DYNAMICALLY ADJUSTING LOAD BALANCING

• US 20160094643A1
• Filed: 12/01/2014
• Published: 03/31/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jain, Jayant, Sengupta, Anirban, Parthasarathy, Mohan, Sequeira, Allwyn, Maskalik, Serge, Lund, Rick
• Granted Patent: US 9,774,537 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/24 Multipath
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/44 Distributed routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/125 by balancing the load, e.g. traffic engineering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2521 Translation architectures other than single NAT servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5069 for group communication, multicast communication or broadcast communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1017 based on a round robin mechanism
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1025 Dynamic adaptation of the criteria on which the server selection is based
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a novel method for load balancing data messages that are sent by a source compute node (SCN) to one or more different groups of destination compute nodes (DCNs). In some embodiments, the method deploys a load balancer in the source compute node'"'"'s egress datapath. This load balancer receives each data message sent from the source compute node, and determines whether the data message is addressed to one of the DCN groups for which the load balancer spreads the data traffic to balance the load across (e.g., data traffic directed to) the DCNs in the group. When the received data message is not addressed to one of the load balanced DCN groups, the load balancer forwards the received data message to its addressed destination. On the other hand, when the received data message is addressed to one of load balancer'"'"'s DCN groups, the load balancer identifies a DCN in the addressed DCN group that should receive the data message, and directs the data message to the identified DCN. To direct the data message to the identified DCN, the load balancer in some embodiments changes the destination address (e.g., the destination IP address, destination port, destination MAC address, etc.) in the data message from the address of the identified DCN group to the address (e.g., the destination IP address) of the identified DCN.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing sets of instructions for adjusting load balancing operations of a particular load balancer that load balances data messages sent by at least one source compute node (SCN) to a group of destination compute nodes (DCNs), the sets of instructions for comprising instructions for:

sending, to a set of controllers, message traffic data relating to data messages that the particular load balancer distributes among the DCNs of the DCN group;

receiving, from the set of controllers, load balancing adjustment data that is based on message traffic data collected by the set of controllers from a plurality of load balancers; and

adjusting, based on the received adjustment data, how the particular load balancer distributes new data message flows among the DCNs of the DCN group.

2. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the adjustment data comprises aggregated message traffic data that expresses the data message traffic load on each DCN in the DCN group.

3. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 2, wherein the aggregated message traffic data expresses either the number of flows, packets or bytes directed to each DCN.

6. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 2, wherein the aggregated message traffic data expresses a relative congestion percentage of each DCN.

7. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 2 further comprising sets of instructions for:

spreading, from the particular load balancer, the data messages among the DCNs based on a set of load balancing criteria; and

analyzing, after receiving the aggregated message traffic data at the particular load balancer, the received aggregated message traffic data and adjusting the particular load balancer'"'"'s set of load balancing criteria when an adjustment is needed based on the analysis of the aggregated message traffic data.

8. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 7 further comprising a set of instructions for receiving at the particular load balancer an initial set of load balancing criteria as part of an initial configuration of the load balancer.

9. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 8, wherein the load balancing criteria specifies numerical values that affect how the load balancer spreads the data messages among the DCN.

10. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 9, wherein the numerical values include one weight value for each DCN, wherein based on the weight values, the load balancer performs a weighted round robin selection of the DCNs for new data message flows.

11. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 7 further comprising a set of instruction for using an initial set of load balancing criteria to spread the data messages among the DCNs of the DCN group, before receiving the adjustment data.

12. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 further comprising a set of instructions for spreading, from the particular load balancer, the data messages among the DCNs based on a set of load balancing criteria, wherein the adjustment data comprises an adjusted set of load balancing criteria for adjusting the spreading of the data messages to the DCNs of the DCN group.

13. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 12, wherein

the received load balancing criteria set specifies a weight value for each DCN,

based on the weight values, the load balancer performs a weighted round robin selection of the DCNs for new data message flows.

14. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein

the adjustment data identifies at least one new DCN that has been added to the DCN group,

the sets of instructions further comprises a set of instructions for directing, after receiving the updated membership data, a portion of new data message flows to the newly added DCN.

15. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein

the adjustment data identifies at least one DCN that has been removed from the DCN group due to an operational failure at the DCN, and

the sets of instructions further comprises a set of instructions for redirecting, after receiving the updated membership data, message data flows that were previously being directed to the removed DCN to other DCNs in the group.

16. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein

the adjustment data identifies at least one DCN that has been removed from the DCN group, and

the sets of instructions further comprises a set of instructions for directing, after receiving the updated membership data, all new data message flows to a subset of DCNs in the DCN group that does not include the removed DCN.

17. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein

the adjustment data identifies at least one DCN that has been removed from the DCN group, and

the sets of instructions further comprises a set of instructions for directing, after a particular time subsequent to receiving the updated membership data, all new data message flows to a subset of DCNs in the DCN group that does not include the removed DCN.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17, wherein the set of instructions for directing all new data message flows to the DCN subset comprises a set of instructions for switching from one set of load balancing criteria of a load balancing rule to another set of load balancing criteria after the particular time.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the particular load balancer is a load balancer of a source compute node (SCN) that executes on the a host computing device with the particular load balancer, the sets of instructions further comprising sets of instructions for:

intercepting each data message from the SCN,

determining whether the data message is addressed to the DCN group, and

directing the data message to one of the DCNs in the DCN group when the data message is addressed to the DCN group.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the set of instructions for directing the data message comprises a set of instructions for directing at least two different data messages that are part of two different data message flows to two different DCNs of the DCN group.

21. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the set of instructions for directing the data message comprises a set of instructions for supplying the data message to a software forwarding element (SFE) that executes on the load balancer'"'"'s host computing device, for the SFE to forward the data message to an addressed destination.

4-5. -5. (canceled)

22. A method for adjusting load balancing operations of a particular load balancer that load balances data messages that one source compute node (SCN) sends to a group of destination compute nodes (DCNs), the method comprising:

sending message traffic data relating to data messages that the load balancer distributes among the DCNs of the DCN group;

from the set of controllers, receiving load balancing adjustment data that is based on message traffic data collected by the set of controllers from a plurality of load balancers;

based on the received adjustment data, adjusting how the particular load balancer distributes new data message flows among the DCNs of the DCN group.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the adjustment data comprises aggregated message traffic data that expresses the data message traffic load on each DCN in the DCN group.

24. The method of claim 23 further comprising:

from the particular load balancer, spreading the data messages among the DCNs based on a set of load balancing criteria;

after receiving the aggregated message traffic data at the particular load balancer, analyzing the received aggregated message traffic data and adjusting the particular load balancer'"'"'s set of load balancing criteria when an adjustment is needed based on the analysis of the aggregated message traffic data.

25. The method of claim 22 further comprising:

from the particular load balancer, spreading the data messages among the DCNs based on a set of load balancing criteria;

wherein the adjustment data comprises an adjusted set of load balancing criteria for adjusting the spreading of the data messages to the DCNs of the DCN group.