Hot swapping and hot scaling containers

• US 10,411,947 B2
• Filed: 12/28/2016
• Issued: 09/10/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 01/22/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Equinix Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Equinix Incorporated
• Inventors: Rangasamy, Venkatachalam, Kumar, Parveen, Jeyapaul, Jaganathan, Lillie, Brian J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Salad, Abdullahi E
• Application Number:
  US15/392,820
• Publication Number:
  US 20170244787A1
• Time in Patent Office: 986 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4679 Arrangements for the registration or de-registration of VLAN attribute values, e.g. VLAN identifiers, port VLAN membership
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4683 characterized by the protocol used
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5045 Making service definitions prior to deployment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/20 the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/021 Ensuring consistency of routing table updates, e.g. by using epoch numbers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/3015 Name registration, generation or assignment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/45 Network directories; Name-to-address mapping
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 : Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 : for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

Techniques for hot swapping and hot scaling containers between cloud services are disclosed. In one example, a method includes storing, with a cloud exchange, data indicating an association of a first container of a first private network with a second container of a second private network, wherein the first private network and the second private network are coupled to the cloud exchange to send and receive data packets via the cloud exchange. The method further includes sending, with the cloud exchange based on the association, state of the first container to the second container.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing, with a cloud exchange, an interface for receiving one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, wherein the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria comprises a customer-selected first cloud service provider and a customer-selected second cloud service provider;

associating, in response to receiving the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria and with the cloud exchange, an address of a first container of a first private network with an address of a second container of a second private network, wherein the first container is hosted by the customer-selected first cloud service provider, and wherein the cloud exchange creates the second container with the customer-selected second cloud service provider;

storing, with the cloud exchange, data indicating the association of the address of the first container of the first private network with the address of the second container of the second private network, wherein the first private network and the second private network are coupled to the cloud exchange to send and receive data packets via the cloud exchange; and

copying, in response to the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, with the cloud exchange, and based on the association, state of the first container to the second container.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the cloud exchange, cloud service traffic from an enterprise network; and

redirecting, by the cloud exchange, the cloud service traffic from the first container to the second container.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the state enables the second container to replicate an operating environment of the first container.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the state of the first container comprises one or more of:

application data, application stack configuration data, microservice state, memory data, commands, process information, and current instruction pointers.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein copying the state of the first container to the second container is performed while the first container is executing one or more applications.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising registering a registration handle for the second container with the first container via the cloud exchange.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the registration handle comprises a network address for a host of the second private network that executes the second container, and a container identifier for the second container.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein copying the state of the first container to the second container comprises the first container using the registration handle to communicate the state to the second container via the cloud exchange.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the address of the first container with the second container comprises registering a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the second container with a data store of container information.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising creating, with the cloud exchange, the second container, prior to associating the address of the first container with the address of the second container.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

partitioning tasks from the first container between the first container and the second container,

wherein the copying the state of the first container to the second container is performed for the tasks partitioned to the second container.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein partitioning the tasks from the first container between the first container and the second container comprises sending units of workload from the first container to the second container in accordance with one or more policies based on content and one or more rules.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

maintaining, with the cloud exchange, a data store of container registration information, wherein the container registration information comprises data associating the address of the first container with the second container.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the address of the first container with the address of the second container and copying the state of the first container to the second container are performed in response to a customer-entered request.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria are stored in an orchestration engine of the cloud exchange.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the address of the first container with the address of the second container and copying the state of the first container to the second container are performed in response to a timing defined by a customer-selected schedule.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

creating a channel from the first container to the second container; and

orchestrating a migration of the state of the first container to the second container.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

placing a hold on operations of the first container prior to copying the state of the first container to the second container; and

re-starting the operations in the second container subsequent to copying the state of the first container to the second container.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the first container comprises a user-space instance from a plurality of user-space instances that share an operating system executing on a host of the first private network, and

wherein the second container comprises a user-space instance from a plurality of user-space instances that share an operating system executing on a host of the second private network.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the second private network comprises a cloud service provider network coupled to the cloud exchange to provide, via one or more virtual circuits, a cloud service to one or more enterprise networks coupled to the cloud exchange.

21. A computing system for a cloud exchange, the computing system comprising:

at least one memory device; and

at least one processor, operably coupled to the at least one memory device, and configured to execute instructions to;

provide an interface for receiving one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, wherein the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria comprises a customer-selected first cloud service provider and a customer-selected second cloud service provider;

associate, in response to receiving the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, an address of a first container of a first private network with an address of a second container of a second private network, wherein the first container is hosted by the customer-selected first cloud service provider, and wherein the cloud exchange creates the second container with the customer-selected second cloud service provider;

store data indicating the association of the address of the first container of the first private network with the address of the second container of the second private network, wherein the first private network and the second private network are coupled to the cloud exchange to send and receive data packets via the cloud exchange; and

copy, in response to the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria and based on the association, state of the first container to the second container.

22. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute instructions to:

receive cloud service traffic from an enterprise network; and

redirect the cloud service traffic from the first container to the second container.

23. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the state of the first container comprises one or more of:

application data, application stack configuration data, microservice state, memory data, commands, process information, and current instruction pointers, and wherein the state enables the second container to replicate an operating environment of the first container.

24. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute instructions to copy the state of the first container to the second container while the first container is executing one or more applications.

25. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute instructions to register a registration handle for the second container with the first container via the cloud exchange,

wherein the registration handle comprises a network address for a host of the second private network that executes the second container, and a container identifier for the second container, and

wherein copying the state of the first container to the second container comprises the first container using the registration handle to communicate the state to the second container via the cloud exchange.

26. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute instructions to create the second container, prior to associating the address of the first container with associating the address of the second container.

27. The computing system of claim 21, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute instructions to:

partition tasks from the first container between the first container and the second container,

wherein the copying the state of the first container to the second container is performed for the tasks partitioned to the second container, and

wherein partitioning the tasks from the first container between the first container and the second container comprises sending units of workload from the first container to the second container in accordance with one or more policies based on content and one or more rules.

28. A Non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for causing at least one programmable processor of a cloud exchange to:

provide an interface for receiving one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, wherein the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria comprises a customer-selected first cloud service provider and a customer-selected second cloud service provider;

associate, in response to receiving the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria, an address of a first container of a first private network with an address of a second container of a second private network, wherein the first container is hosted by the customer-selected first cloud service provider, and wherein the cloud exchange creates the second container with the customer-selected second cloud service provider;

store data indicating an the association of the address of the first container of the first private network with the address of the second container of the second private network, wherein the first private network and the second private network are coupled to the cloud exchange to send and receive data packets via the cloud exchange;

copy, in response to the one or more customer-selected hot swap configuration criteria and based on the association, state of the first container to the second container;

receive, by the cloud exchange, cloud service traffic from an enterprise network; and

redirect, by the cloud exchange, the cloud service traffic from the first container to the second container.