WIDE AREA AGGREGATED COMMUNICATIONS

• US 20150237117A1
• Filed: 02/19/2014
• Published: 08/20/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 02/19/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: TAYLOR, Frank Stephen
• Granted Patent: US 9,258,359 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• 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 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/562 Brokering proxy services

Abstract

Methods, systems, and techniques for federating operations, in an optimized way using wide area networks are provided. Example systems provide an API for generating and handling federated requests as an aggregation. In one example Wide Area Network Aggregation System, WANAS provides an API, a connection manager, and connection iterators to manage inter-site connections and requests, and inter-pod requests and messaging. These components cooperate to distribute a task across multiple physically disparate sites using a representative connection to the site and fan out of requests to other pods within the site.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for optimizing communications between computing sites connected via a wide area network comprising:

upon receiving, at a virtualization infrastructure installation of a computing site, via a connection over the wide area network to a second computing site, a site request that specifies a requested operation relating to virtualization infrastructure resources, the site request having been sent to a site request target that specifies a set of equivalent broker endpoints capable of responding to the received site request, the computing site comprising a plurality of virtualization infrastructure installations including the receiving installation and wherein the receiving installation contains at least one broker that is one of the set of equivalent broker endpoints capable of responding to the received site request;

generating a local request for each of the other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site to forward the requested operation, wherein each generated local request specifies the requested operation and indicates an installation request target that specifies a set of equivalent broker endpoints capable of responding to the local request;

forwarding each generated local request to a one of the set of broker endpoints of the installation request target of the corresponding virtualization infrastructure installation, to be executed asynchronously and in parallel with each other forwarded local request;

determining for the receiving virtualization infrastructure installation a response to the requested operation; and

receiving, from each other virtualization infrastructure installation of the computing site, a response to the forwarded local request, aggregating the received responses to the forwarded local requests with the determined response to the requested operation into an overall response to the received site request, and forwarding the overall response in answer to the received site request.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

upon not receiving a response to a forwarded local request within a designated time period, determining a next broker of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints of the installation request target and forwarding the local request to the determined next broker until a response is received or no more next brokers of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints of the installation request target are available.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the local request includes one or more of:

a type indicating a purpose of the local request, a correlation identifier to identify responses to sub-requests associated with the local request, a message header, and a message body.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the message header or message body comprise key-value pairs.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the requested operation relating to virtualization infrastructure resources is at least one of:

a query for a status of sessions for a designated user, a query to determine all of the existing virtual desktops for a designated user, a query to determine a virtual resource associated with a designated user, a request to provision a desktop connection, and/or a request to disconnect a session, to inquire regarding installation health, to obtain user information, to kill a session, to ping an endpoint, to reset a session, to send a message, and/or to set user settings.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising a connection manager associated with each broker endpoint of the computing site, wherein each connection manager manages life cycle of one or more connections established between the associated broker endpoint and broker endpoints of other computing sites connected via the wide area network.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein each connection manager also manages life cycle of one or more connections established between the associated broker endpoint and other broker endpoints of the same computing site.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the one or more connections are configured to be established before receiving a site request or a local request.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the connections can be shared by multiple site requests and/or local requests without requiring reestablishment of connections between the multiple requests.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein a connection manager determines which broker endpoints constitute more reliable candidates for establishing connections over the wide area network using connection criteria.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the connection criteria include at least one of:

a current connection already exists, broker endpoint health information, known previous latency information for connections to this broker endpoint, number of requests previously sent, a configured priority value associated with the connection, and/or network topology information.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein the connection criteria are used to load balance requests across broker endpoints.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing logic that controls a computer processor to optimize communications between computing sites connected via a wide area network by performing a method comprising:

upon receiving, at a first broker of a virtualization infrastructure installation of a computing site, via a connection over the wide area network to a second computing site, a site request that specifies a first requested operation relating to virtualization infrastructure resources, the site request having been sent to a site request target that specifies a set of equivalent broker endpoints capable of responding to the received site request including the first broker, the computing site comprising a plurality of virtualization infrastructure installations including the receiving installation;

generating a local request for each of the other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site to forward the requested operation, wherein each generated local request specifies the first requested operation and indicates an installation request target that specifies a set of equivalent broker endpoints capable of responding to the local request;

forwarding each generated local request to a one of the set of broker endpoints of the installation request target of the corresponding virtualization infrastructure installation, to be executed asynchronously and in parallel with each other forwarded local request;

determining for the receiving virtualization infrastructure installation a response to the first requested operation; and

receiving, from each other virtualization infrastructure installation of the computing site, a response to the forwarded local request, aggregating the received responses to the forwarded local requests with the determined response to the first requested operation into an overall response to the received site request, and forwarding the overall response in answer to the received site request.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, the method further comprising:

upon not receiving a response to the forwarded local request within a designated time period, determining a next broker of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints of the installation request target and forwarding the local request to the determined next broker until a response is received or no more next brokers of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints of the installation request target are available.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein the medium is a memory and the content are instructions stored in the memory.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein the logic is distributed in the form of an application programming interface.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein a virtualization infrastructure installation comprises a plurality of servers, each server comprising a broker endpoint.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein a site request is received across an endpoint to endpoint connection that is processing other site and/or local requests, without requiring set up or tear down of the connection to process each request.

19. A virtualization server of a virtualization infrastructure installation of a computing site connected via one or more wide area networks to other computing sites, each computing site comprising one or more virtualization infrastructure installations, each virtualization infrastructure installation comprising one or more virtualization servers, comprising:

a computer processor;

a memory;

site level logic, stored in the memory, and configured, when executed to;

receive a site query that indicates a first operation related to virtualization infrastructure resources;

perform the first operation to determine a local response to the site query on behalf of the virtualization infrastructure installation;

determine whether there are other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site;

when it is determined that other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site are present;

generate and forward a pod query to a set of equivalent broker endpoints of each of the other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site, wherein the pod query specifies the first operation and the set of equivalent broker endpoints can equivalently respond to the pod query;

receive a response to each pod query forwarded to each of the other virtualization infrastructure installations;

aggregate the received responses to the pod queries with the local response to formulate a cumulative response; and

return the cumulative response as an aggregated response to the site query; and

when it is determined that no other virtualization infrastructure installations in the computing site are present, return the local response to the site query as an aggregated response to the site query; and

pod level logic, stored in the memory, and configured, when executed to;

receive a pod query that indicates a second operation related to virtualization infrastructure resources; and

perform the second operation to determine a response to the pod query on behalf of the virtualization server.

20. The server of claim 19, further comprising:

upon not receiving a response to a forwarded pod query within a designated time period, determine a next broker endpoint of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints for the pod query and forward the pod query to the determined next broker until a response is received or no more next broker endpoints of the specified set of equivalent broker endpoints for the pod query are available.