CROSS-REGIONAL VIRTUAL NETWORK PEERING

• US 20190319847A1
• Filed: 04/17/2018
• Published: 10/17/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 04/17/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: NAHAR, Anavi Arun, BRUMLEY, David M., CHANDRAPPA, Harish Kumar, MOTWANI, Neeraj, SRIVASTAVA, Nisheeth, TEWARI, Rishabh, KUMAR, Vaibhav, TANEJA, Vishal, SEROV, Vladimir, ZAN, Xinyan, BANSAL, Deepak, ANNAMALAI, Narayan, DASGUPTA, Milan
• Granted Patent: US 11,102,079 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/659 Internet protocol version 6 [IPv6] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/668 Internet protocol [IP] address subnets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/69 using geographic information, e.g. room number
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/044 comprising hierarchical management structures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/64 using an overlay routing layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2592 using tunnelling or encapsulation
• 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

Abstract

Virtual networks located in different regions of cloud provider are peered using unique regional identifiers for the virtual networks. The regional identifiers and other information are pushed down a network management stack to implement the peering.

Claims

1. A virtual network management device operable to implement peering of virtual networks, the device comprising:

a memory containing machine-readable instructions; and

a processor to execute the machine-readable instructions to;

determine unique regional identifiers for virtual networks located in two different geographical regions; and

generate an encapsulated packet for transmission from a first virtual machine (VM) in a first one of the virtual networks located in a first region of the geographical regions to a second VM in a second one of the virtual networks located in a second region of the geographical regions,

wherein the encapsulated packet includes a header comprising the regional identifiers, virtual network addresses of the first and second VMs, and physical network addresses of the first and second VMs.

2. The virtual network management device of claim 1, wherein the regional identifiers comprise Internet Protocol version six prefixes that uniquely identify each of the first and second regions.

3. The virtual network management device of claim 2, wherein region-based packet filtering is performed based on at least one of the Internet Protocol version six prefixes.

4. The virtual network management device of claim 1, wherein the encapsulated packet comprises a Network Virtualization Using Generic Routing Encapsulation header.

5. The virtual network management device of claim 1, wherein the first and second VMs have non-overlapping customer address spaces.

6. The virtual network management device of claim 1, wherein the first VM transmits the packet directly to the second VM without traversing a virtual network gateway for the first or second virtual networks.

7. The virtual network management device of claim 1, wherein the virtual networks are implemented on a network of a cloud provider employing a hierarchical network management stack comprising a regional layer, a cluster layer and a host layer to perform network management operations for regions of the network, clusters of the network, and hosts of the network, respectively, and

the unique regional identifiers are determined based on regional information for the virtual networks passed down from the regional layer to the host layer.

8. The virtual network management device of claim 7, wherein network management agents at the cluster layer publish mappings of customer addresses of virtual machines in a customer address space of a customer of the cloud provider to physical addresses of host machines in a provider address space of the cloud provider.

9. The virtual network management device of claim 8, wherein a host network management agent at the host layer subscribes to the mappings to generate the encapsulated packet.

20. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media devices of claim 1, wherein the virtual networks are implemented on a network of a cloud provider employing a hierarchical network management stack comprising a regional layer, a cluster layer and a host layer to perform network management operations for regions of the network, clusters of the network, and hosts of the network, respectively, and

the unique regional identifiers are determined based on regional information for the virtual networks passed down from the regional layer to the host layer.

10. A computer-implemented method for peering virtual networks managed by a cloud provider, the method comprising:

determining unique regional identifiers for first and second virtual networks located in two different geographical regions based on regional information pushed down a network management stack of the cloud provider from a regional layer to a host layer; and

generating an encapsulated packet for transmission from a first virtual machine (VM) in the first virtual network located in a first region of the geographical regions to a second VM in the second virtual network located in a second region of the geographical regions,

wherein the encapsulated packet includes a header comprising the regional identifiers, virtual network addresses of the first and second VMs, and provider network addresses of the first and second VMs.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the regional identifiers comprise Internet Protocol version 6 prefixes that uniquely identify each of the first and second regions.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein region-based packet filtering is performed based on at least one of the Internet Protocol version 6 prefixes.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the encapsulated packet comprises a Network Virtualization Using Generic Routing Encapsulation header.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein the first and second VMs have non-overlapping customer address spaces.

15. The method of claim 10, comprising:

transmitting the packet from the first VM directly to the second VM without traversing a virtual network gateway for the first or second virtual networks.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the network management stack comprises a regional layer, a cluster layer and a host layer to perform network management operations for regions of the cloud provider'"'"'s network, clusters of the cloud provider'"'"'s network, and hosts of the cloud provider'"'"'s network, respectively, and

the regional information is passed down from the regional layer to the host layer via the cluster layer.

17. The method of claim 16, comprising:

publishing mappings by network management agents at the cluster layer, wherein the mappings map customer addresses of virtual machines in a customer address space of a customer of the cloud provider to provider addresses of host machines in a provider address space of the cloud provider.

18. The method of claim 17, comprising:

a host network management agent at the host layer subscribing to the mappings to generate the encapsulated packet.

19. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media devices having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon, wherein the instructions are executed by at least one processor to peer virtual networks of a tenant of a cloud provider provided in different geographical regions of the cloud provider'"'"'s network, and the computer-executable instructions are executable by at least one processor to:

determine regional information of the virtual networks;

determine unique regional identifiers for the virtual networks based on the regional information;

subscribe to mappings of addresses in a customer address space of the tenant to a provider address space of the cloud provider; and

generate an encapsulated packet for transmission from a first virtual machine (VM) in a first one of the virtual networks located in a first region of the geographical regions to a second VM in a second one of the virtual networks located in a second region of the geographical regions based on the unique regional identifiers and the subscribed mappings.