support acquire and place operations (to support replication requests from packet processors) to replicate and manage state information associated with the communication channels. The replication system 622 may run on the same machine (e.g., 620) as the packet processor or on a different machine than the packet processor. RS 622 may act as a gateway for other host machines within RC 650. In an example embodiment, the state information table entries within state information cache 624 may be manipulated by RS 622 using three basic operations: 1) the read-copy system may look up a particular key entry and return an associated value, 2) the write-copy system may write the entry into the cache, and 3) the delete-copy system may delete the entry in the cache.

In an example embodiment, to provide high throughput for operations in a replication system, if an operation request (e.g., a request to store and replicate a change in state information of a communication channel) has been successfully submitted to the replication system, the replication system may provide a response to the request immediately or later, depending on the type of operation mode (further described with reference to fig. 10). The packet processor may submit a new request while the replication system is processing a previous replication request. Thus, the replication system may be fully pipelined with replication requests.

In an example embodiment, for operations requiring replication system 622 to forward a request for replication state information to another replication system 632 within a backup host machine (e.g., 630), replication system 622 may place the request in its own work queue and send the request to its peer replication system 632 to perform the operation. Peer-to-peer communication of the replication chain may be accomplished via messages through standard network protocols. In an example embodiment, TCP may be used to replicate system peer-to-peer communications because it guarantees the order of communications.

In an example embodiment, the packet processor or the status monitoring system may request that an entry managed by the replication system expire after a fixed amount of time. If such an expiration operation is requested, the head copy system (e.g., 622) may store the expiration time and delete the mapping when it reaches its expiration time. In the above embodiment, if the entry is also cached on other machines, the header may first have the other machines delete the entry and then delete the expired entry from their own caches. In alternative embodiments, the packet processor or the status monitoring system may request notification when an entry expires. Thus, the replication system of the header may provide notification to the processor of the expiration of the entry to allow the client to perform additional cleanup upon expiration of the entry.

In an example embodiment, replication system 622 may provide support for cache entries in a "shared" or "read only" mode within state information cache 624. In an example embodiment, entries relating to status information related to the communication channel may be cached in the form of key-value pairs within a key-value database (cache 624) associated with the head or primary host machine 620. In an example embodiment, if the state of the communication channel is updated, then the replication system may need to update the entries inside itself (e.g., in-memory key-value store) and then cause other replication systems within the chain to update the entries. In the above embodiment, writing this information into the chain ensures that the data entry is preserved in the event of a failure of the header.

In an example embodiment, replication system 622 may use a shared cache to cache network states. In a shared cache setting, multiple replication systems (e.g., 622 and 632) within RC 650 may keep copies of the same entry, but only use them for reading. Here, only the primary host machine or replication system 622 within the header is able to edit the entry of the state information. The header of RC 650 is responsible for managing and copying state information and passing the state information to other host machines within the chain (RC 650). Thus, the header may be the only member that is allowed to propose changes related to state information within the replication chain 650.

In an example embodiment, if an update of an entry is required, the replication system 622 of the primary host machine 620 may request a backup host machine (e.g., 630) that caches different state information to invalidate the entry related to the state information before replicating the update within the replication chain. In an example embodiment, all host machines within a replicated chain may not know the configuration of each chain within the infrastructure, but only their immediate successor. Thus, all host machines can know where to send their copy requests. In an alternative embodiment, the host machine may retrieve information about the immediate successor from a disk-supported data storage device.

It must be appreciated that the configuration depicted in fig. 7A is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, fig. 7B depicts a centralized configuration of replication system 622. In particular, replication system 622 may be a centralized entity that controls/manages replication operations associated with host machines included in replication chain 650. Replication system 622 can replicate and store the state information data in respective caches associated with the host machines included in replication chain 650 (i.e., primary host machine 620, backup host machine 630, etc.).

Fig. 8 depicts a simplified flowchart 800 depicting a method for copying communication channel-related state information to a backup host machine, in accordance with certain embodiments. The processes depicted in fig. 8 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, using hardware, or according to a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., on a memory device). The methods presented in fig. 8 and described below are intended to be illustrative and not limiting. Although fig. 8 depicts various process steps occurring in a particular order or sequence, this is not intended to be limiting. In some alternative embodiments, the processes may be performed in a different order, or some steps may be performed in parallel. In certain embodiments, the steps depicted in fig. 8 may be performed by one or more components depicted in fig. 7A and 7B.

In an example embodiment, as discussed in fig. 6 and fig. 7A and 7B, to securely process packets between CPE 608 in the customer's in-place network and primary host machine 620 within Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) 660, communication channel 616 is set.

In step 810, a primary host machine and a backup host machine(s) for a communication channel are configured. To configure the backup host machine(s) 630 for the communication channel 616, the RS 622 within the primary host machine can communicate with the disk-supported data storage to identify the backup host machine for the communication channel 616. Thus, in some embodiments, the primary host machine 620 may configure and allocate the backup host machine 630 for storing state information of the communication channel 616 during a startup or boot process of the primary host machine 620.

In step 820, an event is detected that causes a change in status information of the communication channel. Specifically, within primary host machine 620, processor or replication system 622 may detect events that result in a change in state information of the communication channels stored within state information cache 624. For example, if a packet is received at a processor within primary host machine 620, the sequence number of the packet may be different from the previously stored sequence number, and thus, the received packet is an event that causes a change in state information. Similarly, if an SA (i.e., security association between the primary host machine 620 of the communication channel 616 and the CPE 608) needs to be renegotiated (i.e., SA between the two endpoints), the endpoint (e.g., primary host machine 620) may receive the packet with the encryption and decryption keys for renegotiation. Packets involving these cryptographic keys are also one type of event that results in a change in the state information of the communication channel 616.

In step 830, a change in status information associated with the communication channel stored by the primary host machine is determined. Specifically, in some implementations, after detecting the event in step 820, replication system 622 determines a change in state information after analyzing the packet received at primary host machine 620 by comparing the state information from the packet to the state information stored in cache 624. For example, replication system 622 may examine packets received at primary host machine 620. Replication system 622 may hash the header of the packet received at primary host machine 620. Replication system 622 may identify the sequence number of the packet from a hash of the header of the packet. The header of the packet may include a sequence or identification of the packet. When a new packet is received at host machine 620, it will have a different sequence number than the previously received packet.

In some implementations, as previously discussed with respect to fig. 7A, a packet processor or monitoring system may receive and analyze packets directed to the primary host machine 620 associated with the status information of the communication channel 616. Once the packet processor or monitoring system recognizes the change in state information, the processor may request that replication system 622 update and replicate the change in state information within backup host machine 630.

In step 840, a backup host machine for storing status information of the communication channel is identified. In particular, replication system 622 can query disk-supported data storage devices to identify the backup host machine. Alternatively, replication system 622 may retrieve backup host machine information from configuration data of primary host machine 620. In particular, replication system 622 can retrieve the IP address of the replication system (e.g., 632) within the backup host machine (e.g., 630).

In step 850, the change in the status information of the communication is copied to the identified backup host machine. In particular, replication system 622 can communicate the change in state information to replication system 632 within backup host machine 630. Replica system 632 can store changes to state information received from replica system 622 in replica state information cache 634. The replication system 632 may discard or invalidate previously stored state information entries before storing changes to the state information in the cache 634.

Fig. 9 depicts a flow chart 900 depicting replication of status information associated with a communication channel by a replication channel in accordance with some embodiments. The processes depicted in fig. 9 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, using hardware, or according to a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., on a memory device). The methods presented in fig. 9 and described below are intended to be illustrative and not limiting. Although fig. 9 depicts various process steps occurring in a particular order or sequence, this is not intended to be limiting.

In some alternative embodiments, the processes may be performed in a different order, or some steps may be performed in parallel. By some embodiments, the processing steps depicted in fig. 9 may be performed by one or more components (e.g., replication systems) within the host machine depicted in fig. 6 and 7A and 7B. In particular, fig. 9 depicts a flowchart depicting steps performed by a component (within a host machine receiving a packet) to replicate state information related to a communication channel within a replication chain, in accordance with certain embodiments. In an example embodiment, to securely process packets between CPE 608 within customer's in-place network 602 and primary host machine 620 within Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure (CSPI) 660, a communication channel 616 is provided, as depicted in fig. 6.

In step 910, for a communication channel between a customer's on-premise network and a customer's virtual network hosted by the CSPI, the replication chain is configured to store state information associated with the communication channel. The replication chain may include a cluster of host machines for storing status information related to the communication channel. Within the replicated chain, the host machines are ordered linearly to form a chain (e.g., RC 650), the primary host machine 620 of the chain is designated as the "head" or "master" of the chain and the remaining nodes in the chain are designated as backup host machines of the communication channel 616.

In step 920, within the replicated chain, a node corresponding to the primary host machine is designated as the head node of the chain. Specifically, for communication channel 616, when one endpoint of the channel is a host machine 620 that receives traffic from a second endpoint (CPE 608) on the other side of communication channel 616, host machine 620 is designated as the primary host machine for communication channel 616. Thus, within the replicated chain, the primary host machine for the communication channel is designated as the head node of the chain.

In step 930, within the replication chain, the remaining node(s) (i.e., the backup host machine (s)) are configured to replicate the subsequent node(s) within the chain to the head. For communication channel 616, if a host machine within CSPI 660 does not primarily receive traffic for communication channel 616 but is instead assigned to store state information for the communication channel, then the host machine is designated as backup host machine 630 for communication channel 616. In some implementations, the replication chain may include a single backup host machine 630 for the primary host machine 620, as shown in fig. 6. In other implementations, multiple host machines may be designated as backup host machines for communication channel 616.

In step 940, a failure of a head node within the replication chain is detected. Mechanisms involving the chain log replication protocol may control and manage membership within the chain. The mechanism may also monitor the health of the head of the chain to discover any faults.

In step 950, upon detecting a failure to replicate a head node within the chain, the immediate successor of the head within the chain is configured as a new head of the chain. Thus, the immediate successor (e.g., 630) may be lifted as a head. In some scenarios, when the primary host machine recovers from the failure mode, it again becomes the head of the chain. In other scenarios, when the primary host machine recovers from failure mode, it joins the chain at the end and may be lifted as other hosts are removed from the chain. In an example embodiment, there may be multiple chains involving multiple communication channels, and each node may be the head of more than one chain. In particular, each strand may handle a different set of SAs, where a node may be the head of one strand and the successor of another strand.

Fig. 10 depicts a flowchart 1000 that depicts detailed processing performed for copying communication channel related state information by a primary host machine, in accordance with some embodiments. In particular, the flowchart presents steps performed by the head-end host machine to replicate network state information when it receives packets for a particular flow.

In step 1010, an event is detected that causes a change in status information of a communication channel. Specifically, within primary host machine 620, replication system 622 may detect events that result in a change in state information of the communication channels stored within state information cache 624. For example, replication system 622 may analyze packets received at primary host machine 620. Replication system 622 may hash the header of the packet received at primary host machine 620. Replication system 622 may identify the sequence number of the packet from a hash of the header of the packet. The header of the first packet may be a standard five-tuple packet header with information about the source IP address, source port, destination IP address, destination port, and layer 4 protocol (e.g., TCP, UDP, etc.). The header of the packet also includes a sequence number or identification number, i.e., an identifier associated with the packet. When a new packet is received at host machine 620, it will have a different sequence number than the previously received packet.

In step 1015, a change in status information associated with the communication channel stored by the primary host machine is determined. Specifically, after detecting the event in step 1010, replication system 622 determines a change in state information after analyzing the packets received at primary host machine 620.

In step 1017, the determined change in status information associated with the communication channel is stored in a local cache of primary host machine 620. Specifically, a processor within host machine 620 may send the changes to replication system 622. Replication system 622 can store changes to state information within state information cache 624.

In step 1020, after replication system 622 stores the state information for the communication channel, replication system 622 determines a pattern for replicating the state information within the backup host machine for communication channel 616. By some embodiments, the mode of operation for copying state information may be one of a secure mode of operation and a best effort mode of operation. The mode of operation may be determined based on one or more conditions. For example, if maintenance of primary host machine 620 is scheduled within a threshold amount of time after determining the change in status information of communication channel 616, replication system 622 can determine that the mode of operation for replication is a secure mode. Similarly, if replication system 622 determines that a change in status information is associated with establishing communication for communication channel 616, then the mode of operation will be a secure mode of replicating the status information. In particular, as described below, the secure mode of operation ensures continuous and successful operation of the communication channel in situations where, for example, the host machine may be in an offline state for maintenance purposes.

In step 1030, processing of packets by the primary host machine 620 is suspended after determining that a copy of the change to the communication channel related status information is to be performed in the secure mode. In particular, replication system 622 may alert the packet processor to temporarily suspend processing packets.

In step 1035, once host machine 620 suspends processing packets, replication system 622 may identify a replication chain configured for communication channel 616. The replication chain may query the disk-supported data storage system to identify the replication chain and one or more backup host machines within the replication chain for communication channel 616. In some scenarios, information about the replication chain and one or more backup host machines for communication channel 616 may be available and configured in primary host machine 620 during startup.

In step 1040, after identifying the replication chain for the communication channel 616, one or more backup host machines for the communication channel 616 are identified. In particular, replication system 622 within primary host 620 may identify another replication system, i.e., a replication system associated with the backup host machine (for communication channel 616).

In step 1045, the status information associated with the changed communication channel is replicated within the backup host machine. In particular, replication system 622 within primary host machine 620 may communicate status information related to the changed communication channel to a backup host machine that is a subsequent node of the replication chain of primary host machine 620. A subsequent node represented as a backup host machine may cause the next backup host machine within the replication chain to replicate state information. Thus, each of the backup host machines within the replication chain replicates the changes in state information. Specifically, the change in state information is replicated in a sequential manner at each host machine in the replication chain. Each replication system within the chain may cache this entry, i.e., the changed state information within its local cache. Once an entry has been replicated among all host machines in the chain, the head host machine may receive an acknowledgement or notification from the tail host machine of the chain.

By way of one embodiment, in the above-described replication mechanism of a change in state information to be performed in a host machine of a replication chain, a head host machine may access a disk-supported data storage device to identify peer host machines within the replication chain. In the above-described embodiments, the head host machine or a processor within a host machine may send an insert entry message with entry information to an immediately subsequent host machine or peer host machine of the chain, where the peer host machine may cache the entry within its local cache and send a similar insert entry message to the next host machine in the replication chain for replication.

In step 1050, the head-host machine receives a confirmation message indicating that the state information has been replicated by the backup host machine. Specifically, replication system 622 within the head host machine receives an acknowledgement message from the tail host machine in the replication chain indicating that the corresponding change in status information of the communication channel has been incorporated into all intermediate host machines. It must be appreciated that the acknowledgement message may be transmitted from the tail host machine to the head host machine using any suitable communication protocol for communication between the host machines.

For example, according to some embodiments, the replication chain performs replication within the backup host machine using a log structured mechanism (e.g., a chain log replication protocol). This type of replication protocol in secure mode operation provides the option of enhancing security by suspending processing of packets until replication of the change in state information is guaranteed to have occurred within all backup host machines.

By way of some examples, the security mode may have different implementation variants. For example, in some embodiments, in a secure mode of operation, packets need not be suspended until the states are absolutely synchronized, but as long as the state changes are synchronized within a certain window. The window may be defined in terms of the number of packets. For example, the size of the window may be w=3 packets. This mode of operation may be referred to as a loose safe mode of operation. The primary host machine may continue to process packets before all state changes are replicated for the entire window. According to some embodiments, another mode of operation for copying state information may be a best effort mode. In this mode of operation, the channel information is replicated without stopping or suspending packet processing operations, similar to the relaxed secure mode of operation. However, the difference between the best effort mode of operation and the relaxed safe mode of operation is that in best effort mode the window size is very large, i.e. an infinitely sized window. In other words, the window size is not a constraint on packet processing in the best effort mode of operation.

In step 1055, processing of the packet on the communication channel is resumed (e.g., in a secure mode) after receiving an acknowledgement that the status information has been replicated by the backup host machine for the communication channel 616.

Returning to step 1020, if it is determined that copying is not performed in a secure mode, such as in a best effort mode, then no pending packets are required. After determining that copying is not performed in the secure mode, copying of the state information is performed substantially using steps 1035, 1040, and 1045 described above, without suspending processing of the packet.

It must be noted that if the replication rate of the state information is not fast enough (e.g., the replication rate cannot keep up with the rate of packets received at the primary host machine, i.e., the arrival rate of packets), one possible outcome is that in the event of a failover, i.e., when the primary host machine fails and the backup host will become the new header of the replication chain, some packets may be dropped when the communication channel is reestablished with the backup host machine as the new header. Such a scenario may occur in best effort mode data replication. However, it must be appreciated that such a failover event may not have a security impact on packet processing because the integrity of the customer data is not compromised.

In other words, if the sequence of packets is not properly synchronized, the packets may be discarded. If there is some blocking in the replication, this means that in the case of failover, the successor that should take over will have a stale sequence number, and it will not be able to get a connection (in a completely successful manner) because the packets it sees are not synchronized. The successor can interpret this as a replay attack and can respond by dropping some packets.

In some scenarios, the copying is performed without using a secure mode (e.g., a best effort mode or a relaxed secure mode) when handling packet sequence numbers of state information associated with the communication channel. In some implementations, if replication of a large number of state change streams lags behind a certain amount (e.g., a certain number of packets), after a failover event, the backup host machine can predict how far it needs to jump (or exceed sequence numbers), which may discard packets that fall behind the window. The protocol may simply assume that such packets are lost (i.e., dropped packets) and the backup host machine may update its packet counter. It is therefore always based on the highest authentication sequence number it sees. Thus, in the case of a loose secure mode of operation, the backup host machine during failover may jump forward a predicted amount (e.g., a number of packets) and return within the window even if the replication of sequence number state information for communication lags or is out of sync. In so doing, the originally established communication channel may continue to operate with the backup host as the new header of the replication chain.

Thus, with the secure mode option, a copy operation is performed in which the processing of the packet is suspended until the copy has been completed. For example, the secure mode may be used when a connection is established by transmitting encryption/decryption information between endpoints. However, after the connection has been set, the copying may be performed outside the secure mode (i.e., loose secure mode or best effort mode). Further, the copy mode may transition back to the secure mode when the state change involves a change in cryptographic state information. The secure mode ensures continuous/complete replication of state information within the backup host machine, while the best effort mode ensures best effort to replicate state information and process packets during the primary host machine failover scenario.

Fig. 11 illustrates a flowchart 1100 depicting steps performed to handle packet processing during failover of a primary host machine, in accordance with certain embodiments.

In step 1110, a data plane including a primary host machine receives a signal indicating that the primary host machine is unavailable. The unavailability of the primary host machine may be due to intentional or unintentional reasons. For example, the primary host may be deliberately down due to maintenance activities. In other cases, the primary host machine may be down due to a sudden failover event within the host machine, which would be an unintended failover.

In step 1120, a backup host machine for the communication channel may be identified. In particular, a data plane or processor within a VCN hosted on a CSPI identifies a backup host machine for a communication channel by querying the communication channel with disk-supported data storage. In some implementations, the backup host machine can be identified and configured within the data plane.

In step 1130, the packets processed by the communication channel may be directed to the identified backup host machine. In particular, the data plane of the VCN may change the destination IP address of the packet to the IP address of the backup host machine. In this case, the customer-side endpoint (CPE 608) is still sending packets to the IP address of the primary host machine, but the data plane processor diverts the packets to the IP address of the backup host machine.

In step 1140, the processing of the packet is performed by the backup host machine using state information of the communication channel that has been previously synchronized from the primary host machine to the backup host machine. As discussed, in failover involving maintenance activities, the primary host machine is scheduled offline and replication in secure mode (as discussed in fig. 10) will ensure that all content is synchronized. Thus, replication in secure mode may ensure that the backup host machine can successfully process packets while the primary host machine is down for maintenance.

For unexpected failover scenarios, while it cannot be guaranteed that all state information is synchronized using the replication method (as discussed in fig. 10), the probability of successfully handling the failover scenario is still high without compromising packet security. In the worst case, the parameters of the connection may be lost and the parameters of the communication channel may need to be renegotiated. In accordance with aspects of the present disclosure, using a single highly available tunnel, provision is made for the endpoints of the tunnel to be assigned from the host that we want to patch to another host without having to close the tunnel.

Example cloud infrastructure embodiment

As noted above, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a particular type of cloud computing. The IaaS may be configured to provide virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the internet). In the IaaS model, cloud computing providers may host infrastructure components (e.g., servers, storage devices, network nodes (e.g., hardware), deployment software, platform virtualization (e.g., hypervisor layer), etc.). In some cases, the IaaS provider may also provide various services to accompany these infrastructure components (e.g., billing, monitoring, logging, security, load balancing, clustering, etc.). Thus, as these services may be policy driven, iaaS users may be able to implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain availability and performance of applications.

In some cases, the IaaS client may access resources and services through a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the internet, and may use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining elements of the application stack. For example, a user may log onto the IaaS platform to create Virtual Machines (VMs), install an Operating System (OS) on each VM, deploy middleware such as databases, create buckets for workloads and backups, and even install enterprise software into the VM. The customer may then use the provider's services to perform various functions including balancing network traffic, solving application problems, monitoring performance, managing disaster recovery, and the like.

In most cases, the cloud computing model will require participation of the cloud provider. The cloud provider may, but need not, be a third party service that specifically provides (e.g., provisions, rents, sells) IaaS. An entity may also choose to deploy a private cloud, thereby becoming its own infrastructure service provider.

In some examples, the IaaS deployment is a process of placing a new application or a new version of an application onto a prepared application server or the like. It may also include a process of preparing a server (e.g., installation library, daemon, etc.). This is typically managed by the cloud provider, below the hypervisor layer (e.g., servers, storage, network hardware, and virtualization). Thus, the guest may be responsible for processing (OS), middleware, and/or application deployment (e.g., on a self-service virtual machine (e.g., that may be started on demand), etc.).

In some examples, iaaS provisioning may refer to obtaining computers or virtual hosts for use, even installing the required libraries or services on them. In most cases, the deployment does not include provisioning, and provisioning may need to be performed first.

In some cases, the IaaS supply presents two different challenges. First, there are initial challenges to provisioning an initial infrastructure set before anything runs. Second, once everything has been provisioned, there is a challenge to evolve the existing infrastructure (e.g., add new services, change services, remove services, etc.). In some cases, both of these challenges may be addressed by enabling the configuration of the infrastructure to be defined in a declarative manner. In other words, the infrastructure (e.g., which components are needed and how they interact) may be defined by one or more configuration files. Thus, the overall topology of the infrastructure (e.g., which resources depend on which resources, and how they work in concert) can be described in a declarative manner. In some cases, once the topology is defined, workflows may be generated that create and/or manage the different components described in the configuration file.

In some examples, an infrastructure may have many interconnected elements. For example, there may be one or more Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) (e.g., potential on-demand pools of configurable and/or shared computing resources), also referred to as core networks. In some examples, one or more security group rules may also be supplied to define how to set security of the network and one or more Virtual Machines (VMs). Other infrastructure elements, such as load balancers, databases, etc., may also be supplied. As more and more infrastructure elements are desired and/or added, the infrastructure may evolve gradually.

In some cases, continuous deployment techniques may be employed to enable deployment of infrastructure code across various virtual computing environments. Furthermore, the described techniques may enable infrastructure management within these environments. In some examples, a service team may write code that is desired to be deployed to one or more, but typically many, different production environments (e.g., across various different geographic locations, sometimes across the entire world). However, in some examples, the infrastructure on which the code is to be deployed must first be set up. In some cases, provisioning may be done manually, resources may be provisioned with a provisioning tool, and/or code may be deployed with a deployment tool once the infrastructure is provisioned.

Fig. 12 is a block diagram 1200 illustrating an example mode of the IaaS architecture in accordance with at least one embodiment. The service operator 1202 may be communicatively coupled to a secure host lease 1204 that may include a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) 1206 and a secure host subnet 1208. In some examples, the service operator 1202 may use one or more client computing devices, which may be portable handheld devices (e.g.,cellular phone, & lt & gt>Computing tablet, personal Digital Assistant (PDA)) or wearable device (e.g., google +.>Head mounted display), running software (such as Microsoft Windows +.>) And/or various mobile operating systems (such as iOS, windows Phone, android, blackBerry, palm OS, etc.), and supports the internet, email, short Message Service (SMS), SMS,Or other communication protocol. Alternatively, the client computing device may be a general purpose computing deviceWith personal computers, including, for example, microsoft +.>Apple/>And/or a personal computer and/or a laptop computer of a Linux operating system. The client computing device may be running a variety of commercially available devicesOr a workstation computer that resembles any of the UNIX operating systems, including but not limited to various GNU/Linux operating systems such as, for example, google Chrome OS. Alternatively or additionally, the client computing device may be any other electronic device, such as a thin client computer, an internet-enabled gaming system (e.g., with or without Microsoft Xbox game console of the gesture input device), and/or a personal messaging device capable of communicating over a network that has access to the VCN 1206 and/or the internet.

The VCN 1206 may include a local peer-to-peer gateway (LPG) 1210 that may be communicatively coupled to a Secure Shell (SSH) VCN 1212 via the LPG 1210 contained in the SSH VCN 1212. The SSH VCN 1212 may include an SSH subnetwork 1214, and the SSH VCN 1212 may be communicatively coupled to the control plane VCN 1216 via the LPG 1210 contained in the control plane VCN 1216. Further, the SSH VCN 1212 may be communicatively coupled to a data plane VCN 1218 via the LPG 1210. The control plane VCN 1216 and the data plane VCN 1218 may be included in a service lease 1219 that may be owned and/or operated by the IaaS provider.

The control plane VCN 1216 may include a control plane demilitarized zone (demilitarized zone, DMZ) layer 1220 that acts as a peripheral network (e.g., part of a corporate network between a corporate intranet and an external network). DMZ-based servers can assume limited responsibility and help control security vulnerabilities. Further, DMZ layer 1220 may include one or more Load Balancer (LB) subnetworks 1222, control plane app layer (control plane application layer) 1224 that may include app subnetwork(s) 1226, control plane data layer 1228 that may include Database (DB) subnetwork(s) 1230 (e.g., front end DB subnetwork(s) and/or back end DB subnetwork (s)). The LB subnetwork(s) 1222 included in the control plane DMZ layer 1220 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnetwork(s) 1226 included in the control plane application layer 1224 and the internet gateway 1234 that may be included in the control plane VCN 1216, and the application subnetwork(s) 1226 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnetwork(s) 1230 included in the control plane data layer 1228 and the serving gateway 1236 and Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1238. Control plane VCN 1216 may include a serving gateway 1236 and a NAT gateway 1238.

The control plane VCN 1216 may include a data plane mirror app layer (data plane mirror application layer) 1240, which may include application subnet(s) 1226. The application subnet(s) 1226 included in the data plane mirror application layer 1240 can include Virtual Network Interface Controllers (VNICs) 1242 that can execute computing instances 1244. Compute instance 1244 may communicatively couple application subnet(s) 1226 of data plane mirror application layer 1240 to application subnet(s) 1226 that may be included in data plane app layer (data plane application layer) 1246.

Data plane VCN 1218 may include a data plane application layer 1246, a data plane DMZ layer 1248, and a data plane data layer 1250. Data plane DMZ layer 1248 may include LB subnet(s) 1222 that may be communicatively coupled to application subnet(s) 1226 of data plane application layer 1246 and internet gateway 1234 of data plane VCN 1218. The application subnet(s) 1226 may be communicatively coupled to a serving gateway 1236 of the data plane VCN 1218 and a NAT gateway 1238 of the data plane VCN 1218. Data plane data layer 1250 may also include DB subnetwork(s) 1230 that may be communicatively coupled to application subnetwork(s) 1226 of data plane application layer 1246.

The internet gateway 1234 of the control plane VCN 1216 and the data plane VCN 1218 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1252, which metadata management service 1252 may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1254. Public internet 1254 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateway 1238 of control plane VCN 1216 and data plane VCN 1218. The service gateway 1236 of the control plane VCN 1216 and the data plane VCN 1218 may be communicatively coupled to the cloud service 1256.

In some examples, service gateway 1236 of control plane VCN 1216 or data plane VCN 1218 may make Application Programming Interface (API) calls to cloud service 1256 without going through public internet 1254. The API call from service gateway 1236 to cloud service 1256 may be unidirectional: service gateway 1236 may make an API call to cloud service 1256, and cloud service 1256 may send the requested data to service gateway 1236. However, cloud service 1256 may not initiate an API call to service gateway 1236.

In some examples, secure host lease 1204 may be directly connected to service lease 1219, which service lease 1219 may otherwise be quarantined. The secure host subnetwork 1208 can communicate with the SSH subnetwork 1214 through the LPG 1210, the LPG 1210 can enable bi-directional communication over an otherwise isolated system. Connecting the secure host subnetwork 1208 to the SSH subnetwork 1214 can enable the secure host subnetwork 1208 to access other entities within the service lease 1219.

The control plane VCN 1216 may allow a user of the service lease 1219 to set or otherwise provision desired resources. The desired resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1216 may be deployed or otherwise used in the data plane VCN 1218. In some examples, control plane VCN 1216 may be isolated from data plane VCN 1218, and data plane mirror application layer 1240 of control plane VCN 1216 may communicate with data plane application layer 1246 of data plane VCN 1218 via VNIC 1242, which VNIC 1242 may be contained in both data plane mirror application layer 1240 and data plane application layer 1246.

In some examples, a user or customer of the system may make a request (e.g., create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) operations) through the public internet 1254 that may communicate the request to the metadata management service 1252. Metadata management service 1252 may communicate the request to control plane VCN 1216 via internet gateway 1234. The request may be received by LB subnet(s) 1222 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1220. The LB subnet(s) 1222 may determine that the request is valid, and in response to the determination, the LB subnet(s) 1222 may transmit the request to the application subnet(s) 1226 included in the control plane application layer 1224. If the request is authenticated and calls to the public internet 1254 are required, the call to the public internet 1254 may be transmitted to the NAT gateway 1238 which may make calls to the public internet 1254. The memory in which the request may desire to store may be stored in DB subnetwork(s) 1230.

In some examples, data plane mirror application layer 1240 may facilitate direct communication between control plane VCN 1216 and data plane VCN 1218. For example, it may be desirable to apply changes, updates, or other suitable modifications to the configuration to the resources contained in the data plane VCN 1218. Via VNIC 1242, control plane VCN 1216 may communicate directly with resources contained in data plane VCN 1218, and thus changes, updates, or other appropriate modifications to the configuration may be performed.

In some embodiments, control plane VCN 1216 and data plane VCN 1218 may be included in service lease 1219. In this case, a user or customer of the system may not own or operate the control plane VCN 1216 or the data plane VCN 1218. Alternatively, the IaaS provider may own or operate the control plane VCN 1216 and the data plane VCN 1218, both of which may be contained in the service lease 1219. This embodiment may enable isolation of networks that may prevent a user or customer from interacting with other users or other customers' resources. Furthermore, this embodiment may allow users or clients of the system to store databases privately without relying on the public internet 1254 for storage that may not have the desired level of security.

In other embodiments, LB subnet(s) 1222 contained in control plane VCN 1216 may be configured to receive signals from serving gateway 1236. In this embodiment, the control plane VCN 1216 and the data plane VCN 1218 may be configured to be invoked by customers of the IaaS provider without invoking the public internet 1254. This embodiment may be desirable to customers of the IaaS provider because the database(s) used by the customers may be controlled by the IaaS provider and may be stored on a service lease 1219, which 1219 may be isolated from the public internet 1254.

Fig. 13 is a block diagram 1300 illustrating another example mode of the IaaS architecture in accordance with at least one embodiment. Service operator 1302 (e.g., service operator 1202 of fig. 12) may be communicatively coupled to a secure host lease 1304 (e.g., secure host lease 1204 of fig. 12), which secure host lease 1304 may include a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) 1306 (e.g., VCN 1206 of fig. 12) and a secure host subnet 1308 (e.g., secure host subnet 1208 of fig. 12). The VCN 1306 may include a local peer-to-peer gateway (LPG) 1310 (e.g., LPG 1210 of fig. 12) that may be communicatively coupled to a Secure Shell (SSH) VCN 1312 (e.g., SSH VCN 1212 of fig. 12) via an LPG 1310 contained in the SSH VCN 1312. The SSH VCN 1312 may include an SSH subnetwork 1314 (e.g., SSH subnetwork 1214 of fig. 12), and the SSH VCN 1312 may be communicatively coupled to the control plane VCN 1316 via an LPG 1310 contained in the control plane VCN 1316 (e.g., control plane VCN 1216 of fig. 12). The control plane VCN 1316 may be included in a service lease 1319 (e.g., service lease 1219 of fig. 12) and the data plane VCN 1318 (e.g., data plane VCN 1218 of fig. 12) may be included in a customer lease 1321 that may be owned or operated by a user or customer of the system.

The control plane VCN 1316 may include a control plane DMZ layer 1320 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1220 of fig. 12), which may include LB subnet(s) 1322 (e.g., LB subnet(s) 1222 of fig. 12), a control plane application layer 1324 (e.g., control plane application layer 1224 of fig. 12) which may include application subnet(s) 1326 (e.g., application subnet(s) 1226 of fig. 12), a control plane data layer 1328 (e.g., control plane data layer 1228 of fig. 12) which may include Database (DB) subnet(s) 1330 (e.g., similar to DB subnet(s) 1230 of fig. 12). The LB subnet(s) 1322 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1320 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1326 contained in the control plane application layer 1324 and the internet gateway 1334 (e.g., the internet gateway 1234 of fig. 12) that may be contained in the control plane VCN 1316, and the application subnet(s) 1326 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1330 and the serving gateway 1336 (e.g., the serving gateway of fig. 12) and the Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1338 (e.g., the NAT gateway 1238 of fig. 12) contained in the control plane data layer 1328. Control plane VCN 1316 may include a serving gateway 1336 and a NAT gateway 1338.

The control plane VCN 1316 may include a data plane mirror application layer 1340 (e.g., data plane mirror application layer 1240 of fig. 12), which may include application subnet(s) 1326. The application subnet(s) 1326 included in the data plane mirror application layer 1340 can include Virtual Network Interface Controllers (VNICs) 1342 (e.g., VNICs 1242) that can execute computing instances 1344 (e.g., similar to computing instance 1244 of fig. 12). The computing instance 1344 may facilitate communication between the application subnet(s) 1326 of the data plane mirror application layer 1340 and the application subnet(s) 1326 that may be included in the data plane application layer 1346 (e.g., the data plane application layer 1246 of fig. 12) via the VNIC 1342 included in the data plane mirror application layer 1340 and the VNIC 1342 included in the data plane application layer 1346.

The internet gateway 1334 included in the control plane VCN 1316 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1352 (e.g., the metadata management service 1252 of fig. 12), which metadata management service 1352 may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1354 (e.g., the public internet 1254 of fig. 12). Public internet 1354 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateway 1338 included in control plane VCN 1316. The service gateway 1336 included in the control plane VCN 1316 may be communicatively coupled to a cloud service 1356 (e.g., cloud service 1256 of fig. 12).

In some examples, the data plane VCN 1318 may be contained in a customer lease 1321. In this case, the IaaS provider may provide a control plane VCN 1316 for each customer, and the IaaS provider may set a unique computing instance 1344 contained in the service lease 1319 for each customer. Each computing instance 1344 may allow communication between a control plane VCN 1316 contained in service lease 1319 and a data plane VCN 1318 contained in customer lease 1321. The compute instance 1344 may allow resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1316 contained in the service lease 1319 to be deployed or otherwise used in the data plane VCN 1318 contained in the customer lease 1321.

In other examples, the customer of the IaaS provider may have a database that exists in customer lease 1321. In this example, the control plane VCN 1316 may include a data plane mirror application layer 1340, which may include application subnet(s) 1326. The data plane mirror application layer 1340 may reside in the data plane VCN 1318, but the data plane mirror application layer 1340 may not reside in the data plane VCN 1318. That is, the data plane mirror application layer 1340 may access the customer lease 1321, but the data plane mirror application layer 1340 may not exist in the data plane VCN 1318 or be owned or operated by the customer of the IaaS provider. The data plane mirror application layer 1340 may be configured to make calls to the data plane VCN 1318, but may not be configured to make calls to any entity contained in the control plane VCN 1316. The customer may desire to deploy or otherwise use resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1316 in the data plane VCN 1318, and the data plane mirror application layer 1340 may facilitate the customer's desired deployment or other use of resources.

In some embodiments, a customer of the IaaS provider may apply a filter to the data plane VCN 1318. In this embodiment, the customer may determine what the data plane VCN 1318 may access, and the customer may restrict access to the public internet 1354 from the data plane VCN 1318. The IaaS provider may not be able to apply filters or otherwise control access of the data plane VCN 1318 to any external networks or databases. The application of filters and controls by customers to the data plane VCN 1318 contained in customer lease 1321 may help isolate the data plane VCN 1318 from other customers and public internet 1354.

In some embodiments, cloud services 1356 may be invoked by service gateway 1336 to access services that may not exist on public internet 1354, control plane VCN 1316, or data plane VCN 1318. The connection between the cloud service 1356 and the control plane VCN 1316 or the data plane VCN 1318 may not be real-time or continuous. Cloud services 1356 may reside on different networks owned or operated by the IaaS provider. The cloud service 1356 may be configured to receive calls from the service gateway 1336 and may be configured to not receive calls from the public internet 1354. Some cloud services 1356 may be isolated from other cloud services 1356, and control plane VCN 1316 may be isolated from cloud services 1356 that may not be in the same area as control plane VCN 1316. For example, the control plane VCN 1316 may be located in "zone 1" and the cloud service "deployment 12" may be located in both zone 1 and "zone 2". If a service gateway 1336 contained in the control plane VCN 1316 located in region 1 makes a call to deployment 12, the call may be transmitted to deployment 12 in region 1. In this example, the control plane VCN 1316 or deployment 12 in region 1 may not be communicatively coupled or otherwise in communication with deployment 12 in region 2.

Fig. 14 is a block diagram 1400 illustrating another example mode of the IaaS architecture in accordance with at least one embodiment. The service operator 1402 (e.g., the service operator 1202 of fig. 12) may be communicatively coupled to a secure host lease 1404 (e.g., the secure host lease 1204 of fig. 12), which secure host lease 1404 may include a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) 1406 (e.g., the VCN 1206 of fig. 12) and a secure host subnet 1408 (e.g., the secure host subnet 1208 of fig. 12). VCN 1406 may include an LPG 1410 (e.g., LPG 1210 of fig. 12) that may be communicatively coupled to SSH VCN 1412 via LPG 1410 contained in SSH VCN 1412 (e.g., SSH VCN 1212 of fig. 12). The SSH VCN 1412 may include an SSH subnetwork 1414 (e.g., SSH subnetwork 1214 of fig. 12), and the SSH VCN 1412 may be communicatively coupled to the control plane VCN 1416 via an LPG 1410 contained in the control plane VCN 1416 (e.g., control plane VCN 1216 of fig. 12) and to the data plane VCN 1418 via an LPG 1410 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 (e.g., data plane 1218 of fig. 12). The control plane VCN 1416 and the data plane VCN 1418 may be included in a service lease 1419 (e.g., service lease 1219 of fig. 12).

The control plane VCN 1416 may include a control plane DMZ layer 1420 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1220 of fig. 12) that may include a Load Balancer (LB) subnetwork(s) 1422 (e.g., LB subnetwork(s) 1222 of fig. 12), a control plane application layer 1424 (e.g., control plane application layer 1224 of fig. 12) that may include application subnetwork(s) 1426 (e.g., similar to application subnetwork(s) 1214 of fig. 12), and a control plane data layer 1428 (e.g., control plane data layer 1228 of fig. 12) that may include DB subnetwork(s) 1430. The LB subnet(s) 1422 included in the control plane DMZ layer 1420 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1426 included in the control plane application layer 1424 and the internet gateway 1434 (e.g., the internet gateway 1234 of fig. 12) that may be included in the control plane VCN 1416, and the application subnet(s) 1426 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1430 and the service gateway 1436 (e.g., the service gateway of fig. 12) and the Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1438 (e.g., the NAT gateway 1238 of fig. 12) included in the control plane data layer 1428. The control plane VCN 1416 may include a service gateway 1436 and a NAT gateway 1438.

Data plane VCN 1418 may include a data plane application layer 1446 (e.g., data plane application layer 1246 of fig. 12), a data plane DMZ layer 1448 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 1248 of fig. 12), and a data plane data layer 1450 (e.g., data plane data layer 1250 of fig. 12). The data plane DMZ layer 1448 may include trusted app subnet(s) 1460 and untrusted app subnet(s) 1462 that may be communicatively coupled to the data plane application layer 1446 and LB subnet(s) 1422 of the internet gateway 1434 included in the data plane VCN 1418. Trusted application subnet(s) 1460 may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 1436 contained in data plane VCN 1418, NAT gateway 1438 contained in data plane VCN 1418, and DB subnet(s) 1430 contained in data plane data layer 1450. The untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1436 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 and the DB subnet(s) 1430 contained in the data plane data layer 1450. Data plane data layer 1450 may include DB subnetwork(s) 1430 which may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 1436 included in data plane VCN 1418.

The untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 may include one or more primary VNICs 1464 (1) - (N) that may be communicatively coupled to tenant Virtual Machines (VMs) 1466 (1) - (N). Each tenant VM 1466 (1) - (N) may be communicatively coupled to a respective application subnet 1467 (1) - (N) that may be included in a respective container outlet VCN 1468 (1) - (N), where the respective container outlet VCN 1468 (1) - (N) may be included in a respective customer lease 1470 (1) - (N). The respective secondary VNICs 1472 (1) - (N) may facilitate communications between the untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 and the application subnets contained in the container egress VCN 1468 (1) - (N). Each container egress VCN 1468 (1) - (N) may include a NAT gateway 1438, which NAT gateway 1438 may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1454 (e.g., public internet 1254 of fig. 12).

The internet gateway 1434 contained in the control plane VCN 1416 and contained in the data plane VCN 1418 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1452 (e.g., the metadata management system 1252 of fig. 12), which metadata management service 1452 may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1454. Public internet 1454 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateway 1438 contained in control plane VCN 1416 and contained in data plane VCN 1418. The service gateway 1436 contained in the control plane VCN 1416 and contained in the data plane VCN 1418 may be communicatively coupled to the cloud service 1456.

In some embodiments, the data plane VCN 1418 may be integrated with a customer lease 1470. In some cases (such as where support may be desired while executing code), such integration may be useful or desirable for customers of the IaaS provider. The customer may provide code that may be destructive, may communicate with other customer resources, or may otherwise cause undesirable effects to operate. In response thereto, the IaaS provider may determine whether to run the code given to the IaaS provider by the customer.

In some examples, a customer of the IaaS provider may grant temporary network access to the IaaS provider and request functionality to attach to the data plane layer application 1446. Code that runs this functionality may be executed in VM 1466 (1) - (N), and the code may not be configured to run anywhere else on data plane VCN 1418. Each VM 1466 (1) - (N) may be connected to a guest lease 1470. The respective containers 1471 (1) - (N) contained in VMs 1466 (1) - (N) may be configured to run code. In this case, there may be dual isolation (e.g., containers 1471 (1) - (N) running code, where containers 1471 (1) - (N) may be at least contained in VMs 1466 (1) - (N) contained in untrusted application subnet(s) 1462), which may help prevent incorrect or otherwise undesirable code from damaging the IaaS provider's network or damaging the network of a different customer. Containers 1471 (1) - (N) may be communicatively coupled to customer lease 1470 and may be configured to transmit or receive data from customer lease 1470. Containers 1471 (1) - (N) may not be configured to transmit or receive data from any other entity in data plane VCN 1418. After the run code is complete, the IaaS provider may terminate or otherwise dispose of containers 1471 (1) - (N).

In some embodiments, trusted application subnet(s) 1460 may run code that may be owned or operated by the IaaS provider. In this embodiment, trusted application subnet(s) 1460 may be communicatively coupled to DB subnet(s) 1430 and configured to perform CRUD operations in DB subnet(s) 1430. The untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1430, but in this embodiment the untrusted application subnet(s) may be configured to perform read operations in the DB subnet(s) 1430. Containers 1471 (1) - (N), which may be contained in VMs 1466 (1) - (N) of each guest and may run code from the guest, may not be communicatively coupled with DB subnetwork(s) 1430.

In other embodiments, control plane VCN 1416 and data plane VCN 1418 may not be directly communicatively coupled. In this embodiment, there may be no direct communication between the control plane VCN 1416 and the data plane VCN 1418. However, communication may occur indirectly through at least one method. LPG 1410 can be established by IaaS providers, which can facilitate communication between control plane VCN 1416 and data plane VCN 1418. In another example, the control plane VCN 1416 or the data plane VCN 1418 may invoke the cloud service 1456 via the service gateway 1436. For example, a call from the control plane VCN 1416 to the cloud service 1456 may include a request for a service that may communicate with the data plane VCN 1418.

Fig. 15 is a block diagram 1500 illustrating another example mode of an IaaS architecture in accordance with at least one embodiment. Service operator 1502 (e.g., service operator 1202 of fig. 12) may be communicatively coupled to secure host lease 1504 (e.g., secure host lease 1204 of fig. 12), which secure host lease 1504 may include Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) 1506 (e.g., VCN 1206 of fig. 12) and secure host subnet 1508 (e.g., secure host subnet 1208 of fig. 12). The VCN 1506 may include an LPG 1510 (e.g., the LPG 1210 of fig. 12), and the LPG 1510 may be communicatively coupled to the SSH VCN 1512 via the LPG 1510 contained in the SSH VCN 1512 (e.g., the SSH VCN 1212 of fig. 12). The SSH VCN 1512 may include an SSH subnetwork 1514 (e.g., SSH subnetwork 1214 of fig. 12), and the SSH VCN 1512 may be communicatively coupled to the control plane VCN 1516 via an LPG 1510 contained in the control plane VCN 1516 (e.g., control plane VCN 1216 of fig. 12) and to the data plane VCN 1518 via an LPG 1510 contained in the data plane VCN 1518 (e.g., data plane 1218 of fig. 12). Control plane VCN 1516 and data plane VCN 1518 may be included in service tenancy 1519 (e.g., service tenancy 1219 of fig. 12).

Control plane VCN 1516 may include control plane DMZ layer 1520 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1220 of fig. 12) which may include LB subnet(s) 1522 (e.g., LB subnet(s) 1222 of fig. 12), control plane application layer 1524 (e.g., control plane application layer 1224 of fig. 12) which may include application subnet(s) 1526 (e.g., application subnet(s) 1226 of fig. 12), control plane data layer 1528 (e.g., control plane data layer 1228 of fig. 12) which may include DB subnet(s) 1530 (e.g., DB subnet(s) 1430 of fig. 26). The LB subnet(s) 1522 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1520 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1526 contained in the control plane application layer 1524 and the internet gateway 1534 (e.g., the internet gateway 1234 of fig. 12) that may be contained in the control plane VCN 1516, and the application subnet(s) 1526 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1530 and the service gateway 1536 (e.g., the service gateway of fig. 12) and the Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1538 (e.g., the NAT gateway 1238 of fig. 12) contained in the control plane data layer 1528. Control plane VCN 1516 may include a serving gateway 1536 and a NAT gateway 1538.

Data plane VCN 1518 may include data plane application layer 1546 (e.g., data plane application layer 1246 of fig. 12), data plane DMZ layer 1548 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 1248 of fig. 12)), and data plane data layer 1550 (e.g., data plane data layer 1250 of fig. 12). Data plane DMZ layer 1548 may include trusted application subnet(s) 1560 (e.g., trusted application subnet(s) 1460 of fig. 14) and untrusted application subnet(s) 1562 (e.g., untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 of fig. 14) and LB subnet 1522 of internet gateway 1534 contained in data plane VCN 1518, which may be communicatively coupled to data plane application layer 1546. Trusted application subnet(s) 1560 may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 1536 contained in data plane VCN 1518, NAT gateway 1538 contained in data plane VCN 1518, and DB subnet(s) 1530 contained in data plane data layer 1550. Untrusted application subnet(s) 1562 may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 1536 included in data plane VCN 1518 and DB subnet(s) 1530 included in data plane data layer 1550. Data plane data layer 1550 may include DB subnetwork(s) 1530 that may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 1536 included in data plane VCN 1518.

The untrusted application subnet(s) 1562 may include a master VNIC 1564 (1) - (N) that may be communicatively coupled to a tenant Virtual Machine (VM) 1566 (1) - (N) residing within the untrusted application subnet(s) 1562. Each tenant VM 1566 (1) - (N) may run code in a respective container 1567 (1) - (N) and be communicatively coupled to an application subnet 1526 that may be contained in a data plane application layer 1546 contained in container egress VCN 1568. The respective secondary VNICs 1572 (1) - (N) may facilitate communications between untrusted application subnet(s) 1562 contained in data plane VCN 1518 and application subnets contained in container egress VCN 1568. The container egress VCN may include a NAT gateway 1538 that may be communicatively coupled to a public internet 1554 (e.g., public internet 1254 of fig. 12).

An internet gateway 1534 included in control plane VCN 1516 and in data plane VCN 1518 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1552 (e.g., metadata management system 1252 of fig. 12), which metadata management service 1552 may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1554. Public internet 1554 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateway 1538 included in control plane VCN 1516 and in data plane VCN 1518. Service gateway 1536, contained in control plane VCN 1516 and contained in data plane VCN 1518, may be communicatively coupled to cloud service 1556.

In some examples, the pattern shown by the architecture of block 1500 of fig. 15 may be considered an exception to the pattern shown by the architecture of block 1400 of fig. 14, and if the IaaS provider cannot directly communicate with the customer (e.g., disconnected areas), such a pattern may be desirable to the customer of the IaaS provider. The guests may access respective containers 1567 (1) - (N) contained in each guest's VM 1566 (1) - (N) in real-time. Containers 1567 (1) - (N) may be configured to invoke corresponding secondary VNICs 1572 (1) - (N) contained in application subnet(s) 1526 of data plane application layer 1546, which data plane application layer 1546 may be contained in container egress VCN 1568. The secondary VNICs 1572 (1) - (N) may transmit calls to the NAT gateway 1538, which NAT gateway 1538 may transmit the calls to the public internet 1554. In this example, containers 1567 (1) - (N), which may be accessed by clients in real-time, may be isolated from control plane VCN 1516 and may be isolated from other entities contained in data plane VCN 1518. Containers 1567 (1) - (N) may also be isolated from resources from other clients.

In other examples, a customer may use containers 1567 (1) - (N) to invoke cloud service 1556. In this example, a customer may run code in containers 1567 (1) - (N) that requests services from cloud service 1556. Containers 1567 (1) - (N) may transmit the request to secondary VNICs 1572 (1) - (N), which secondary VNICs 1572 (1) - (N) may transmit the request to a NAT gateway, which may transmit the request to public internet 1554. The public internet 1554 may transmit the request via the internet gateway 1534 to the LB subnet(s) 1522 contained in the control plane VCN 1516. In response to determining that the request is valid, the LB subnet(s) may transmit the request to the application subnet(s) 1526, which application subnet(s) 1526 may transmit the request to cloud service 1556 via service gateway 1536.

It should be appreciated that the IaaS architecture 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 depicted in the figures may have other components in addition to those depicted. Additionally, the embodiments shown in the figures are merely some examples of cloud infrastructure systems that may incorporate embodiments of the present disclosure. In some other embodiments, the IaaS system may have more or fewer components than shown in the figures, may combine two or more components, or may have different component configurations or arrangements.

In certain embodiments, the IaaS system described herein may include application suites, middleware, and database service products that are delivered to customers in a self-service, subscription-based, elastically extensible, reliable, highly available, and secure manner. An example of such an IaaS system is the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provided by the present transferee.

FIG. 16 illustrates an example computer system 1600 in which various embodiments may be implemented. System 1600 may be used to implement any of the computer systems described above. As shown, computer system 1600 includes a processing unit 1604 that communicates with multiple peripheral subsystems via bus subsystem 1602. These peripheral subsystems may include a processing acceleration unit 1606, an I/O subsystem 1608, a storage subsystem 1618, and a communication subsystem 1624. Storage subsystem 1618 includes tangible computer-readable storage media 1622 and system memory 1610.

Bus subsystem 1602 provides a mechanism for letting the various components and subsystems of computer system 1600 communicate with each other as intended. Although bus subsystem 1602 is shown schematically as a single bus, alternative embodiments of the bus subsystem may utilize multiple buses. Bus subsystem 1602 may be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. Such architectures can include Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) local bus, and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, which can be implemented as Mezzanine bus manufactured by the IEEE P1386.1 standard, for example.

The processing unit 1604, which may be implemented as one or more integrated circuits (e.g., a conventional microprocessor or microcontroller), controls the operation of the computer system 1600. One or more processors may be included in the processing unit 1604. These processors may include single-core or multi-core processors. In some embodiments, processing unit 1604 may be implemented as one or more separate processing units 1632 and/or 1634, where a single-core or multi-core processor is included in each processing unit. In other embodiments, processing unit 1604 may also be implemented as a four-core processing unit formed by integrating two dual-core processors into a single chip.

In various embodiments, processing unit 1604 may execute various programs in response to program code and may maintain multiple concurrently executing programs or processes. At any given time, some or all of the program code to be executed may reside in the processor(s) 1604 and/or in the storage subsystem 1618. The processor(s) 1604 may provide the various functions described above by suitable programming. The computer system 1600 may additionally include a processing acceleration unit 1606, which may include a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), a special-purpose processor, and so forth.

The I/O subsystem 1608 may include a user interface input device and a user interface output device. The user interface input devices may include a keyboard, a pointing device such as a mouse or trackball, a touch pad or touch screen incorporated into a display, a scroll wheel, a click wheel, dials, buttons, switches, a keyboard, an audio input device with a voice command recognition system, a microphone, and other types of input devices. The user interface input device may include, for example, a motion sensing and/or gesture recognition device, such asA motion sensor enabling a user to control a user such as +. >360 to the input device of the game controller and interact therewith. The user interface input device may also include an eye gesture recognition device, such as detecting eye activity from a user (e.g., "blinking" when taking a photograph and/or making a menu selection) and converting the eye gesture to a gesture directed to the input device (e.g., google->) Google->A blink detector. Furthermore, the user interface input device may comprise a control unit enabling the user to communicate with the speech recognition system via voice commands (e.g. -/->Navigator) interactive voice recognition sensing device.

User interface input devices may also include, but are not limited to, three-dimensional (3D) mice, joysticks or sticks, game pads and drawing tablets, and audio/video devices such as speakers, digital cameras, digital camcorders, portable media players, webcams, image scanners, fingerprint scanners, bar code reader 3D scanners, 3D printers, laser rangefinders, and gaze tracking devices. Furthermore, the user interface input device may comprise, for example, a medical imaging input device, such as a computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, medical ultrasound device. The user interface input device may also include, for example, an audio input device such as a MIDI keyboard, digital musical instrument, or the like.

The user interface output device may include a display subsystem, an indicator light, or a non-visual display such as an audio output device. The display subsystem may be a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), a flat panel device such as one using a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) or a plasma display, a projection device, a touch screen, or the like. In general, use of the term "output device" is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for outputting information from computer system 1600 to a user or other computer. For example, user interface output devices may include, but are not limited to, various display devices that visually convey text, graphics, and audio/video information, such as monitors, printers, speakers, headphones, car navigation systems, plotters, voice output devices, and modems.

Computer system 1600 may include a storage subsystem 1618, shown as being located currently within system memory 1610, containing software elements. The system memory 1610 may store program instructions that are executable and loadable on the processing unit 1604 as well as data generated during the execution of these programs.

Depending on the configuration and type of computer system 1600, system memory 1610 may be volatile (such as Random Access Memory (RAM)) and /or non-volatile (such as Read Only Memory (ROM), flash memory, etc.). RAM typically contains data and/or program modules that are immediately accessible to and/or presently being operated on and executed by processing unit 1604. In some implementations, system memory 1610 may include a variety of different types of memory, such as Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) or Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). In some implementations, a basic input/output system (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within computer system 1600, such as during start-up, may be stored in ROM. By way of example, and not limitation, system memory 1610 also illustrates application programs 1612, which may include client applications, web browsers, middle tier applications, relational database management systems (RDBMS), etc., program data 1614, and operating system 1616. By way of example, operating system 1616 may include various versions of Microsoft WindowsApple/>And/or Linux operating system, each

Commercially available seedsOr UNIX-like operating systems (including but not limited to various GNU/Linux operating systems, google +.>OS, etc.) and/or such as iOS,/-or the like>Phone、/>OS、16OS and->Mobile operating system of OS operating system.

Storage subsystem 1618 may also provide a tangible computer-readable storage medium for storing basic programming and data constructs that provide the functionality of some embodiments. Software (programs, code modules, instructions) that when executed by a processor provide the functionality described above may be stored in storage subsystem 1618. These software modules or instructions may be executed by processing unit 1604. Storage subsystem 1618 may also provide a repository for storing data for use in accordance with the present disclosure.

Storage subsystem 1600 may also include a computer-readable storage media reader 1620 that may be further connected to a computer-readable storage media 1622. In connection with system memory 1610, and optionally in connection therewith, computer-readable storage medium 1622 may comprehensively represent remote, local, fixed, and/or removable storage devices plus storage media for temporarily and/or more permanently containing, storing, transmitting, and retrieving computer-readable information.

Computer-readable storage media 1622 containing code or portions of code may also include any suitable media known or used in the art including storage media and communication media such as, but not limited to: volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage and/or transmission of information. This may include tangible computer-readable storage media such as RAM, ROM, electrically Erasable Programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital Versatile Disks (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or other tangible computer-readable media. This may also include non-tangible computer-readable media, such as data signals, data transmissions, or any other medium that may be used to transmit the desired information and that may be accessed by computing system 1600.

For example, computer-readable storage medium 1622 may include reading or writing from a non-removable, non-volatile magnetic mediaHard disk drive to which writing is performed, magnetic disk drive to which reading is performed from or to a removable nonvolatile magnetic disk, and optical disk drive to which writing is performed from a removable nonvolatile optical disk (such as CD ROM, DVD, and the likeA disk or other optical medium) to which a data signal is read or written. Computer-readable storage media 1622 may include, but is not limited to: />Drives, flash cards, universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drives, secure Digital (SD) cards, DVD discs, digital video bands, etc. The computer-readable storage medium 1622 may also include a non-volatile memory based Solid State Drive (SSD) (such as flash memory based SSD, enterprise flash drive, solid state ROM, etc.), a volatile memory based SSD (such as solid state RAM, dynamic RAM, static RAM, DRAM based SSD), a Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) SSD, and a hybrid SSD that uses a combination of DRAM based SSD and flash memory based SSD. The disk drives and their associated computer-readable media may provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for computer system 1600.

Communication subsystem 1624 provides an interface to other computer systems and networks. Communication subsystem 1624 serves as an interface for receiving data from and transmitting data to computer system 1600. For example, communication subsystem 1624 may enable computer system 1600 to connect to one or more devices via the internet. In some embodiments, communication subsystem 1624 may include Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver components for accessing wireless voice and/or data networks (e.g., advanced data network technology using cellular telephone technology such as 3G, 4G, or EDGE (enhanced data rates for global evolution), wiFi (IEEE 802.11 family standard), or other mobile communication technology, or any combination thereof), global Positioning System (GPS) receiver components, and/or other components. In some embodiments, communication subsystem 1624 may provide a wired network connection (e.g., ethernet) in addition to or in lieu of a wireless interface.

In some embodiments, communication subsystem 1624 may also receive input communications in the form of structured and/or unstructured data feeds 1626, event streams 1628, event updates 1630, and the like, on behalf of one or more users who may use computer system 1600.

For example, the communication subsystem 1624 may be configured to receive data feeds 1626, such as in real-time, from users of social networks and/or other communication servicesFeed, & lt & gt>Updates, web feeds such as Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, and/or real-time updates from one or more third-party information sources.

In addition, communication subsystem 1624 may also be configured to receive data in the form of a continuous data stream, which may include event stream 1628 and/or event update 1630, which may be continuous or unbounded in nature, without explicitly terminated real-time events. Examples of applications that generate continuous data may include, for example, sensor data applications, financial quoters, network performance measurement tools (e.g., network monitoring and traffic management applications), click stream analysis tools, automotive traffic monitoring, and the like.

The communication subsystem 1624 may also be configured to output structured and/or unstructured data feeds 1626, event streams 1628, event updates 1630, and the like to one or more databases that may be in communication with one or more streaming data source computers coupled to the computer system 1600.

Computer system 1600 can be one of various types, including hand-held portable devices (e.g., Cellular phone, & lt & gt>Computing tablet, PDA), wearable device (e.g., +.>Glass head mounted display), a PC, a workstation, a mainframe, a kiosk, a server rack, or any other data processing system.

Due to the ever-changing nature of computers and networks, the description of computer system 1600 depicted in the drawings is intended only as a specific example. Many other configurations are possible with more or fewer components than the system depicted in the figures. For example, custom hardware may also be used and/or particular elements may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software (including applets), or a combination thereof. In addition, connections to other computing devices, such as network input/output devices, may also be employed. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided herein, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize other ways and/or methods of implementing the various embodiments.

While specific embodiments have been described, various modifications, alterations, alternative constructions, and equivalents are also included within the scope of the disclosure. Embodiments are not limited to operation within certain specific data processing environments, but may be free to operate within multiple data processing environments. Furthermore, while embodiments have been described using a particular series of transactions and steps, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the scope of the present disclosure is not limited to the described series of transactions and steps. The various features and aspects of the embodiments described above may be used alone or in combination.

In addition, while embodiments have been described using a particular combination of hardware and software, it should be recognized that other combinations of hardware and software are also within the scope of the present disclosure. Embodiments may be implemented in hardware alone, or in software alone, or in a combination thereof. The various processes described herein may be implemented in any combination on the same processor or on different processors. Thus, where a component or module is described as being configured to perform certain operations, such configuration may be accomplished by, for example, designing electronic circuitry to perform the operations, programming programmable electronic circuitry (such as a microprocessor) to perform the operations, or any combination thereof. The processes may communicate using a variety of techniques, including but not limited to conventional techniques for inter-process communication, and different pairs of processes may use different techniques, or the same pair of processes may use different techniques at different times.

The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense. It will, however, be evident that various additions, subtractions, deletions and other modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope as set forth in the claims. Thus, while specific disclosed embodiments have been described, these are not intended to be limiting. Various modifications and equivalents are intended to be within the scope of the following claims.

The use of the terms "a" and "an" and "the" and similar referents in the context of describing the disclosed embodiments (especially in the context of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. Unless otherwise indicated, the terms "comprising," "having," "including," and "containing" are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning "including, but not limited to"). The term "connected" should be interpreted as partially or wholly contained within, attached to, or connected together even though something is intermediate. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description of ranges of values herein is intended only as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range, and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., "such as") provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate the embodiments and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the disclosure unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the disclosure.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, disjunctive language (such as the phrase "at least one of X, Y or Z") is intended in this context to be understood to mean generally that an item, term, etc. may be one of X, Y or Z or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y and/or Z). Thus, such disjunctive language is generally not intended nor should it suggest that certain embodiments require at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z to each be present.

Preferred embodiments of this disclosure are described herein, including the best mode known for carrying out the disclosure. Variations of those preferred embodiments may become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the foregoing description. One of ordinary skill in the art should be able to employ such variations as appropriate and may practice the disclosure in a manner other than that specifically described herein. Accordingly, this disclosure includes all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Furthermore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the present disclosure includes any combination of the above elements in all possible variations thereof.

All references, including publications, patent applications, and patents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein. In the foregoing specification, aspects of the present disclosure have been described with reference to specific embodiments thereof, but those skilled in the art will recognize that the present disclosure is not limited thereto. The various features and aspects of the disclosure described above may be used alone or in combination. Moreover, embodiments may be utilized in any number of environments and applications other than those described herein without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the specification. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.

Claims (20)

1. A method, comprising:

for a communication channel having a first endpoint in a customer locally deployed network and a second endpoint on a primary host machine in a cloud service provider infrastructure, determining, by the primary host machine, a change in status information of the communication channel;

identifying, by the primary host machine, a backup host machine for the communication channel; and

the changes in the state information are caused by the primary host machine to be copied to the backup host machine, wherein the copied state information stored by the backup host machine is usable by the backup host machine after failover causes the backup host machine to become the second endpoint of the communication channel.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein copying the change in the status information of the communication channel to the backup host machine comprises:

determining, by the primary host machine, whether to perform replication of the change in state information in the secure mode, wherein the change in state information is identified by analyzing packets received at the primary host machine;

after determining that the copy of the change of state information is to be performed in secure mode:

suspending, by the primary host machine, processing of the packet;

transmitting, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to a backup host machine, wherein the backup host machine is a subsequent host machine to the primary host machine in the replication chain;

Receiving, by the primary host machine, a confirmation indicating that the backup host machine has copied the state information; and

in response to receiving the acknowledgement, processing of the packet is resumed by the primary host machine.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

after determining that the copy of the change in state information is not to be performed in secure mode:

transmitting, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to the backup host machine; and

packets are processed by the primary host machine.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the status information of the communication channel comprises at least one of a sequence number, password status information, internet Key Exchange (IKE) status information, and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) status information.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein determining that the copy of the change in state information is to be performed in the secure mode further comprises:

the downtime of the primary host machine is determined by the primary host machine to be scheduled within a threshold time interval.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining a change in status information of the communication channel further comprises:

detecting, by the primary host machine, an event triggering a change in status information of the communication channel; and

Packets associated with the event are analyzed by the primary host machine to determine a change in status information.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the event triggering the change of state information is at least one of:

receiving a packet at a primary host machine;

receiving a change in encryption or decryption information for a connection of a communication channel; and

a change in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) state information for the connection is received.

8. The method of claim 2, wherein identifying the backup host machine for the communication channel further comprises:

querying a disk-supported storage server by the primary host machine to identify a replication chain for the communication channel; and

a backup host machine is determined by the primary host machine within the replication chain for the communication channel, wherein the primary host machine is a head of the replication chain and the backup host machine is a successor host machine to the primary host machine in the replication chain.

9. The method of claim 2, wherein analyzing packets received at the primary host machine further comprises:

hashing, by the primary host machine, a portion of the packet to generate a hash result; and

status information of the communication channel is identified by the primary host machine based on the hash result.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication channel is an internet protocol security (IPSec) tunnel.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a processor of a computer system to perform a method comprising:

for a communication channel having a first endpoint in a customer locally deployed network and a second endpoint on a primary host machine in a cloud service provider infrastructure, determining, by the primary host machine, a change in status information of the communication channel;

identifying, by the primary host machine, a backup host machine for the communication channel; and

the changes in the state information are caused by the primary host machine to be copied to the backup host machine, wherein the copied state information stored by the backup host machine is usable by the backup host machine after failover causes the backup host machine to become the second endpoint of the communication channel.

12. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein copying the change in the status information of the communication channel to the backup host machine comprises:

determining, by the primary host machine, whether to perform replication of the change in state information in the secure mode, wherein the change in state information is identified by analyzing packets received at the primary host machine;

After determining that the copy of the change of state information is to be performed in secure mode:

suspending, by the primary host machine, processing of the packet;

transmitting, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to a backup host machine, wherein the backup host machine is a subsequent host machine to the primary host machine in the replication chain;

receiving, by the primary host machine, a confirmation indicating that the backup host machine has copied the state information; and

in response to receiving the acknowledgement, processing of the packet is resumed by the primary host machine.

13. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 12, further comprising:

after determining that the copy of the change in state information is not to be performed in secure mode:

transmitting, by the primary host machine, the change in state information to the backup host machine; and

packets are processed by the primary host machine.

14. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the status information of the communication channel comprises at least one of a sequence number, cryptographic status information, and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) status information.

15. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein determining that the copy of the change in state information is to be performed in a secure mode further comprises:

The downtime of the primary host machine is determined by the primary host machine to be scheduled within a threshold time interval.

16. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein determining a change in status information of the communication channel further comprises:

detecting, by the primary host machine, an event triggering a change in status information of the communication channel; and

packets associated with the event are analyzed by the primary host machine to determine a change in status information.

17. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the event triggering the change in status information is at least one of:

receiving a packet at a primary host machine;

receiving a change in encryption or decryption information for a connection of a communication channel; and

a change in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) state information for the connection is received.

18. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein identifying the backup host machine for the communication channel further comprises:

querying a disk-supported storage server by the primary host machine to identify a replication chain for the communication channel; and

a backup host machine is determined by the primary host machine within the replication chain for the communication channel, wherein the primary host machine is a head of the replication chain and the backup host machine is a successor host machine to the primary host machine in the replication chain.

19. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein analyzing packets received at the primary host machine further comprises:

hashing, by the primary host machine, a portion of the packet to generate a hash result; and

status information of the communication channel is identified by the primary host machine based on the hash result.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the communication channel is an internet protocol security (IPSec) tunnel.