Network function virtualization infrastructure pod in a network environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9979602-B1
Application number	US-201414468116-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Aug 25, 2014
Priority date	Aug 25, 2014
Publication date	May 22, 2018
Grant date	May 22, 2018

Abstract

An example method for instantiating a network using a network function virtualization infrastructure (NVFI) pod in a network environment is provided and includes receiving a request to instantiate a logical network topology in the NFVI pod that includes a pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources, the abstract network topology including a virtual network function (VNF) forwarding graph (FG), distilling the VNF FG into various interconnected VNFs, deploying various VNFs of the VNF FG to a plurality of virtual machines, and instantiating the network topology on appropriate hardware resources in the NFVI pod. In specific embodiments, the pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources includes a plurality of compute servers, a plurality of controller servers, a set of network resources, and a plurality of storage resources. It may also include a high performance virtual switch operating in a user space of respective memory elements of a plurality of servers.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method executed by a virtualization layer in a network environment, comprising:
receiving, in a representation state transfer (REST) call from a network topology rendering tool, a request to instantiate a logical network topology in a network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) pod comprising a fixed number of a pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources, pre-configuration of the pre-configured hardware resources comprising at least operating system, hardware network connections, hypervisors and software enabling instantiation of the network topology, the logical network topology comprising a virtual network function forwarding graph (VNF FG), and a plurality of compute servers, controller servers, network resources, and storage resources, wherein the NFVI pod is selected according to a number of hardware resources needed to instantiate the requested logical network topology from a plurality of NFVI pods, the NFVI pods differing among themselves in a number of hardware resources, the NFVI pods located in disparate geographical areas and inter-connected into a network topology that forms a large and complex network spanning a wide geographical area;
distilling the VNF FG into various interconnected VNFs;
deploying the VNFs to a plurality of virtual machines;
selecting a sub-set of hardware resources within the NFVI pod based on respective pre-configurations supporting corresponding VNFs;
instantiating the logical network topology on the selected sub-set of hardware resources in the NFVI pod, the instantiating including instantiating a virtual machine in the NFVI pod, assigning to the virtual machine a particular Internet Protocol (IP) address from a tenant specific pool of IP addresses including distinct IP addresses assigned to different tenants, and configuring routing tables, including addresses and routing rules, in a virtual forwarder of the appropriate one of the selected hardware resources to enable connectivity to the virtual machine; and
performing domain name service (DNS) name resolution within the NFVI pod.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the instantiating the network topology comprises:
selecting the virtual machine to instantiate from the plurality of virtual machines;
provisioning the virtual machine with appropriate VNFs according to the deployment; and
repeating the selecting, the instantiating, the assigning, the configuring and the provisioning for each one of the plurality of virtual machines until the network topology is substantially completely instantiated in the NFVI pod.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein a plurality of tenants subscribe to resources in the network environment, wherein each tenant is assigned a separate IP address pool.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the REST call is generated upon a user-selection of an option to instantiate the network topology on the network topology rendering tool.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources comprises a plurality of compute servers, a plurality of controller servers, a set of network resources providing unique functions for control, management and data, and a plurality of storage resources.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources comprises a high performance virtual switch operating in a user space of respective memory elements of a plurality of servers.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
monitoring health of the virtual machines;
monitoring health of the VNFs in the network topology executing in the virtual machines; and
re-instantiating any VM or VNF that is not operating as expected.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the virtualization layer comprises:
a virtual zero touch install service to instantiate the network topology;
a virtual Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Manager service for control and data network address allocation, the DHCP Manager service receiving a modified DHCP request including tenant information from the virtual forwarder of the appropriate one of the selected hardware resources to enable connectivity to the virtual machine;
a virtual configuration service to configure external and internal network functions and VNFs;
an orchestrator service to setup the VNFs and VNF FG;
a virtual service routing service to setup routing between the VNFs in the VNF FG;
a virtual elastic scaling service to scale the VNFs to meet capacity growth, demand loads, failures, and network utilization; and
a virtual service to abstract compute, network and storage provisioning service to enable NFVI pod deployment in different types of cloud networks.

9. Non-transitory tangible media that includes instructions for execution, which when executed by a processor, is operable to perform operations comprising:
receiving, in a representation state transfer (REST) call from a network topology rendering tool, a request to instantiate a logical network topology in a NFVI pod comprising a fixed number of a pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources, pre-configuration of the pre-configured hardware resources comprising at least operating system, hardware network connections, hypervisors and software enabling instantiation of the network topology, the logical network topology of the pre-selected set comprising a VNF FG, and a plurality of compute servers, controller servers, network resources, and storage resources, wherein the NFVI pod is selected according to a number of hardware resources needed to instantiate the requested logical network topology from a plurality of NFVI pods, the NFVI pods differing among themselves in a number of hardware resources, the NFVI pods located in disparate geographical areas and inter-connected into a network topology that forms a large and complex network spanning a wide geographical area;
distilling the VNF FG into various interconnected VNFs;
selecting a sub-set of hardware resources within the NFVI pod based on respective pre-configurations supporting corresponding VNFs;
deploying the VNFs to a plurality of virtual machines;
instantiating the logical network topology on the sub-set of selected hardware resources in the NFVI pod, the instantiating including instantiating a virtual machine in the NFVI pod, assigning to the virtual machine a particular Internet Protocol (IP) address from a tenant specific pool of IP addresses including distinct IP addresses assigned to different tenants, and configuring routing tables, including addresses and routing rules, in a virtual forwarder of the appropriate one of the selected hardware resources to enable connectivity to the virtual machine; and
performing domain name service (DNS) name resolution within the NFVI pod.

10. The media of claim 9 , wherein the instantiating the network topology comprises:
selecting the virtual machine to instantiate from the plurality of virtual machines;
provisioning the virtual machine with appropriate VNFs according to the deployment; and
repeating the selecting, the instantiating, the assigning, the configuring and the provisioning for each one of the plurality of virtual machines until the network topology is substantially completely instantiated in the NFVI pod.

11. The media of claim 9 , wherein the pre-selected set of interconnected pre-configured hardware resources comprises a plurality of compute servers, a plurality of controller servers, a set of network resources providing unique functions for control, management and data, and a plurality of storage resources.

12. The media of claim 9 , wherein the pre-selected set of int

Assignees

• Cisco Tech Inc

Inventors

• Chinnakannan Palani
• Fernando Rex Emmanuel
• Rao Dhananjaya
• Boutros Sami

Classifications

• H04L41/12 Primary

  Discovery or management of network topologies · CPC title

• H04L45/10

  Routing in connection-oriented networks, e.g. X.25 or ATM · CPC title

• H04L41/122

  of virtualised topologies, e.g. software-defined networks [SDN] or network function virtualisation [NFV] · CPC title

• H04L41/0897 Primary

  by horizontal or vertical scaling of resources, or by migrating entities, e.g. virtual resources or entities · CPC title

• H04L47/82

  Miscellaneous aspects · CPC title