Mechanism for fault diagnosis and recovery of network service chains

• US 10,536,347 B2
• Filed: 06/09/2017
• Issued: 01/14/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Calo, Seraphin B., Freimuth, Douglas M., Le, Thai Franck, Makaya, Christian, Nahum, Erich
• Primary Examiner(s): Dollinger, Tonia L
• Assistant Examiner(s): Cooney, Adam A
• Application Number:
  US15/619,067
• Publication Number:
  US 20180359159A1
• Time in Patent Office: 949 Days
• Field of Search: 709224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0636 based on a decision tree analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/065 involving logical or physical relationship, e.g. grouping and hierarchies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/16 using machine learning or artificial intelligence
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5025 by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5058 Service discovery by the service manager
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/091 Measuring contribution of individual network components to actual service level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display

Abstract

A computer-implemented method is provided for fault diagnostics and recovery of network service chains. The method includes discovering, by a processor, a network graph representative of components of the network service chains. The method further includes identifying, by the processor, intersecting ones of the components of the network service chains in the network graph. The method also includes repairing, by the processor, one or more of the components of at least one of the network service chains based on a component repair sequence that maintains service continuity of the network service chains and that is determined based on a commonality.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for fault diagnostics and recovery of network service chains, comprising:

discovering, by a processor, a network graph representative of components of the network service chains;

identifying, by the processor, intersecting ones of the components of the network service chains in the network graph indicative of a commonality therebetween; and

selectively repairing, by the processor, one or more of the components of at least one of the network service chains up to an entirety thereof based on a component repair sequence that maintains service continuity of the network service chains and that is determined and selectively reordered based on the commonality,

wherein the network graph comprises a plurality of graphs, each (i) comprising one or more Virtualized Network Functions, and (ii) corresponding to a respective one of the network service chains.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising controlling Virtual Network Function dependencies of Virtual Network Functions in the network graph.

3. The computer-implement method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a failure in the network service chains by monitoring a status of the components of the network service chains.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the failure is identified based on one or more metrics selected from the group consisting of a Key Performance Indicator, a latency, a jitter, a throughput, a packet loss, a component usage, a component availability, a component size, and an energy consumption.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the failure is identified based on one or more failure types selected from the group consisting of a physical resource failure, a virtual resource failure, a Virtual Machine failure, an application level failure, a processor failure, a memory failure, a Network Interface Card failure, a disk crash, and an operating system crash.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the component repair sequence is determined further based on one or more application requirements of an application relating to the at least one of the network service chains.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the component repair sequence is determined further based on end-to-end network service requirements.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein said repairing step comprises performing a repair action selected from the group consisting of instantiating a new Virtual Machine based on one or more policies, restoring one or more network functions, adjusting one or more network function configuration parameters, adjusting one or more network function links, and pointing one or more of the components to one or more alternate ones of the intersecting components.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising updating the network graph based on any repair actions performed in said repairing step.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein said repairing step determines a particular repair operation to perform from a set of potential repair operations based on one or more predetermined policies for the network service chains.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the commonality comprises at least one of the intersecting ones of the components of the network service chains in the network graph.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the network service chains comprises N components, wherein N is an integer greater than two, and wherein said repairing step selectively replaces 1 up to N of the N components depending upon an identified failure.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising correlating network service chain requirements for all of the network service chains to network resources to determine the component repair sequence of the at least one of the network service chains.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein said correlating step uses machine learning and heuristics to determine the component repair sequence of the at least one of the network service chains.