DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT

• US 20170085637A1
• Filed: 12/01/2016
• Published: 03/23/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vapor Corp. (Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Vapor Corp. (Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation)
• Inventors: Cencini, Andrew Brian, White, Steven, Crawford, Cole Malone
• Granted Patent: US 10,257,268 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/189 Power distribution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/206 comprising thermal management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/26 Power supply means, e.g. regulation thereof for memories G11C
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/161 Computing infrastructure, e.g. computer clusters, blade chassis or hardware partitioning casings, cabinets, racks or drawers for data centers H05K5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/547 Remote procedure calls [RPC]; Web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/24 using dedicated network management hardware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1042 using topology management mechanisms

Abstract

Provided is a process of managing rack-mounted computing devices in a data center with a distributed peer-to-peer management system, the process including: determining roles of data-center management computing devices in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system; receiving, via an out-of-band network, a data-center management command at a given data-center management computing device; distributing, based on at least some of the roles, via the out-of-band network, the data-center management command.

Claims

1. A method of managing rack-mounted computing devices in a data center with a distributed peer-to-peer management system, the method comprising:

determining roles of data-center management computing devices in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system;

receiving, via an out-of-band network, a data-center management command at a given data-center management computing device;

distributing, based on at least some of the roles, via the out-of-band network, the data-center management command from the given data-center management computing device to a first plurality of other data-center management computing devices; and

for each of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, distributing, based at least some of the roles, via the out-of-band network, the data-center management command to a respective second plurality of other data-center management computing devices, wherein;

the given data-center management computing device, the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, and the respective second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices are each configured to manage a respective plurality of rack-mounted computing devices;

each of the pluralities of respective rack-mounted computing devices executes an in-band application that communicates on an in-band network different from the out-of-band network; and

the data-center management command is a command to update or otherwise configure a microkernel, a virtual machine, a container, an operating system, or an application executing on one or more data-center management computing devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

determining roles of data-center management computing devices in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system comprises;

selecting a primary data-center management computing device;

selecting a plurality of leader data-center management computing devices by concurrently executing a plurality of respective instances of a distributed algorithm by which the respective leader is determined by consensus, each instance being executed by one of the second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices to select a respective leader for the respective one of the second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein:

determining roles comprises determining roles in a peer-to-peer distributed application having a structured topology.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein:

the structured topology is a tree topology having at least three levels, wherein;

the given data-center management computing device is at a first level of the tree topology;

the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices is at a second level of the tree topology, each being adjacent to the given data-center management computing device in the tree topology;

the second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices are at a third level of the tree topology, each respective plurality of other data-center management computing devices being adjacent to a respective one of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices in the tree topology.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein:

determining roles comprises determining roles in a peer-to-peer distributed application having an unstructured topology.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising:

determining, with at least one of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, that the given data-center management computing device has failed;

electing, with at least one of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, one of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices to serve as a replacement to the given data-center management computing device in at least some roles filled by the given data-center management computing device; and

distributing a result of the election to each the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising:

obtaining a file with configuration information from a distributed file system stored with cross-computing-device redundancy by at least a plurality of the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, the second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices, or both.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein:

the file is stored with consensus-based replication based on a consensus protocol, and wherein the consensus protocol is used to determine at least some roles of the data center management computing devices.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein:

at least some of the data-center management computing devices are a rack controller executed in an out-of-band computer having a processor and memory storing instructions that when executed effectuate at least some of the operations of claim 1;

at least some of the data-center management computing devices manage rack-mounted computing devices via respective ones of a plurality of different power-line communication networks; and

the out-of-band network is a different network from the power-line communication networks.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein:

at least some of the data-center management computing devices are rack-mounted computing devices executing a rack controller; and

at least some of the data-center management computing devices manage rack-mounted computing devices via an Ethernet network, without a power-line communication network connecting the at least some of the data-center management computing devices to the rack-mounted computing devices.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein:

at least some of the data-center management computing devices are a rack-mounted computing device executing a rack controller; and

at least some of the data-center management computing devices manage rack-mounted computing devices via a power-line communication network.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein:

at least some of the data-center management computing devices are a rack controller executed in an out-of-band computer having a processor and memory storing instructions that when executed effectuate at least some of the operations of claim 1; and

at least some of the data-center management computing devices manage rack-mounted computing devices via a non-power-line communication network.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein:

at least some of the data-center management computing devices execute rack controllers, each configured to manage a plurality of rack-mounted computing devices on a respective rack, a sensor on the respective rack, and an actuator on the respective rack, wherein the sensor and actuator are not on a chassis of one of the rack-mounted computing devices on the respective rack, wherein controlling the rack-mounted computing devices comprises;

changing a boot target in an extensible firmware interface of a given one of the rack-mounted computing devices on the respective rack;

reading a value indicative of temperature from the sensor or a sensor of a given one of the rack-mounted computing devices on the respective rack; and

actuating the actuator.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the command includes a disk image containing an operating system, an application, and dependencies of the application to be installed on each of the first data-center management computing device, the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, and the respective pluralities of other data-center management computing devices.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the command is a command to orchestrate containers executing on at least some of the data-center management computing devices.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the command is a command to configure a network operating system.

18. The method of claim 1, comprising implementing control and updates of rack controllers at the rack-level, in a distributed, concurrent routine.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein distributing, based at least some of the roles, via the out-of-band network, the data-center management command to a respective plurality of other data-center management computing devices comprises:

periodically, by each of the plurality of other data-center management computing devices, sending a request to one of the plurality of other data-center management computing devices for an update; and

receiving an update, from the one of the plurality of other data-center management computing devices, with each of the plurality of other data-center management computing devices.

20. The method of claim 1, comprising:

initializing a data center with a computer designated to act as a seed unit to distribute configuration files via the given data-center management computing device and the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein determining roles of data-center management computing devices in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system comprises:

steps for device discovery and data routing.

22. The method of claim 1, comprising:

performing steps for configuring rack control units in a data center.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein determining roles of data-center management computing devices in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system comprises:

steps for arriving at a consensus among data-center management computing devices.

24. The method of claim 1, comprising:

executing the in-band application to provide resources to remote computing devices over the Internet with rack-mounted computing devices controlled by at least some of the given data-center management computing device, the first plurality of other data-center management computing devices, and the second pluralities of other data-center management computing devices.

3. The method of claim 3, wherein selecting a plurality of leader data-center management computing devices by concurrently executing a plurality of respective instances of a distributed algorithm by which the respective leader is determined by consensus comprises:

detecting with a first one of the data-center management computing devices that a signal has not been received from a leader within a threshold duration of time;

incrementing or decrementing a count with the with first one of the data-center management computing devices;

sending, with the first one of the data-center management computing devices, a request to vote for a new leader along with the incremented or decremented count to other data-center management computing devices in the same second plurality of other data-center management computing devices;

receiving the request with a second one of the data-center management computing devices;

determining, with the second one of the data-center management computing devices, to vote for the first one of the data-center management computing devices, at least in part, by;

determining that the second one of the data-center management computing devices has not yet submitted a vote associated with the incremented or decremented count; and

determining that the request is the first request received by the second one of the data-center management computing devices in a given round of voting;

sending, with the second one of the data-center management computing devices, the vote to other data-center management computing devices in the same second plurality of other data-center management computing devices;

selecting a leader based on amounts of votes received by candidate data-center management computing devices.

25. A system, comprising:

a plurality of racks, each rack comprising;

a plurality of rack-mounted computing devices; and

a medium storing instructions configured to instantiate a rack controller coupled to each of the rack-mounted computing devices via a network, wherein each rack controller is configured to effectuate operations comprising;

determining roles of the rack controllers in a distributed peer-to-peer data-center management system;

receiving a data-center management command at a first rack controller;

distributing, based on at least some of the roles, the data-center management command from the first rack controller to a first plurality of other rack controller; and

for each of the first plurality of other rack controllers, distributing, based at least some of the roles, the data-center management command to a respective plurality of other rack controllers.