Mitigation of physical network misconfigurations for clustered nodes

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11916739-B2
Application number	US-202017125965-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 17, 2020
Priority date	Dec 17, 2020
Publication date	Feb 27, 2024
Grant date	Feb 27, 2024

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for method for detecting misconfigurations and detecting incorrect cabling of physical adapters in a VLAN cluster. A Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) packet is received. Data is extracted identifying VLANs available on ports, and the MAC address of the switch. Incorrectly coupled adapters and misconfigured VLANs are identified.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for detecting misconfigurations in a virtualized local area network (VLAN) cluster in a computing environment, the method comprising:
receiving, from a network device of the cluster, a Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) packet for each network interface of the network device;
parsing, from each received LLDP packet, data identifying VLANs available on each network interface;
comparing the identified VLANs available on each network interface;
based on the comparing of the identified VLANs, identifying inconsistently configured VLANs between the network interfaces;
comparing the identified VLANs with VLANs in use by applications on hosts in the cluster by:
identifying VLANs in use by applications on a first host and verifying that no other host in the cluster has reported that one of the identified VLANs is missing; and
repeating the verifying for each node in the cluster;

for each host in the cluster, based on the comparing of the identified VLANs and the inconsistently configured VLANs, marking a VLAN as misconfigured if other hosts in the cluster have reported the VLAN as missing; and
generating a notification indicating the misconfigured VLANs.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying deviations between physical adapters.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising generating a notification of the deviations.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the comparing the identified VLANs with VLANs in use by applications comprises:
on the host, retrieving a list of VLANs in use by the applications and comparing the list to the inconsistently configured VLANs.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generating the notification comprises:
providing data indicative of the misconfigured VLANs using native Key-Value Pair exchange.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the LLDP packet is a IEEE 802.1AB packet comprising type-length-value (TLV) structures.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the misconfiguration is an omission of a VLAN from a network interface.

8. A method for detecting incorrect cabling of adapters in a VLAN cluster including one or more network devices, the method comprising:
receiving, from network devices of the VLAN cluster, a Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) packet;
parsing, from the received LLDP packets, MAC addresses of the network devices;
grouping adapters of the network devices by subnet and VLAN to identify adapters that are capable of transmitting and receiving data from one another;
for each host in the VLAN cluster, grouping MAC addresses for the adapters by subnet and VLAN;
for each MAC address, identifying subnet/VLAN pairs;
identifying adapters that report a MAC address for a subnet that is in a minority of the subnet/VLAN pairs for a given MAC address; and
reporting the identified adapters as being incorrectly coupled, wherein an adapter reporting a MAC address associated with a majority of adapters in a given subnet/VLAN pair is statused as correctly coupled.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the LLDP packet is a IEEE 802.1AB packet comprising type-length-value (TLV) structures.

10. The method of claim 8 , wherein the LLDP packet comprises a mandatory TLV identifying the MAC address of the network device.

11. A system, comprising:
one or more processors; and
a memory in communication with the one or more processors, the memory having computer-readable instructions stored thereupon that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform operations comprising:
receiving, from a network device of a computing environment implementing a cluster of virtualized local area networks (VLANs), a Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) packet for each network interface of the network device;
parsing, from each received LLDP packet, data identifying VLANs available on each network interface by:
identifying VLANs in use by applications on a first host and verifying that no other host in the cluster has reported that one of the identified VLANs is missing; and
repeating the verifying for each node in the cluster;

comparing the identified VLANs available on each network interface;
based on the comparing of the identified VLANs, identifying inconsistently configured VLANs between network interface cards (NICs);
comparing the identified VLANs with VLANs in use by applications on hosts in the cluster;
for each host in the cluster, based on the comparing of the identified VLANs and the inconsistently configured VLANs, marking a VLAN as misconfigured if other hosts in the cluster have reported the VLAN as missing; and
generate a notification of the misconfigured VLANs.

12. The system of claim 11 , further comprising identifying deviations between physical adapters.

13. The system of claim 12 , further comprising generating a notification of the deviations.

14. The system of claim 11 , wherein the comparing the identified VLANs with VLANs in use by applications comprises:
on the host, retrieving a list of VLANs in use by the applications and comparing the list to the inconsistently configured VLANs.

15. The system of claim 11 , wherein the generating the notification comprises:
providing data indicative of the misconfigured VLANs using native Key-Value Pair exchange.

16. The system of claim 11 , wherein the LLDP packet is a IEEE 802.1AB packet comprising type-length-value (TLV) structures.

17. The system of claim 11 , wherein the misconfiguration is an omission of a VLAN from a network interface.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Cuomo Jr Daniel Frederick
• Luke Travis

Classifications

• H04L41/0866 Primary

  Checking the configuration · CPC title

• H04L12/4641 Primary

  Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] (LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272) · CPC title

• H04L41/12

  Discovery or management of network topologies · CPC title

• H04L41/0893

  Assignment of logical groups to network elements · CPC title

• H04L41/0873

  Checking configuration conflicts between network elements · CPC title