System and method for supporting a scalable flooding mechanism in a middleware machine environment
First Claim
1. A system for supporting scalable packet intermediate forwarding in a middleware machine environment operable on one or more microprocessors, comprising:
- a network switch instance connected with a plurality of host servers, wherein said network switch instance is associated with a plurality of external ports, each of which is adapted to receive one or more data packets from an external network, andwherein each of the plurality of host servers is connected to the network switch via a host channel adapter (HCA) port and associated with one or more virtual machines, andwherein each of the plurality of host servers is configured to communicate directly with each other of the plurality of host servers via a respective HCA port;
a link aggregation component that combines the plurality of external ports into a logical port, and wherein bandwidth of the logical port is linearly scaled accordingly to a number of the plurality of external ports; and
one or more packet dispatching components, each of which is associated with a different host server from the plurality of host servers that acts as an intermediate forwarding destination for incoming data packets without hardware context received at an external port;
wherein a number of the one or more packet dispatching components is such that each of the one or more packet dispatching components acts as the intermediate forwarding destination for a subset of the plurality of host servers that does not exceed a number of the plurality of external ports;
wherein each of the one or more packet dispatching components is responsible for forwarding a data packet without hardware context to a virtual machine that operates to process the data packet, the virtual machine residing on a host server associated with the packet dispatching component; and
wherein the host servers associated with the one or more packet dispatching components comprise a flood multicast group.
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Abstract
A system and method can support a scalable packet forwarding mechanism in a middleware machine environment. The middleware machine environment can comprise one or more network switch instances, wherein each network switch instance is associated with one or more external ports that are adapted to receive data packets from an external network. Furthermore, the middleware machine environment can comprise a plurality of packet dispatching components, each of which is responsible for forwarding a data packet to a virtual machine on a host server that operates to process the data packet. Additionally, a link aggregation component can combine multiple external ports into a logical port, and wherein the bandwidth of the logical port is linearly scaled accordingly to a total number of the multiple external ports.
114 Citations
12 Claims
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1. A system for supporting scalable packet intermediate forwarding in a middleware machine environment operable on one or more microprocessors, comprising:
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a network switch instance connected with a plurality of host servers, wherein said network switch instance is associated with a plurality of external ports, each of which is adapted to receive one or more data packets from an external network, and wherein each of the plurality of host servers is connected to the network switch via a host channel adapter (HCA) port and associated with one or more virtual machines, and wherein each of the plurality of host servers is configured to communicate directly with each other of the plurality of host servers via a respective HCA port; a link aggregation component that combines the plurality of external ports into a logical port, and wherein bandwidth of the logical port is linearly scaled accordingly to a number of the plurality of external ports; and one or more packet dispatching components, each of which is associated with a different host server from the plurality of host servers that acts as an intermediate forwarding destination for incoming data packets without hardware context received at an external port; wherein a number of the one or more packet dispatching components is such that each of the one or more packet dispatching components acts as the intermediate forwarding destination for a subset of the plurality of host servers that does not exceed a number of the plurality of external ports; wherein each of the one or more packet dispatching components is responsible for forwarding a data packet without hardware context to a virtual machine that operates to process the data packet, the virtual machine residing on a host server associated with the packet dispatching component; and wherein the host servers associated with the one or more packet dispatching components comprise a flood multicast group. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A method for supporting scalable packet intermediate forwarding in a middleware machine environment operable on one or more microprocessors, comprising:
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providing a network switch instance connected with a plurality of host servers, wherein said network switch instance is associated with a plurality of external ports, and wherein each of the plurality of host servers is connected to the network switch via a host channel adapter (HCA) port and associated with one or more virtual machines, wherein each of the plurality of host servers is configured to communicate directly with each other of the plurality of host servers via a respective HCA port; providing a link aggregation component that combines the plurality of external ports into a logical port, and wherein bandwidth of the logical port is linearly scaled accordingly to a number of the plurality of external ports; receiving, at the plurality of external ports, one or more data packets without hardware context from an external network; and forwarding, via one or more packet dispatching components each associated with a different host server from the plurality of host servers that acts as an intermediate forwarding destination for incoming data packets without hardware context received at an external port, each said data packet without hardware context to a virtual machine that operates to process the data packet; wherein a number of the one or more packet dispatching components is such that each of the one or more packet dispatching components acts as the intermediate forwarding destination for a subset of the plurality of host servers that does not exceed a number of the plurality of external ports; and wherein the host servers associated with the one or more packet dispatching components comprise a flood multicast group. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A non-transitory machine readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon for supporting scalable packet intermediate forwarding in a middleware machine environment that when executed cause a system to perform the steps comprising:
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providing a network switch instance connected with a plurality of host servers, wherein said network switch instance is associated with a plurality of external ports, and wherein each of the plurality of host servers is connected to the network switch via a host channel adapter (HCA) port and associated with one or more virtual machines, wherein each of the plurality of host servers is configured to communicate directly with each other of the plurality of host servers via a respective HCA port; providing a link aggregation component that combines the plurality of external ports into a logical port, and wherein bandwidth of the logical port is linearly scaled accordingly to a number of the plurality of external ports; receiving, at the plurality of external ports, one or more data packets without hardware context from an external network; and forwarding, via one or more packet dispatching components each associated with a different host server from the plurality of host servers that acts as an intermediate forwarding destination for incoming data packets without hardware context received at an external port, each said data packet without hardware context to a virtual machine that operates to process the data packet; wherein a number of the one or more packet dispatching components is such that each of the one or more packet dispatching components acts as the intermediate forwarding destination for a subset of the plurality of host servers that does not exceed a number of the plurality of external ports; and wherein the host servers associated with the one or more packet dispatching components comprise a flood multicast group.
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Specification