DYNAMIC CONFIGURATIONS BASED ON THE DYNAMIC HOST CONFIGURATION PROTOCOL

• US 20170033988A1
• Filed: 07/31/2015
• Published: 02/02/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 07/31/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Zhuo, Zhenjun
• Granted Patent: US 10,200,342 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5014 using dynamic host configuration protocol [DHCP] or bootstrap protocol [BOOTP]

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a method for dynamically configuring multiple instances of applications that operate on clients in a network system. The method of some embodiments uses the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to configure the multiple instances of each application to share a pool of resources specific to the application that are used for configuring the application on each of the clients. Some embodiments of the invention store an application ID in DHCP-formatted packets to differentiate the packets from DHCP packets and to distribute shared configuration resources between various instances of the application.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit of a client dynamically configures an application to operate on the client, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

identifying an application ID for the application;

broadcasting a discovery packet comprising the application ID;

receiving a set of response packets from a set of configuration servers; and

configuring the application to operate on the client based on a particular response packet of the received set of response packets.

2. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the discovery packet and the set of response packets are formatted according to the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP).

3. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 2, wherein the application ID is stored in a field of the discovery packet that is unused by DHCP.

4. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the set of instructions for receiving the set of response packets comprises sets of instructions for:

determining whether a response packet of the set of response packets comprises the application ID; and

discarding the response packet when the response packet does not comprise the application ID.

5. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the set of instructions for configuring the application comprises sets of instructions for:

identifying an Internet Protocol (IP) address in the particular response packet; and

configuring the client to use the identified IP address.

6. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the set of instructions for configuring the application comprises sets of instructions for:

identifying a configuration variable in the particular response packet; and

modifying a configuration setting of the application based on the configuration variable.

7. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the program further comprises sets of instructions for:

identifying a particular resource from the particular response packet of the set of response packets; and

broadcasting a set of request packets comprising the particular resource and the application ID to the set of configuration servers.

8. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the client is one of a virtual machine and a container operating on a computer.

9. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein each response packet of the set of response packets comprises a particular resource of a pool of shared resources.

10. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the set of configuration servers comprises a set of DHCP services for providing public IP addresses and a set of application configuration services for providing application-specific configuration data.

11. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the application-specific configuration data comprises private IP addresses reserved for a plurality of clients running the application.

12. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein a particular DHCP service and a particular application configuration service operate on a single configuration server.

13. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the set of instructions for receiving the set of response packets comprises a set of instructions for discarding response packets received from the set of DHCP services.

14. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit provides dynamic configurations for a plurality of applications operating on a plurality of clients in a network, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving a discovery packet from a particular client;

determining whether the discovery packet comprises an application ID for an application operating on the particular client; and

when the discovery packet comprises an application ID, sending an offer packet comprising a set of configuration data to the particular client and the application ID based on the application ID.

15. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the packet is formatted according to the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP).

16. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the application ID is stored in a field of the discovery and offer packets that is unused by DHCP.

17. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein at least a portion of the set of configuration data is stored in a field of the offer packet that is unused by DHCP.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the configuration data comprises a configuration variable that is used to modify a configuration setting of the application operating on the particular client based on the configuration variable.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the program further comprises sets of instructions for, when the discovery packet comprises an application ID:

determining whether a resource pool associated with the application ID is available;

when the resource pool is not available, discarding the discovery packet; and

when the resource pool is available, reserving a resource from the resource pool and including the resource in the set of configuration data in the offer packet.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the program further comprises sets of instructions for:

receiving a request packet from the particular client;

determining whether the request packet comprises the reserved resource; and

when the request packet does not comprise the reserved resource, releasing the reserved resource back to the resource pool.

21. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the particular client is one of a virtual machine and a container operating on a computer.

22. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the program operates on the same computer.

23. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the program further comprises a set of instructions for, when the packet does not comprise an application ID, providing an Internet Protocol (IP) address from a pool of public IP addresses to the client.