Method and system for testing and analyzing management servers

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10212045-B2
Application number	US-201514755594-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 30, 2015
Priority date	Jun 30, 2015
Publication date	Feb 19, 2019
Grant date	Feb 19, 2019

Abstract

The current document is directed to methods and systems for testing and analyzing the operational characteristics of management servers that manage multiple host systems in distributed computing systems on which virtual data centers and other types of virtual infrastructure are implemented. Management servers are generally designed to manage host systems that include particular types of virtualization layers, referred to as “native host systems.” In a described implementation, a management server is connected to a host-gateway appliance that includes host-gateway control logic implemented within a server computer. The host-gateway appliance allows a management server to interface to the management interfaces of non-native host systems that include visualization layers to which the management server is not designed to interface. The host-gateway appliance, in described implementations, is modified to simulate management interfaces of host systems in order to test and analyze the operational characteristics of the management server.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system comprising:
one or more processors;
one or more memories;
communications controllers and hardware;
a communications agent that includes computer instructions stored in one or more of the one or more memories that are executed on one or more of the one or more processors to control the communications agent to receive electronic messages from a virtual-infrastructure-management server and return responses to the electronic messages through the communications controllers and hardware to the virtual-infrastructure-management server;
at least one physical-host adapter, including computer instructions stored in one or more of the one or more memories that are executed on one or more of the one or more processors to control the at least one physical-host adapter to forward messages to a native or foreign physical host server and receive messages from the native or foreign physical host server through the communications controllers and hardware; and
at least one simulation adapter, including computer instructions stored in one or more of the one or more memories that are executed on one or more of the one or more processors to control the simulation adapter to simulate connectivity to a physical host server, the simulation adapter selected from among
when the virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system includes at least one physical-host adapter that exchanges messages with a native physical host server, a copied-host adapter that receives management commands from the virtual-infrastructure-management server, remaps IP-addresses and component identifiers in the received commands, and forwards the received and remapped management commands to the physical host server and that receives responses to management commands from the physical host server, remaps IP-addresses and component identifiers, and forwards the received and remapped responses to the virtual-infrastructure-management server, and
a simulated-host adapter that employs script-based emulation logic to emulate a host server.

2. The virtual-infrastructure-management- server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 1 wherein the physical-host adapter forwards message to, and receives messages from, a native physical host adapter; and
wherein the physical-host adapter comprises:
a communications interface to the communications agent,
a communications interface to the native physical host server,
an interface for information exchange between the native physical-host adapter and the simulation adapter,
an IP-address remapping table,
a current state/version indication,
a current physical-host-state representation, and
a sequence of delta changes, each associated with
a state/version-indication transition, and
a number of copied-host adapters which have not yet received the delta change.

3. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 2 wherein the IP-address remapping table is used by the physical-host adapter to modify received messages before forwarding the received messages and contains:
forward IP-address remappings that remap one or more virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis-system addresses to physical-host-server addresses and that remap one or more VI management server IP addresses to virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis-system addresses; and
reverse IP-address remappings that remap one or more physical-host-server addresses to virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis- system addresses and that remap one or more virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis-system addresses to VI management server IP addresses.

4. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 2 wherein the current state/version indication represents the current state/version of the native physical host system, obtained from a heartbeat message received from the native physical host system.

5. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 2 wherein the current physical-host-state representation represents the current state of the native physical host system, obtained from a response to a getChanges request received from the native physical host system.

6. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 2 wherein the sequence of delta changes, each associated with a state/version-indication transition and a number of copied-host adapters which have not yet received the delta change represents a most recent sequence of responses to getChanges requests received from the physical host system.

7. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 1 wherein a copied-host adapter comprises:
a communications interface to the communications agent;
a communications interface to the physical host server;
an interface for information exchange between the physical-host adapter and the simulation adapter;
an IP-address remapping table;
a UUID remapping table;
a current state/version indication; and
a heartbeat generator.

8. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 7 wherein the UUID remapping table is used by the copied-host adapter to modify received messages before forwarding the received messages and contains:
forward UUID remappings that remap UUIDSs contained in messages received from the virtual-infrastructure-management server to simulated-host UUIDs; and
reverse UUID remappings that remap simulated-host UUIDs to UUIDSs contained in messages forwarded to the virtual-infrastructure-management server.

9. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 7 wherein the current state/version indication represents the current state/version of the simulated host system.

10. The virtual-infrastructure-management-server-testing-and-analysis system of claim 1 wherein the physical-host adapter:
receives management commands from the virtual-infrastructure-management server, remaps IP-addresses in the received commands, and forwards the received and remapped management commands to the physical host server;
receives responses to management commands from the physical host server, remaps IP-addresses in the received responses to management commands, and forwards the received and remapped responses to management commands to the virtual-infrastructure-management server;
receives heartbeat messages from the physical host server, updates the current state/version indication using information extracted from the heartbeat messages, remaps IP-addresses in the heartbeat messages, and forwards the remapped heartbeat messages to the virtual-infrastructure -management server;
receives getChanges requests from the from the virtual-infrastructure-management server, remaps IP-addresses in the received getChanges requests, and forwards the received and remapped getChanges requests to the physical host server;
receives responses to getChanges requests from the physical host server, remaps IP-addresses in the received responses to getChanges requests, updates the current physical-host-state representation the sequence of delta changes using information extracted from the responses to getChanges requests, and forwards the remapped responses to getChanges requests to the virtual-infrastructure-management server; and
receives requests for host-state information from a copied-host adapter and returns state information contained in the current physical-host-state representation or in a delta change to the copied-host adapter.

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Strandzhev Ivaylo Petkov
• Grigorov Danail
• Alexandrov Asen
• Dragoev Ilko

Classifications

• G06F2009/45591

  Monitoring or debugging support · CPC title

• G06F9/45558

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• H04L41/20 Primary

  Network management software packages · CPC title

• H04L67/10 Primary

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title

• H04L43/08

  Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters · CPC title