Multi-site virtual infrastructure orchestration of network service in hybrid cloud environments

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11709698-B2
Application number	US-202017088951-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 4, 2020
Priority date	Nov 4, 2019
Publication date	Jul 25, 2023
Grant date	Jul 25, 2023

Abstract

A method of deploying a network service (NS) across multiple data centers includes identifying virtual network functions (VNFs) associated with the NS in response to a request for or relating to the NS, generating commands to deploy VNFs based on VNF descriptors, and issuing the commands to the data centers to deploy VNFs. The data centers each have a cloud management server in which cloud computing management software is run to provision virtual infrastructure resources thereof for a plurality of tenants. The cloud computing management software of a first data center is different from the cloud computing management software of a second data center, and the commands issued to the first and second data centers are each a generic command that is not in a command format of the cloud computing management software of either the first data center or the second data center.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of orchestrating a network service deployment across a plurality of data centers, said method comprising:
in response to a request for or relating to a network service, identifying virtual network functions associated with the network service;
generating commands to deploy the virtual network functions based on descriptors of the virtual network functions; and
issuing the commands to the data centers to deploy the virtual network functions, wherein
the data centers include a first data center having a plurality of first hosts, a first virtualization management server running a virtualization management software, which cooperates with hypervisors installed in the first hosts to provision virtual infrastructure resources that include virtual compute, storage, and network resources, and a first cloud management server running a cloud computing management software configured to partition the virtual infrastructure resources of the first data center for a plurality of tenants of the first data center, and a second data center having a plurality of second hosts, a second virtualization management server running a virtualization management software, which cooperates with hypervisors installed in the second hosts to provision virtual infrastructure resources that include virtual compute, storage, and network resources, and a second cloud management server running a cloud computing management software configured to partition the virtual infrastructure resources of the second data center for a plurality of tenants of the second data center,
the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is different from the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server, and the commands issued to the data centers are each a generic command that is in a command format specified by neither the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server nor the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the same set of generic commands is issued to the first data center and the second data center.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the generic commands include a command to create virtual networks, a command to create virtual subnets, a command to reserve resources for virtual machines, and a command to create virtual machines.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the virtual machines to be created are associated with a first virtual network function, which is one of the virtual network functions.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein a descriptor of the network service is parsed to identify the virtual network functions associated with the network service.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the descriptors of the virtual network functions are parsed to generate the commands to deploy the virtual network functions.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server and the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server are not identical instances of the same cloud computing management software.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is an older version of the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is released by a first entity and the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server is released by a second entity different from the first entity.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein
the data centers include a first number of core data centers, a second number of regional data centers, and a third number of edge data centers, and
the first number is less than the second number and the third number is greater than the second number by at least one order of magnitude.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein
the data centers each include hardware resources from which the virtual infrastructure resources are provisioned, and
the edge data centers include hardware resources installed at an edge data center location and mounted on a plurality of radio towers.

12. A computer system for orchestrating a deployment of a network service across a plurality of data centers, said computer system comprising an orchestration server including a processor that is programmed to execute the steps of:
in response to a request for or relating to a network service, identifying virtual network functions associated with the network service;
generating commands to deploy the virtual network functions based on descriptors of the virtual network functions; and
issuing the commands to the data centers to deploy the virtual network functions, wherein
the data centers include a first data center having a plurality of first hosts, a first virtualization management server running a virtualization management software, which cooperates with hypervisors installed in the first hosts to provision virtual infrastructure resources that include virtual compute, storage, and network resources, and a first cloud management server running a cloud computing management software configured to partition the virtual infrastructure resources of the first data center for a plurality of tenants of the first data center and a second data center having a plurality of second hosts, a second virtualization management server running a virtualization management software, which cooperates with hypervisors installed in the second hosts to provision virtual infrastructure resources that include virtual compute, storage, and network resources, and a second cloud management server running a cloud computing management software configured to partition the virtual infrastructure resources of the second data center for a plurality of tenants of the second data center, and
the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is different from the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server, and the commands issued to the data centers are each a generic command that is in a command format specified by neither the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server nor the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server.

13. The computer system of claim 12 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server and the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server are not identical instances of the same cloud computing management software.

14. The computer system of claim 13 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is an older version of the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server.

15. The computer system of claim 13 , wherein the cloud computing management software running in the first cloud management server is released by a first entity and the cloud computing management software running in the second cloud management server is released by a second entity different from the first entity.

16. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instruction executable in a computer system, wherein the instructions when executed in the computer system cause the computer system to carry out a method of orchestrating a network service d

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Thakkar Sachin
• Sequeira Allwyn M
• Maskalik Serge
• Basak Debashis
• Sathyanarayan Akshatha

Classifications

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• H04L67/10

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

• H04L67/34

  involving the movement of software or configuration parameters  (network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416) · CPC title

• G06F2009/4557

  Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing · CPC title

• G06F2009/45595

  Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances · CPC title