Scalable cloud computing

• US 8,650,299 B1
• Filed: 02/03/2011
• Issued: 02/11/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Original Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Inventors: Huang, Alex, Liang, Sheng, Vittal, Chiradeep, Chan, Will
• Primary Examiner(s): Donaghue, Larry
• Assistant Examiner(s): MCLEOD, MARSHALL M
• Application Number:
  US13/020,799
• Time in Patent Office: 1,104 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/226
• US Class Current: 709/226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers

Abstract

A scalable cloud infrastructure serves two or more customers, where each customer is associated with at least one unit of virtual resources. The virtual resources are established by apportioning physical resources in the cloud infrastructure that are partitioned into pods within one or more zones in a scalable manner. Each pod comprises a strongly connected discrete set of physical resources in a zone. Additionally, the cloud infrastructure establishes one or more management server clusters each comprising one or more management servers. Each management server is configured for allocating the units of virtual resources to an account associated with each customer. The traffic from two or more customer accounts within the scalable cloud infrastructure is isolated and segmented.

Claims

1. A method for establishing a scalable cloud infrastructure, the method comprising:

partitioning a plurality of physical resources into a plurality of pods within a plurality of zones, wherein;

the physical resources comprise physical compute, storage, and networking resources within a plurality of data centers distributed across a network;

each zone comprises a weakly connected subset of the plurality of pods and is physically isolated from other zones in the plurality, and one or more zone-level layer-3 network switches providing interconnections among the pods of the zone and providing connections to other zones; and

each pod comprises a strongly connected discrete set of the plurality of physical resources in the zone, the physical resources in each pod including one or more compute servers, one or more storage servers, and one or more routing servers connected together by one or more pod-level layer-2 network switches;

establishing at least one data network from the distributed networking resources, the at least one data network connecting, and configured for routing traffic to, the plurality of pods from at least one customer;

establishing at least one management server cluster comprising a plurality of management servers;

establishing at least one management network from the distributed networking resources, the at least one management network connecting one of the plurality of management servers to one of the plurality of zones, and connecting the compute and storage resources partitioned within the pod;

establishing a plurality of units of virtual resources by apportioning selected of the physical resources within one or more of the plurality of pods to each of the plurality of units, wherein the apportioned physical resources may be shared between two or more of the plurality of units of virtual resources; and

wherein each management server is configured for allocating one or more of the plurality of units of virtual resources to an account associated with the at least one customer; and

wherein the compute servers of a pod execute a multitenant hypervisor, and the storage servers of the pod present virtual disks to the compute servers, the virtual disks being visible to the multitenant hypervisor as networked file systems or as block devices and being presented as locally attached storage to virtual machines of the compute servers.

2. A method for segmenting traffic from a plurality of customer accounts within a scalable cloud infrastructure, the method comprising:

allocating one or more units of virtual resources to each of a plurality of customer accounts, each of the one or more units of virtual resources corresponding to physical resources partitioned into a plurality of physically isolated zones within the scalable cloud infrastructure, the plurality of physical resources comprising a plurality of physical compute, storage, and networking resources within a plurality of data centers distributed across a network, wherein the plurality of physical resources are shared at least in part between two or more of the plurality of customer accounts, and wherein for each customer account, the physical resources are selected from one or more of a plurality of weakly connected pods within one of the plurality of zones, each zone including one or more zone-level layer-3 network switches providing interconnections among the pods of the zone and providing connections to other zones, each of the plurality of pods comprising a strongly connected discrete set of the plurality of physical resources within the zone, the physical resources in each pod including one or more compute servers, one or more storage servers, and one or more routing servers connected together by one or more pod-level layer-2 network switches; and

for the physical resources that are shared at least in part between two or more of the plurality of customer accounts, segmenting traffic from the one or more units of virtual resources allocated to a first of the two or more of the plurality of customer accounts from the one or more units of virtual resources allocated to a second of the two or more of the plurality of customer accounts;

wherein the compute servers of a pod execute a multitenant hypervisor, and the storage servers of the pod present virtual disks to the compute servers, the virtual disks being visible to the multitenant hypervisor as networked file systems or as block devices and being presented as locally attached storage to virtual machines of the compute servers.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein segmenting further comprises:

allocating a first subset of the at least in part shared physical resources exclusively to the first customer account and a second subset of the at least in part shared physical resources exclusively to the second customer account, the first and second subsets each comprising at least one virtual machine; and

segmenting first customer account traffic across the at least in part shared physical resources corresponding to the one or more units of virtual resources allocated to the first customer account from second customer account traffic across the at least in part shared physical resources corresponding to the one or more units of virtual resources allocated to the first customer account.

4. A system for a scalable cloud infrastructure, the system comprising:

a plurality of physical resources partitioned into a plurality of pods within a plurality of zones, wherein;

the physical resources comprise physical compute, storage, and networking resources within a plurality of data centers distributed across a network;

each zone comprises a weakly connected subset of the plurality of pods and is physically isolated from other zones in the plurality, and one or more zone-level layer-3 network switches providing interconnections among the pods of the zone and providing connections to other zones; and

each pod comprises a strongly connected discrete set of the plurality of physical resources in the zone, the physical resources in each pod including one or more compute servers, one or more storage servers, and one or more routing servers connected together by one or more pod level layer-2 network switches;

at least one data network from the distributed networking resources, the at least one data network connecting, and configured for routing traffic to, the plurality of pods from at least one customer;

at least one management server cluster comprising a plurality of management servers;

at least one management network from the distributed networking resources, the at least one management network connecting one of the plurality of management servers to one of the plurality of zones, and connecting the compute and storage resources partitioned within the pod;

a plurality of units of virtual resources by apportioning selected of the physical resources within one or more of the plurality of pods to each of the plurality of units, wherein the apportioned physical resources may be shared between two or more of the plurality of units of virtual resources; and

wherein each management server is configured for allocating one or more of the plurality of units of virtual resources to an account associated with the at least one customer; and

wherein the compute servers of a pod execute a multitenant hypervisor, and the storage servers of the pod present virtual disks to the compute servers, the virtual disks being visible to the multitenant hypervisor as networked file systems or as block devices and being presented as locally attached storage to virtual machines of the compute servers.

5. A system according to claim 4, wherein the storage servers of each pod provide pod-level shared storage including an ability to restart a virtual machine on a compute server of the pod different from another compute server of the pod where the virtual machine last ran.

6. A system according to claim 4, wherein storage bandwidth throttling is used to limit a rate of storage traffic from a virtual machine while reading from or writing to a virtual disk.

7. A system according to claim 6, wherein the storage throttling is specified by a desired maximum 10 per second value configured by a management server on either a per-service basis, a per-customer basis, or across the system.

8. A system according to claim 4, wherein virtual LANs are used to segment traffic within the data network between management, public and storage traffic.

9. A system according to claim 4, wherein virtual LANs are used to segment traffic within the data network among different customers.

10. A system according to claim 9, wherein a virtual LAN is allocated to a customer in response to a request from a customer for resources from the system.

11. A system according to claim 9, wherein network bandwidth throttling is used to limit a rate of network traffic from virtual machines of customers.

12. A system according to claim 11, wherein the network bandwidth throttling is specified by a desired maximum network bandwidth for each virtual machine, configured by a management server on either a per-service basis, a per-customer basis, or across the system.

13. A system according to claim 4, wherein a customer provides a resource specification for virtual machines to be used by the customer, the resource specification including specification of hardware and/or software elements.

14. A system according to claim 4, wherein the routing servers include routing appliances executed as virtual machines providing per customer secure and protected routing functionality, the routing appliances being garbage collected when no longer needed so as to release system resources for other uses.

15. A system according to claim 14, wherein the routing functionality includes automatic network address assignment and source network address translation for virtual machines of the respective customer.

16. A system according to claim 4, wherein the management servers are organized into one or more management server clusters.

17. A system according to claim 16, wherein each management server cluster is deployed as a primary management server cluster in a first data center with a backup management server cluster at a second distinct data center.

18. A system according to claim 17, wherein data stored by the primary management server cluster is replicated and transmitted for storage by backup management server cluster, and in the event of failure of the primary management server cluster network traffic is automatically directed to the secondary management server cluster instead of the primary management server cluster such that operation of the servers in the zones is unaffected by the failure of the primary management server cluster.

19. A system according to claim 16, wherein a management server cluster serves multiple zones and pods within the data centers.