SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING LOAD BALANCER VISIBILITY IN AN INTELLIGENT WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• US 20120066487A1
• Filed: 09/09/2010
• Published: 03/15/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus Software, Inc. (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Sabin, Jason Allen, Larsen, Kal A., Burch, Lloyd Leon, Brown, Jeremy, Kranendonk, Nathaniel Brent
• Application Number:
  US12/878,180
• Publication Number:
  US 20120066487A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/150
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/101 based on network conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1027 Persistence of sessions during load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/146 Markers for unambiguous identification of a particular session, e.g. session cookie or URL-encoding
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/561 Adding application-functional data or data for application control, e.g. adding metadata

Abstract

The system and method for providing load balancer visibility in an intelligent workload management system described herein may expand a role or function associated with a load balancer beyond handling incoming and outgoing data center traffic into supporting governance, risk, and compliance concerns that may be managed in an intelligent workload management system. In particular, the load balancer may establish external connections with destination resources in response to client devices establishing internal connections with the load balancer and then attach connection tracers to monitor the internal connections and the external connections. The connection tracers may then detect incoming traffic and outgoing traffic that the internal and external connections pass through the load balancer, and traffic tracers may collect data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic, which the workload management system may use to manage the data center.

Claims

1. A system for providing load balancer visibility in an intelligent workload management system, comprising:

a client device located in an information technology data center; and

a workload management system that manages the information technology data center, wherein the workload management system includes a load balancer configured to;

establish an external connection with a destination resource in response to the client device establishing an internal connection with the load balancer, wherein the internal connection includes a request to communicate with the destination resource;

attach one or more connection tracers to the internal connection established between the client device and the load balancer and the external connection established between the load balancer and the destination resource;

monitor the internal connection with the client device and the external connection with the destination resource using the one or more connection tracers, wherein the connection tracers monitor the internal connection and the external connection to detect incoming traffic and outgoing traffic that the internal connection and the external connection pass through the load balancer;

collect data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic that the internal connection and the external connection pass through the load balancer with one or more traffic tracers, wherein the one or more traffic tracers collect the data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic in response to the connection tracers detecting the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic; and

generate a report describing the data that the one or more traffic tracers collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer, wherein the workload management system manages the information technology data center using the report describing the data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the load balancer further attaches the one or more connection tracers to a connection that the destination resource establishes with the load balancer, wherein the destination resource establishes the connection with the load balancer to pass the incoming traffic through the load balancer in response to the request that passes the outgoing traffic from the client device to the destination resource.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the load balancer is further configured to distinguish one of multiple machines associated with the destination resource that passed the incoming traffic through the load balancer in response to the request from the client device.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the connection tracers detect the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passing through the load balancer in response to the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic including a cookie, session identifier, or header associated with the internal connection and the external connection.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the connection tracers notify the traffic tracers to collect the data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic in response to the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic identifying a virtual network address that the load balancer assigned to the client device.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the load balancer is further configured to decode one or more encrypted messages in the incoming traffic or the outgoing traffic to collect the data from the one or more encrypted messages.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the workload management system further includes an indexing service that orders the data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic according to time or content associated with the collected data.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the workload management system further includes one or more additional load balancers configured to monitor incoming traffic and outgoing traffic that passes through the multiple load balancers and generate reports describing data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the multiple load balancers.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the workload management system further includes an indexing service having one or more configurations that the load balancer applies to configure the one or more connection tracers and the one or more traffic tracers.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the load balancer is further configured to:

read the one or more configurations from the indexing service that define one or more requirements for the data to collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer;

filter the data that the traffic tracers collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic according to the one or more requirements defined in the configurations read from the indexing service; and

provide the generated report to an application that submitted the one or more requirements to the indexing service, wherein the application uses the report to manage the information technology data center.

11. A method for providing load balancer visibility in an intelligent workload management system, comprising:

establishing an external connection with a destination resource in response to a client device located in an information technology data center establishing an internal connection with a load balancer, wherein the internal connection includes a request to communicate with the destination resource;

attaching one or more connection tracers to the internal connection established between the client device and the load balancer and the external connection established between the load balancer and the destination resource;

monitoring the internal connection with the client device and the external connection with the destination resource using the one or more connection tracers, wherein the connection tracers monitor the internal connection and the external connection to detect incoming traffic and outgoing traffic that the internal connection and the external connection pass through the load balancer;

collecting data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic that the internal connection and the external connection pass through the load balancer with one or more traffic tracers, wherein the one or more traffic tracers collect the data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic in response to the connection tracers detecting the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic; and

generating a report describing the data that the one or more traffic tracers collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer, wherein a workload management system manages the information technology data center using the report describing the data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the load balancer further attaches the one or more connection tracers to a connection that the destination resource establishes with the load balancer, wherein the destination resource establishes the connection with the load balancer to pass the incoming traffic through the load balancer in response to the request that passes the outgoing traffic from the client device to the destination resource.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising distinguishing one of multiple machines associated with the destination resource that passed the incoming traffic through the load balancer in response to the request from the client device.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the connection tracers detect the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passing through the load balancer in response to the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic including a cookie, session identifier, or header associated with the internal connection and the external connection.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising notifying the traffic tracers to collect the data from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic in response to the connection tracers detecting that the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic identifies a virtual network address that the load balancer assigned to the client device.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the load balancer decodes one or more encrypted messages in the incoming traffic or the outgoing traffic to collect the data from the one or more encrypted messages.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising ordering the data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic with an indexing service, wherein the indexing service orders the collected data according to time or content associated with the collected data.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the workload management system includes one or more additional load balancers that monitor incoming traffic and outgoing traffic that passes through the multiple load balancers and generate reports describing data collected from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the multiple load balancers.

19. The method of claim 11, further comprising reading one or more configurations from an indexing service, wherein the load balancer applies the one or more configurations read from the indexing service to configure the one or more connection tracers and the one or more traffic tracers.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

defining one or more requirements for the data to collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic passed through the load balancer, wherein the load balancer defines the one or more requirements from the one or more configurations read from the indexing service;

filtering the data that the traffic tracers collect from the incoming traffic and the outgoing traffic according to the one or more requirements defined in the configurations read from the indexing service; and

providing the generated report to an application that submitted the one or more requirements to the indexing service, wherein the application uses the report to manage the information technology data center.