Method and apparatus for achieving dynamic capacity and high availability in multi-stage data networks using adaptive flow-based routing
First Claim
1. A system comprising a virtual connectivity grid overlaid on a physical network in which nodes are coupled to one or more physical switches through respective physical interfaces, the virtual connectivity grid including virtual interfaces overlaid over the node physical interfaces so as to provide communicative coupling of the nodes to one or more virtual networks established within the virtual connectivity grid, the communicative coupling being established by virtual links arranged so as to emulate physical connections in a desired connectivity pattern, wherein the system is implemented using a plurality of stand-alone general purpose and/or special purpose computers having software stored therein as the nodes and local area network (LAN) switches that support virtual local area networks (VLANs) and jumbo frames as the one or more physical switches, the software comprises flow management software configured to cause the computers to adaptively route data flows through a multi-stage network defined by the virtual connectivity grid, and each stage of the multi-stage network comprises a cluster of similarly configured applications performing one or more network services.
15 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Methods and systems for determining paths for flows within a multi-stage network made up of clusters of processing nodes. The flow paths may be determined without knowledge of whether or not packets of a particular flow will actually traverse specific ones of the clusters within the multi-stage network. In various implementations, the nodes of the multi-stage network may be coupled to one or more physical network switches through respective physical interfaces and a virtual connectivity grid superimposed thereon and configured through the use of a flow routing framework and system management framework to group the nodes into a number of clusters. The nodes of each cluster are configured to perform similar packet processing functions and the clusters are interconnected through virtual networks to which the nodes are communicatively coupled via virtual interfaces overlaid on top of the physical network interfaces.
-
Citations
35 Claims
- 1. A system comprising a virtual connectivity grid overlaid on a physical network in which nodes are coupled to one or more physical switches through respective physical interfaces, the virtual connectivity grid including virtual interfaces overlaid over the node physical interfaces so as to provide communicative coupling of the nodes to one or more virtual networks established within the virtual connectivity grid, the communicative coupling being established by virtual links arranged so as to emulate physical connections in a desired connectivity pattern, wherein the system is implemented using a plurality of stand-alone general purpose and/or special purpose computers having software stored therein as the nodes and local area network (LAN) switches that support virtual local area networks (VLANs) and jumbo frames as the one or more physical switches, the software comprises flow management software configured to cause the computers to adaptively route data flows through a multi-stage network defined by the virtual connectivity grid, and each stage of the multi-stage network comprises a cluster of similarly configured applications performing one or more network services.
- 22. A method, comprising establishing a virtual connectivity grid configured to permit arbitrary interconnections among a first number of computer systems within a computer network, each of the computer systems being communicatively coupled to respective ports of one or more physical network switching devices, through a second number of virtual links that emulate physical network connectivity mechanisms as a result of configurations of one or more virtual networks (VLANs) overlaid on ports of the physical network switching devices wherein at least one of the virtual links emulates, in a fully switched environment, a switch that provides multi-access, broadcast capable connectivity to a plurality of the computer systems while providing unicast traffic isolation.
Specification