Method and system to provide blade server load balancing using spare link bandwidth

• US 20040202182A1
• Filed: 09/19/2003
• Published: 10/14/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/12/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Baumer, Howard, Lund, Martin
• Granted Patent: US 7,835,363 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/395.21
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3433 for load management allocation of a server based on load conditions G06F9/505; load rebalancing G06F9/5083; redistributing the load in a network by a load balancer H04L67/1029
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/885 Monitoring specific for caches
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/14 Channel dividing arrangements , i.e. in which a single bit stream is divided between several baseband channels and reassembled at the receiver
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/4908 using mBnB codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10015 Access to distributed or replicated servers, e.g. using brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A blade server with an improved method and apparatus for controlling the capacity utilization of the servers is disclosed. Capacity utilization information is obtained from blade servers mounted on a common backplane. The servers provide information concerning capacity utilization using spare link bandwidth without polling or the use of special messages. The blade manager then allocates network traffic based on a utilization algorithm in order to balance the capacity of the server in an efficient manner.

Claims

1. A method for providing blade server load balancing using spare link bandwidth in a multi-server platform having a common backplane, comprising:

a. receiving digital information on a digital communications link at a blade server manager;

b. receiving capacity utilization information embedded in spare link bandwidth from a plurality of blade servers operably coupled to the blade server manager;

c. selecting a blade server to receive said digital information based on the received capacity utilization information; and

d. forwarding the received digital information to the selected blade server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said embedded capacity utilization information is data representing blade server CPU percent utilization.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said embedded capacity utilization information is data representing blade server interrupt utilization.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an Ethernet network.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an external network.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an external network at a link data rate of 10 Gigabits per second.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the blade server manager communicates with each blade server over a dedicated link.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the data rate of the dedicated link is 1 Gigabit/second.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the blade server utilization information is embedded in frame alignment information.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the embedded capacity information is represented with at least two symbols.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the embedded capacity information is represented with expanded control characters.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the selecting is based on a load balancing algorithm.

13. A blade server with load balancing using spare link bandwidth, comprising:

a server including a blade server manager, two or more blade servers, and a common backplane;

a network interface for communicating with an external network; and

two or more blade server interfaces for communicating between the blade server manager and each blade server;

wherein said blade server manager allocates data received from said external network to each blade server based on embedded capacity utilization data transmitted by each blade server to the blade server manager that is embedded in spare link bandwidth on said interface between the blade server manager and each of said blade servers.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein said embedded capacity utilization data information is data representing blade server CPU percent utilization.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein said embedded capacity utilization data represents blade server interrupt utilization.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an Ethernet network.

17. The system of claim 13, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an external TCP/IP network.

18. The system of claim 13, wherein the blade server manager is operably coupled to an external network with a communications link having a data rate of 10 Gigabits per second.

19. The system of claim 13, wherein the blade server manager communicates with each blade server over a dedicated link having a data rate of 1 Gigabit/second.

20. The system of claim 13, wherein the blade server utilization information is embedded in frame alignment information.

21. The system of claim 13, wherein the embedded capacity information is represented with at least two symbols.

22. The system of claim 13, wherein the embedded capacity information is represented with expanded control characters.

23. The system of claim 13, wherein said blade server allocates data received from said external network to each blade server using a load balancing algorithm, and wherein said load balancing algorithm utilizes said embedded capacity utilization data.

24. The system of claim 13, wherein said capacity utilization data is embedded in the inter packet gap.

25. The system of claim 13, wherein said capacity utilization data is embedded in the control words bounding a data word.