Facilitating flow symmetry for service chains in a computer network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11329918-B2
Application number	US-202016949999-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 23, 2020
Priority date	Dec 21, 2018
Publication date	May 10, 2022
Grant date	May 10, 2022

Abstract

Techniques are described for facilitating flow symmetry using a scalable service platform that anchors the service chain. The scalable service platform may facilitate flow symmetry and, at least in some cases, flow stickiness for a first packet flow (a “forward packet flow”) and a second, related packet flow (a “reverse packet flow”) both traversing the service chain in the forward and reverse directions, respectively. For example, a virtualized computing infrastructure may deploy a scalable service platform to perform load balancing of multiple forward packet flows, received from the gateway, among multiple parallel service instances for an ingress service in a service chain. For each corresponding reverse packet flows for the multiple forward packet flows, the scalable service platform load balances the reverse packet flow to the service instance for the egress service in the service chain that is applied to the corresponding forward packet flow.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A scalable service platform for a virtualized computing infrastructure, a set of servers of the scalable service platform comprising:
a first virtual router and a first service instance executing on first processing circuitry of a first server and a second virtual router and a second service instance executing on second processing circuitry of a second server,
wherein the first virtual router is configured to send a forward packet flow, received from a gateway device for the virtualized computing infrastructure and destined to the first service instance, to an ingress service instance of a set of ingress service instances of a service chain, the service chain comprising one or more service instances installed on one or more servers of the virtualized computing infrastructure,
wherein the second virtual router is configured to send a reverse packet flow, received from the gateway device for the virtualized computing infrastructure and destined to the second service instance, to an egress service instance of a set of egress service instances of the service chain, the reverse packet flow corresponding to the forward packet flow,
wherein the first service instance is installed in the first server for an ingress of the service chain and is configured with a first virtual network address for receiving the forward packet flow from the gateway device,
wherein the second service instance is installed in the second server for an egress of the service chain and is configured with a second virtual network address for receiving the reverse packet flow from the gateway device.

2. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein a network controller comprises processing circuitry and a memory device, wherein the network controller is configured to:
install the one or more service instances for the service chain to the one or more servers of the virtualized computing infrastructure, the one or more service instances including the ingress service instance and the egress service instance;
install, to the scalable service platform, the first service instance for the ingress of the service chain; and
install, to the scalable service platform, the second service instance for the egress of the service chain,

wherein the first service instance and second service instance operate as endpoints for the service chain to anchor packet flows mapped to the service chain.

3. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein the first virtual router is configured to create a flow table entry for the reverse packet flow by receiving the forward packet flow from the egress service instance, identifying a flow table for a routing instance that implements the second service instance and creating the flow table entry in the identified flow table to identify the egress service instance as a next hop.

4. The scalable service platform of claim 3 ,
wherein the first server and the second server are a same server, wherein the first virtual network address and the second virtual network address are a same virtual network address.

5. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein a network controller comprises processing circuitry and a memory device, wherein the network controller is configured to send a configuration message to the gateway device to program, in the gateway device, the first virtual network address as a next hop address for one or more packet flows to be mapped to the service chain.

6. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein a network controller comprises processing circuitry and a memory device, wherein the network controller is configured to, in response to detecting a load on the scalable service platform that exceeds a threshold, add an additional virtual router executing on an additional server to scale up the scalable service platform.

7. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein a network controller comprises processing circuitry and a memory device, wherein the network controller is configured to install, to a plurality of servers of the virtualized computing infrastructure, a plurality of parallel ingress service instances of each of the one or more service instances for the service chain,
wherein the first virtual router is configured to, in response to receiving a packet of the forward packet flow, select one of the parallel ingress service instances and forward the packet to a server that hosts the selected parallel ingress service instance, and wherein the second virtual router is configured to receive the reverse packet flow from the server that hosts the selected parallel ingress service instance.

8. The scalable service platform of claim 7 ,
wherein the first virtual router is configured to generate and send, to the server that hosts the selected parallel ingress service instance, a tunnel packet having a source network address that is a network address of the server hosting the virtual router.

9. The scalable service platform of claim 1 ,
wherein the first service instance and the second service instance each maps to a different port-tuple object each defining at least one port.

10. A scalable service platform for a virtualized computing infrastructure, wherein the virtualized computing infrastructure comprises a plurality of servers hosting a plurality of service instances of a service chain, the plurality of servers comprises a server hosting an egress service instance and a server hosting an ingress service instance, the scalable service platform comprising:
a set of servers, wherein a first server executes a first service instance for an ingress to the service chain and a second server executes a second service instance for an egress of the service chain,
wherein the first service instance and the second service instance operate as endpoints for the service chain to anchor corresponding packet flows mapped to the service chain by storing, in a flow table, data specifying an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the server hosting the ingress service instance as a next hop for packets of a forward packet flow and data specifying an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the server hosting the egress service instance as a next hop for packets of a reverse packet flow corresponding to the forward packet flow,
wherein the first service instance is installed in the first server for the ingress of the service chain and is configured with a first virtual network address for receiving the forward packet flow from the gateway device,
wherein the second service instance is installed in the second server for the egress of the service chain and is configured with a second virtual network address for receiving the reverse packet flow from the gateway device.

11. The scalable service platform of claim 10 ,
wherein a network controller comprises processing circuitry and a memory device, wherein the network controller is configured to:
install the plurality of service instances of the service chain to the plurality of servers of the virtualized computing infrastructure;
install, to the scalable service platform, the first service instance for the ingress of the service chain; and
install, to the scalable service platform, the second service instance for the egress of the service chain.

12. The scalable service platform of claim 11 ,
wherein the first service instance and the second service instance each maps to a different port-tuple object each defining at least one port.

13. The scalable service platform of claim 10 ,
wherein the scalable service platform comprises one or more virtual routers executing on the set of servers.

14. The scalable service platform of claim 13 ,
whe

Assignees

• Juniper Networks Inc

Inventors

• Sarva Sreelakshmi
• Nakil Harshad Bhaskar

Classifications

• H04L45/745 Primary

  Address table lookup; Address filtering · CPC title

• H04L45/38 Primary

  Flow based routing · CPC title

• G06F8/61

  Installation · CPC title

• H04L41/0803

  Configuration setting · CPC title

• H04L47/827

  Aggregation of resource allocation or reservation requests · CPC title