CREATING VIRTUAL NETWORKS SPANNING MULTIPLE PUBLIC CLOUDS

• US 20190103990A1
• Filed: 05/04/2018
• Published: 04/04/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Cidon, Israel, Dar, Chen, Venugopal, Prashanth
• Granted Patent: US 11,005,684 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/14 Charging , metering or billing arrangements for data wireline or wireless communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1403 Architecture for metering, charging or billing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1428 Invoice generation, e.g. customization, lay-out, database processing, algorithms for calculating the bill or formatting invoices as WWW pages invoicing in general G06Q30/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2854 Wide area networks, e.g. public data networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2859 Point-to-point connection between the data network and the subscribers encapsulation H04L12/4633; virtual LANs H04L12/4641; routing of packets H04L45/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4641 Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/35 containing special prefixes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2212/00 Encapsulation of packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0803 Configuration setting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0829 Packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0888 Throughput
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/04 Interdomain routing, e.g. hierarchical routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/12 Shortest path evaluation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/14 Routing performance; Theoretical aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/64 : using an overlay routing layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/74 : Address processing for routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/745 : Address table lookup; Address filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/25 : of the same type
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2514 : between local and global IP addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/255 : Maintenance or indexing of mapping tables
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 : using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0245 : Filtering by information in the payload
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0263 : Rule management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0272 : Virtual private networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0281 : Proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 : for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• 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: H04M 15/00 : Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/51 : for resellers, retailers or service providers

Abstract

Some embodiments establish for an entity a virtual network over several public clouds of several public cloud providers and/or in several regions. In some embodiments, the virtual network is an overlay network that spans across several public clouds to interconnect one or more private networks (e.g., networks within branches, divisions, departments of the entity or their associated datacenters), mobile users, and SaaS (Software as a Service) provider machines, and other web applications of the entity. The virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the routing of the entity'"'"'s data messages to their destinations for best end-to-end performance, reliability and security, while trying to minimize the routing of this traffic through the Internet. Also, the virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the layer 4 processing of the data message flows passing through the network.

Claims

1. A method of establishing virtual networks over a plurality of public cloud datacenters, the method comprising:

configuring a first set of forwarding elements in first and second multi-tenant public cloud datacenters to implement a first virtual wide area network (WAN) for a first entity, said first virtual WAN connecting a plurality of machines operating in a set of two or more machine locations of the first entity; and

configuring a second set of forwarding elements in first and second multi-tenant public cloud datacenters to implement a second virtual wide area network for a second entity, said second virtual WAN connecting a plurality of machines operating in a set of two or more machine locations of the second entity.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity includes two or more office locations

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity further includes at least one datacenter location.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity further includes remote device locations.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity includes an office location and a datacenter location.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity further includes a location comprising a plurality of machines of a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the machines include at least one of virtual machines, containers, or standalone computers.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a subset of forwarding elements in the first set of forwarding elements are also in the second set of forwarding elements.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein at least another subset of forwarding elements in the first set of forwarding elements are not in the second set of forwarding elements.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein

configuring the first set of forwarding elements comprises configuring the first set of forwarding elements to use a first set of overlay virtual WAN headers to encapsulate data messages exchanged between the first-entity machines in different machine locations;

and

configuring the second set of forwarding elements comprises configuring the second set of forwarding elements to use a second set of overlay virtual WAN headers to encapsulate data messages exchanged between the second-entity machines in different machine locations;

the first set of overlay virtual WAN headers storing a first entity identifier identifying the first entity, and the second set of overlay virtual WAN headers storing a second entity identifier identifying the second entity.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the first and second sets of forwarding elements overlap such that at least one forwarding element is in both sets of forwarding elements.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the configuring of the first and second sets of forwarding elements is performed by a set of one or more controllers of a virtual network provider that deploys different virtual WANs for different entities over public cloud datacenters of different public cloud providers and in different regions.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second sets of forwarding elements comprise a plurality of software forwarding elements executing on computers.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second sets of forwarding elements comprise a plurality of software forwarding elements executing on host computers in the datacenters.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the plurality of software forwarding elements are machines executing on the host computers.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein at least a subset of machines implementing the plurality of software forwarding elements execute on host computers along with other machines.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein at least a subset of machines implementing the plurality of software forwarding elements are virtual machines.

18. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program for establishing virtual networks over a plurality of public cloud datacenters, the program for execution by at least one hardware processing unit, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

configuring a first set of forwarding elements in first and second multi-tenant public cloud datacenters to implement a first virtual wide area network (WAN) for a first entity, said first virtual WAN connecting a plurality of machines operating in a set of two or more machine locations of the first entity; and

configuring a second set of forwarding elements in first and second multi-tenant public cloud datacenters to implement a second virtual wide area network for a second entity, said second virtual WAN connecting a plurality of machines operating in a set of two or more machine locations of the second entity.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 18, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity includes at least one office location, one datacenter location and a plurality of remote user locations.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the set of machine locations of the first entity further includes a location comprising a plurality of machines of a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider.