Network control apparatus and method with quality of service controls

• US 8,761,036 B2
• Filed: 07/06/2011
• Issued: 06/24/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/06/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Fulton, Bryan J., Ingram, Paul S., Thakkar, Pankaj
• Primary Examiner(s): HSU, ALPUS
• Application Number:
  US13/177,545
• Publication Number:
  US 20130058358A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,084 Days
• Field of Search: 370/252, 370/395.21, 370/397, 370/409, 370/412, 370/429, 709/223, 709/228
• US Class Current: 370/252
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/07 Responding to the occurrence of a fault, e.g. fault tolerance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/17312 Routing techniques specific to parallel machines, e.g. wormhole, store and forward, shortest path problem congestion routing on a LAN H04L45/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0816 the condition being an adaptation, e.g. in response to network events
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0853 by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0894 Policy-based network configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/122 of virtualised topologies, e.g. software-defined networks [SDN] or network function virtualisation [NFV]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/02 Topology update or discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/036 Updating the topology between route computation elements, e.g. between OpenFlow controllers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/586 of virtual routers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/76 Routing in software-defined topologies, e.g. routing between virtual machines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/783 Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/00 Packet switching elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/1546 using pipelined operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/3063 Pipelined operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/70 : Virtual switches
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5007 : Internet protocol [IP] addresses

Abstract

A control application of some embodiments allows a user to enable a logical switching element for Quality of Service (QoS). QoS in some embodiments is a technique to apply to a particular logical port of a logical switching element such that the switching element can guarantee a certain level of performance to network data that a machine sends through the particular logical port. The control application of some embodiments receives user inputs that specify a particular logical switch to enable for QoS. The control application may additionally receive performance constraints data. The control application in some embodiments formats the user inputs into logical control plane data. The control application in some embodiments then converts the logical control plane data into logical forwarding data that specify QoS functions.

Claims

1. For a controller, a method for controlling a logical switching element comprising one or more logical ports, the logical switching element implemented in one or more managed switching elements that forward data in a network, each managed switching element having one or more ports to which machines connect, the method comprising:

receiving user inputs for specifying (i) a logical queue for a logical port of the logical switching element for implementing a logical data path set (LDPS) and (ii) a set of performance constraints to apply to the logical port using the logical queue;

based on the user inputs, creating the logical queue for the logical port and applying the set of performance constraints to the logical port, wherein the logical port is mapped to a particular port of a managed switching element to which a particular machine connects; and

associating the logical queue with a physical queue for the particular port of the managed switching element, the physical queue for queuing data received at the managed switching element through the particular port according to the set of performance constraints before the managed switching element sends the data toward a destination of the data.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising assigning another logical port to the logical queue in order to apply the set of performance constraints to the other logical port.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of performance constraints includes at least one of (1) a maximum amount of network traffic that the logical port is to pass through per unit of time and (2) a minimum amount of network traffic that the logical port is to pass through per unit of time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the logical switching element forwards the data received through the particular port of the managed switching element from the particular machine.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the physical queue is implemented with storage for storing data.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the data comprises a plurality of data packets.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the particular machine is a virtual machine that executes on a particular host, wherein the managed switching element is a software switching element that also executes on the particular host.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the particular machine is a physical machine that sends the data to the managed switching element.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating a request for creating a physical queue collection in the managed switching element, wherein the physical queue collection is for (i) including one or more physical queues and (ii) applying the set of performance constraints to ports of the managed switching element that are associated with the physical queues included in the physical queue collection.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

converting the request into a format that can be stored in a network information base (NIB) data structure; and

publishing the converted request to the NIB data structure, wherein the managed switching element receives the converted request from the NIB and creates the physical queue collection.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating a request for creating the physical queue for the particular port when the particular port is not associated with a physical queue, wherein the request is subsequently sent to the managed switching element.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein said associating the logical queue with the physical queue comprises:

providing a first set of tables that stores information for the logical queue;

providing a second set of tables that stores information for the physical queue; and

mapping the information for the logical queue to the information for the physical queue by performing a set of table mapping operations on the first and second sets of tables.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the controller (i) defines the LDPS in terms of logical forwarding plane (LFP) data that specifies logical forwarding operations of the logical switching element and (ii) converts the LFP data to physical control plane data for supplying to a plurality of managed switching elements across which the LDPS is implemented.

14. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a network controller program for execution by at least one processing unit to control a logical switching element comprising a set of logical ports, the logical switching element implemented in a set of managed switching elements that forward data in a network, each managed switching element having a set of ports to which machines connect, the network controller program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving, from a user, inputs for specifying (i) a logical queue for a logical port of the logical switching element for implementing a logical data path set (LDPS) and (ii) a set of performance constraints to apply to the logical port using the logical queue;

based on the received inputs, creating the logical queue for the logical port and applying the set of performance constraints to the logical port, wherein the logical port is mapped to a particular port of a managed switching element to which a particular machine connects; and

associating the logical queue with a physical queue for the particular port of the managed switching element, the physical queue for queuing data received at the managed switching element through the particular port according to the set of performance constraints before the managed switching element sends the data toward a destination of the data.

15. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the logical switching element comprises a set of forwarding tables for storing a plurality of logical flow entries that specify forwarding rules for forwarding data by the logical switching element.

16. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the network controller program further comprises a set of instructions for assigning another logical port of the logical switching element to the logical queue in order to apply the set of performance constraints to the other logical port.

17. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the set of performance constraints defines a range of bitrates for the logical switching element, wherein an actual bitrate for the logical switching element is guaranteed to be within the range of bitrates.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the physical queue comprises storage for storing data.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the particular machine is a virtual machine that executes on a particular host, wherein the managed switching element is a software switching element that also executes on the particular host.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the particular machine is a physical machine that sends the data to the managed switching element.

21. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the LDPS is defined in terms of logical forwarding plane (LFP) data that specifies logical forwarding operations of the logical switching element and the LFP data is converted to physical control plane data for supplying to a plurality of managed switching elements across which the LDPS is implemented.