Decoupling network connections from an application while the application is temporarily down

• US 10,587,673 B2
• Filed: 06/29/2016
• Issued: 03/10/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Olmsted-Thompson, Jeremy, Agarwal, Mayank
• Primary Examiner(s): Cheema, Umar
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mekonen, Tesfu N
• Application Number:
  US15/197,692
• Publication Number:
  US 20180006958A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,350 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/069 using logs of notifications; Post-processing of notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1034 Reaction to server failures by a load balancer

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a method for saving data communicated with an application during the application downtime. The method, in some embodiments, receives incoming data from an interface of a machine. The incoming data includes data that is originated by different resources to be sent to a particular application that executes on the machine. The method forwards the incoming data to the particular application when the particular application is available, and forwards the incoming data to a data storage to be buffered when the particular application is unavailable for receiving the incoming data.

Claims

1. A method for decoupling data communicated with a particular application from the particular application during the particular application'"'"'s downtime while the particular application is being upgraded, the particular application executing on a first computing machine, the method comprising:

at a proxy executing on the first computing machine,

receiving, from a machine external to the first computing machine, incoming data through an interface of the first computing machine for the particular application;

determining that the particular application is being upgraded and is unavailable to receive incoming data by determining that a particular flag is set on, wherein the particular flag is set on before the particular application is upgraded and set off after the particular application has completed its upgrade; and

based on the determination that the particular application is being upgraded and is unavailable to receive the incoming data, forwarding the incoming data to a data storage of the first computing machine in order to buffer the incoming data until the particular application becomes available to receive the incoming data after it has completed its upgrade.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising, after buffering the incoming data in the data storage:

determining that the particular application has completed its upgrade and is available to receive data;

retrieving the buffered data from the data storage; and

forwarding the buffered data to the particular application.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first computing machine comprises a first virtual machine (VM) and the interface comprises a virtual network interface controller of the VM.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the first VM executes on a particular host computer and receives the incoming data from a set of one or more VMs that execute on a set of host computers.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the first VM further receives the incoming data from one or more physical machines that are connected to one or more hardware switches.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the incoming data comprises log data received from different forwarding elements of a network implemented on a plurality of host computers.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the incoming data further comprises application programming interface (API) calls received from an analytical application that receives the log data from the particular application and analyses the log data.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising listening on a first port number for receiving the log data and listening on a second different port number for receiving the API calls.

9. The method of claim 8, where in the first port number is allocated for a syslog protocol while the second port number is allocated for other protocols.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein forwarding the incoming data to the data storage comprises only forwarding the log data to the data storage and not the API calls.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the interface denies any new API call received for the particular application and closes existing API connections to the particular application while the particular application is being upgraded.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the incoming data comprises listening on one or more port numbers for receiving the incoming data, wherein the particular application listens on a loopback port number, which is different from the one or more port numbers, for receiving the incoming data.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein forwarding the incoming data to the particular application comprises forwarding the incoming data to the particular application through the loopback port.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein the machine is a first machine external to the first computing machine, the method further comprising:

at the proxy;

receiving, from a second machine external to the first computing machine, incoming data through the interface of the first computing machine for the particular application;

determining that the particular application is not being upgraded and is available to receive incoming data by determining that the particular flag is set off; and

based on the determination that the particular application is not being upgraded and is available to receive the incoming data, forwarding the incoming data received from the external second machine to the particular application.

14. A non-transitory machine readable medium of a computer storing a proxy program that when executed by at least one processing unit of the computer processes data for a particular application executing on the computer, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving incoming data for the particular application, the incoming data originating from a first machine external to the computer;

determining whether the particular application is being upgraded and is unavailable to receive incoming data by determining whether a particular flag is set on, wherein the particular flag is set on before the particular application is upgraded and set off after the particular application has completed its upgrade;

when the particular flag is set off indicating that the particular application is not being upgraded and is available to receive the incoming data, forwarding the incoming data to the particular application; and

when the particular flag is set on indicating that the particular application is being upgraded and is unavailable to receive the incoming data, forwarding the incoming data to a data storage of the computer in order to buffer the incoming data until the particular application becomes available to receive the incoming data after it has completed its upgrade.

15. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the proxy program further comprises sets of instructions for, after buffering the incoming data in the data storage:

determining that the particular application has completed its upgrade and is available to receive data;

receiving the buffered data from the data storage; and

forwarding the buffered data to the particular application.

16. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the particular application comprises a log monitoring application, wherein the incoming data comprises log data generated by different network elements and sent to the log monitoring application.

17. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 16, wherein the particular application comprises a first instance of the application and the computer comprises a first computer, wherein the log monitoring application comprises at least a second instance instantiated in a data compute node (DCN) executing on a second computer, the second instance also for receiving the log data generated by at least one machine external to the second computer.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17, wherein the first and second instances receive log data from first and second virtual interfaces, respectively, wherein the set of instructions for forwarding the incoming data to the first instance comprises a set of instructions for forwarding the log data to the first virtual interface.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 18, wherein the incoming data further comprises application programing interface (API) calls, wherein the first virtual interface forwards the log data to the data storage and the API calls to the second virtual interface to be subsequently forwarded to the second instance.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first virtual interface forwards the API calls to the second virtual interface by encapsulating data packets of the API calls using a particular tunneling protocol and tunneling the encapsulated data packets to the second virtual interface.

21. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein a second machine executes on the computer, and the proxy program and the particular application both execute on the second machine.

22. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 21, wherein the second machine is a virtual machine (VM).