In service upgrades for a hypervisor or hardware manager hosting virtual traffic managers

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10091138-B2
Application number	US-201213671450-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 7, 2012
Priority date	Feb 21, 2012
Publication date	Oct 2, 2018
Grant date	Oct 2, 2018

Abstract

Embodiments are directed towards upgrading hypervisors operating in hardware clusters that may be hosting one or more virtual clusters of virtual traffic managers. Virtual clusters may be arranged to span multiple computing devices in the hardware cluster. Spanning the virtual clusters across multiple hardware nodes the virtual cluster may enable the virtual clusters to remain operative while one or more hardware nodes may be upgraded. Hypervisor may include a management control plane for virtual clusters of virtual traffic managers. Hypervisors running on hardware nodes may manage the lower level networking traffic topology while the virtual traffic managers may manage the higher level network processing. Further, hypervisor based management control planes may interface with the virtual clusters and virtual traffic manager's using pluggable translation modules may enable different versions of hypervisor based management control planes and virtual traffic managers to communicate and cooperatively manage network traffic.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for upgrading one or more hypervisors in a cluster of nodes over a network with a network device that includes a hardware processor that executes instructions that perform actions, comprising:
iteratively determining the one or more hypervisors for in service upgrading to prevent interruption of communication over the network by the cluster of nodes, wherein each of the one or more hypervisors determined for in service upgrading correspond to a virtual traffic manager that is part of a virtual cluster of virtual traffic managers that spans at least two nodes and the one or more determined hypervisors are instantiated on one or more separate blade server computers, and wherein one or more non-transitory processor readable memories are configured and arranged to store instructions sufficient to implement the one or more determined hypervisors that are associated with one or more translation modules and the corresponding virtual traffic managers that are associated with one or more other translation modules, performing further actions:
deactivating operation of the one or more determined hypervisors and the one or more corresponding virtual traffic managers while the virtual cluster remains operative;
upgrading the one or more deactivated hypervisors, wherein the upgrading includes one or more of enabling inactive software code, change a configuration of running software, re-purposing the one or more deactivated hypervisors to perform one or more different functionalities, rolling back a current version of software code to a prior version, or replacement of hardware; and
preventing interruption of communication over the network by the cluster of nodes by re-activating the one or more upgraded hypervisors and each corresponding virtual traffic manager for the virtual cluster; and

providing in service communication between the at least one re-activated hypervisor and each corresponding virtual traffic manager, wherein the upgraded hypervisor provides management control of Layer 1 and 2 network traffic of the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) stack, and wherein each upgraded hypervisor employs their translation module to forward OSI Layer 3 through Layer 7 network traffic to one or more other translation modules that are employed by their associated virtual traffic manager to receive the forwarded network traffic, wherein the one or more translation modules associated with each upgraded hypervisor are configured to support a negotiation process to identify a compatible version of the one or more upgraded hypervisors by mapping different versions of the one or more upgraded hypervisors that are compatible to the one or more other translation modules associated with the corresponding virtual traffic managers, and wherein different versions of candidate upgrade packages are stored in a non-transitory processor readable memory that is accessible over layers 1 and 2 by the one or more hypervisors the mapping of different versions of the candidate upgrade packages; and
employing the same upgraded hypervisor to use the one or more translation modules to communicate with different versions of the one or more other translation modules of the one or more virtual traffic managers.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein upgrading the one or more hypervisors further comprises automatically upgrading one or more translation modules for the one or more upgraded hypervisors, wherein the one or more translation modules map messages and data structures between different versions of a hypervisor and the hypervisor's corresponding virtual traffic managers.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein deactivating the one or more determined hypervisors further comprises:
bleeding off one or more connections to the one or more corresponding virtual traffic managers;
suspending operation of the one or more corresponding virtual traffic managers; and
suspending operation of the one or more determined hypervisors.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
receiving network traffic at the one or more hypervisors;
processing at least a portion of low level network traffic on the one or more hypervisors; and
forwarding at least a portion of high level network traffic to one or more virtual traffic managers that correspond to the one or more hypervisors; and
processing the at least portion of the high level network traffic on the one or more virtual traffic managers that correspond to the one or more hypervisors.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining one or more hypervisors for upgrading further comprises:
generating an upgrade priority score for the one or more hypervisors; and
determining the one or more hypervisors for upgrading based on the upgrade priority score.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more upgraded hypervisors communicate with one or more command hypervisors to obtain configuration information.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising performing the actions of claim 1 for each other hypervisor in the cluster of nodes.

8. A network device that upgrades one or more hypervisors in a cluster of nodes comprising:
a transceiver that communicates over a network;
a memory that stores at least instructions; and
a processor device that executes instructions that perform actions, including:
iteratively determining the one or more hypervisors for in service upgrading to prevent interruption of communication over the network by the cluster of nodes, wherein each of the one or more hypervisors determined for in service upgrading correspond to a virtual traffic manager that is part of a virtual cluster of virtual traffic managers that spans at least two nodes and the one or more determined hypervisors are instantiated on one or more separate blade server computers, and wherein one or more non-transitory processor readable memories are configured and arranged to store instructions sufficient to implement the one or more determined hypervisors that are associated with one or more translation modules and the corresponding virtual traffic managers that are associated with one or more other translation modules, performing further actions:
deactivating operation of the one or more determined hypervisors and the one or more corresponding virtual traffic managers while the virtual cluster remains operative;
upgrading the one or more deactivated hypervisors, wherein the upgrading includes one or more of enabling inactive software code, change a configuration of running software, re-purposing the one or more deactivated hypervisors to perform one or more different functionalities, rolling back a current version of software code to a prior version, or replacement of hardware; and
preventing interruption of communication over the network by the cluster of nodes by re-activating the one or more upgraded hypervisors and each corresponding virtual traffic manager for the virtual cluster; and

providing in service communication between the at least one re-activated hypervisor and each corresponding virtual traffic manager, wherein the upgraded hypervisor provides management control of Layer 1 and 2 network traffic of the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) stack, and wherein each upgraded hypervisor employs their translation module to forward OSI Layer 3 through Layer 7 network traffic to one or more other translation modules that are employed by their associated virtual traffic manager to receive the forwarded network traffic, wherein the one or more translation modules associated with each upgraded hypervisor are configured to support a negotiation process to identify a compatible version of the one or more upgraded hypervisors by mapping different versions of the one or more upgraded hypervisors that are compatible to the one or more other transl

Assignees

• F5 Networks Inc

Inventors

• Szabo Paul Imre
• Skene Bryan David

Classifications

• G06F8/656

  while running · CPC title

• G06F8/67

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/45558

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• H04L49/70 Primary

  Virtual switches · CPC title