Discovery and inventory control integrated with remote resources for cloud services

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed herein for extending the scope of cloud services into an internally deployed or externally deployed environment, as well as other cloud platforms, to enable migration and multi-cloud use cases. In one aspect, a computer-implemented method is provided, the method comprising: deploying a remote proxy device having a discovery plug-in in an external environment of a user; creating an asset source specifying a location of an external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be found; generating a discovery job for retrieving asset metadata of external assets found within the asset source; executing a discovery job using the discovery plug-in to discover and retrieve external assets and associated asset metadata within the asset source; and providing the set of assets including the asset metadata of the external assets to the user as at least a portion of the inventory.

Description

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0002] This application claims priority to U.S. non-provisional application No. 18 / 336,544, filed on June 16, 2023, which claims the benefit of and priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 63 / 434,879, filed on December 22, 2022, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 63 / 434,846, filed on December 22, 2022, under 35 U.S.C. 119(e), the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. Technical Field

[0003] The present disclosure relates generally to resource integration with cloud services, and more particularly to techniques for extending the reach of cloud services into on-premises or off-premises environments and other cloud platforms to enable migration and multi-cloud use cases. Background Art

[0004] For years, cloud computing has been a staple for many organizations, offering a range of online services such as collaboration, communications, data storage and backup, customer relationship management tools, and more; essentially, it encompasses every technological element required to run a business. Currently, there are four main types of cloud computing: private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud. A private cloud architecture is a cloud environment dedicated to a single user, group, or organization, which can be either on-premises or off-premises. A public cloud architecture is a cloud environment dedicated to multiple users, groups, or organizations, which can be either on-premises or off-premises. A hybrid cloud architecture utilizes both public and private cloud architectures or on-premises infrastructure. A multi-cloud architecture is a combination of clouds (private and / or public) across multiple providers. Each of these cloud types can be configured to offer a variety of cloud computing services, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). IaaS provides standard computing, storage, and networking resources based on the scale of demand. PaaS provides software development and deployment resources. SaaS provides software distribution to end users. iPaaS is a set of cloud services that enables users to develop, execute and manage integration processes between different applications.

[0005] The growth of cloud computing has enabled organizations to access a wide variety of highly scalable resources and services on-demand without the need to build and maintain them on-premises or off-premises. However, in some organizations, the emergence of these diverse resources and services has created information technology (IT) silos, as administrators struggle to manage and maintain each distinct cloud resource and / or on-premises or off-premises (non-cloud resources). For example, IT silos can arise when only a group of people (e.g., a department within an organization) has access to certain resources. Cloud-based integration (also known as cloud integration) unifies all disparate cloud resources and / or on-premises or off-premises resources to avoid these IT silos. Cloud integration is a form of systems integration delivered as a cloud computing service that addresses data, processing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and application integration. At its most basic level, cloud integration means connecting various processes, applications, systems, data repositories, and other IT environments (e.g., public cloud, private cloud, on-premises infrastructure, etc.)—whether in hybrid or multi-cloud deployments—so that they can operate as a single, cohesive IT infrastructure for the organization. Without a cloud integration solution, administrators need to perform each integration task individually and manually—a process that is time-consuming and increases the chances of errors. Summary of the Invention

[0006] This document provides technologies (e.g., methods, systems, non-transitory computer-readable media storing code or instructions executable by one or more processors) for extending the scope of cloud services to include on-premises or off-premises environments of other cloud platforms to enable migration and multi-cloud use cases. More specifically, this document discloses a cloud bridge (part of a cloud-based integration service) as a framework and platform for other cloud services that need to be integrated with external environments. This integration is based on a dedicated software component (agent) deployed by a user (e.g., a cloud service customer) in this environment (the user's on-premises network).

[0007] In various embodiments, a computer-implemented method is provided, comprising: deploying, by a computing system, a remote agent device in an external environment of a user, wherein the remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in; creating, by the computing system, an asset source that specifies a location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, together with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository; creating, by the computing system, a discovery policy for discovering external assets within the asset source; generating, by the computing system, a discovery job for retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source; executing, by the computing system, the discovery job using the discovery plug-in to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory contains an asset collection that includes asset metadata for the external assets; and providing, by the computing system, the asset collection and associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user.

[0008] In some embodiments, the computer-implemented method further includes generating, by the computing system, the inventory on a cloud infrastructure, wherein the cloud infrastructure is in communication with the remote agent device.

[0009] In some embodiments, a discovery policy is a schedule that identifies when the computing system is to perform discovery jobs.

[0010] In some embodiments, the computer-implemented method further includes: receiving, by the computing system, a query from a user regarding asset metadata; executing, by the computing system, the query on the inventory; and providing, by the computing system, results of the query to the user based on the execution.

[0011] In some embodiments, the computer-implemented method further includes generating, by the computing system, a connector between the discovery plug-in and the location of the external environment in response to generating the asset source, wherein asset metadata for the external asset is retrieved using the connector.

[0012] In some embodiments, the computer-implemented method further includes: generating, by the computing system, a migration project based on one or more assets within the asset collection within the inventory and associated asset metadata; and performing, by the computing system, migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure based on the migration project.

[0013] In some embodiments, providing the set of assets within the inventory and the associated asset metadata to the user includes displaying the set of assets and the associated asset metadata to the user in a graphical user interface.

[0014] In various embodiments, a system is provided that includes one or more data processors and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed on the one or more data processors, cause the one or more data processors to perform part or all of one or more methods disclosed herein.

[0015] In various embodiments, a computer program product is provided, tangibly embodied in one or more non-transitory machine-readable media and comprising instructions configured to cause one or more data processors to perform part or all of one or more methods disclosed herein.

[0016] The technology described above and below can be implemented in a variety of ways and in a variety of contexts. Several example implementations and contexts are provided with reference to the following figures, as described in more detail below. However, the following implementations and contexts are only a small part of the many implementations and contexts. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0017] Figure 1 A high-level diagram of a distributed environment of an overlay or user virtual cloud network hosted by a cloud service provider infrastructure is shown in accordance with various embodiments.

[0018] Figure 2 is a simplified architectural diagram of the underlying physical components that provide a virtual network in a physical network within a cloud service provider infrastructure according to various embodiments.

[0019] Figure 3 An example is shown within a cloud service provider infrastructure where a host machine is connected to multiple network virtualization devices according to various embodiments.

[0020] Figure 4A is a high-level diagram illustrating a distributed environment 400 of a Cloud Bridge architecture for managing and configuring remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to various embodiments.

[0021] Figure 4B and 4C is a simplified block diagram illustrating a user's external environment as part of a virtual appliance according to various embodiments.

[0022] Figure 5 is a schematic diagram of a cloud migration workflow according to various embodiments.

[0023] Figure 6 is a simplified block diagram of an architecture that can be implemented for cloud migration according to various embodiments.

[0024] Figure 7Depicted is a general workflow for using discovery and inventory services according to various embodiments.

[0025] Figure 8 is a high-level simplified block diagram of an overall discovery architecture according to various embodiments.

[0026] Figure 9 is a high-level simplified block diagram of an overall inventory architecture according to various embodiments.

[0027] Figure 10 Depicted is a flow diagram illustrating discovery and inventory control for integration with remote resources of a cloud service, in accordance with various embodiments.

[0028] Figure 11 is a block diagram illustrating one mode for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system according to at least one embodiment.

[0029] Figure 12 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system according to at least one embodiment.

[0030] Figure 13 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system according to at least one embodiment.

[0031] Figure 14 is a block diagram illustrating another mode for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system according to at least one embodiment.

[0032] Figure 15 is a block diagram illustrating an example computer system in accordance with at least one embodiment. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0033] In the following description, for purposes of explanation, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of certain embodiments. However, it will be apparent that various embodiments can be practiced without these specific details. The figures and description are not intended to be limiting. The word "exemplary" is used herein to mean "serving as an example, instance, or illustration." Any embodiment or design described herein as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments or designs.

[0034] introduce

[0035] Cloud computing is the on-demand access, via a network such as the internet, to computing resources hosted in remote data centers managed by a cloud service provider—applications, servers (physical and virtual), data storage, development tools, networking capabilities, and more. Cloud infrastructure, such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), is a set of cloud computing services (cloud services) that enables users to build and run a range of applications and services in a hosted environment. Cloud infrastructure is physically hosted in one or more global regions (i.e., data centers managed by a cloud service provider such as Oracle) and provides high-performance computing power (as physical or virtual hardware instances) and storage capacity in a flexible overlay virtual network securely accessible from the user's on-premises network. The cloud services provided by the cloud infrastructure are natively integrated with resources maintained in the hosted environment, such as databases and compute instances (e.g., physical and / or virtual servers). It is highly desirable to use these cloud services with resources in remote environments, whether on-premises or off-premises, including other cloud resources.

[0036] Traditionally, the user experience for integrating remote resources with cloud services has been complex. Many services require the deployment of service-specific agents, and connecting on-premises or off-premises resources to the cloud requires either a one-off service-specific solution or establishing private site-to-site network connectivity with the cloud infrastructure. For example, Database Management Cloud Service, Oracle Data Security Service, and Database Migration Service have traditionally implemented three separate frameworks for integrating with remote databases. Service-specific solutions create barriers to adoption—they fragment the cloud service provider's service portfolio with inconsistent on-premises support and force users to independently onboard each service. Furthermore, each cloud service bears the burden of building and maintaining support for remote sites. Site-to-site network connectivity offers a more unified experience but has a high barrier to adoption because it requires significant changes to the remote network infrastructure and forces users to expose their network extensively to the cloud infrastructure.

[0037] The method described in the present disclosure provides a simple and secure mechanism to extend the scope of cloud services to internal or externally deployed environments and other cloud platforms to enable migration and multi-cloud use cases. This mechanism is performed by a cloud bridge, which provides a framework and platform for integrating the functionality of cloud services with external environments or assets (i.e., bridging the gap and connecting cloud services and external environments or assets). An exemplary use case is to facilitate the native migration of virtual machines from an internally deployed VMware virtualization environment to a cloud infrastructure (i.e., cloud migration). Another exemplary use case is to facilitate the use of virtual machines deployed in a cloud infrastructure provided by a first cloud provider with assets stored in a different cloud infrastructure provided by a second cloud provider (i.e., multi-cloud). The integration is based on dedicated software components (i.e., agents) deployed by the user in the external environment. Each agent consists of agent software residing in the external environment and a corresponding agent control plane residing in the cloud infrastructure.

[0038] Despite this, users often have difficulty understanding their legacy environments, including what assets they have and how those assets interact. For example, for migrating on-premises VMware virtual appliances to OCI native virtual machines, customers need to understand what virtual appliances they have and how those virtual appliances interact. Discovery involves understanding the customer environment. For the migration use case, customer resources that are part of the various customer on-premises VMware environments need to be discovered. After discovery, customers need to explore the characteristics of their on-premises resources to determine what they want to migrate to OCI. As an example, a customer may want to identify their virtual appliances running Oracle E-Business Suite by filtering the list of all VMware appliances to those with "ebs" in their name. They may then want to further limit to those appliances running production workloads by filtering to only appliances with more than four cores.

[0039] To address these and other challenges, this disclosure describes a system and workflow for discovery and inventory of components used for remote resource integration with cloud services. Discovery and inventory are designed to support thousands of customers, each with tens of thousands of assets. Migrations are often complex, so the goal is to build a flexible framework with diverse capabilities, such as supporting different types of external user environments, different types of assets, and different asset discovery mechanisms. In summary, the system and workflow involve discovery and inventory to provide a representation of a customer's external environment to support various services, such as migration use cases. Discovery involves discovering resources in the customer environment and creating / updating assets representing these resources in the inventory. Discovery is implemented using a discovery control plane on the cloud infrastructure side and discovery plugins on the external environment side. The discovery control plane includes a customer-facing application programming interface (API), deployed in an overlay layer and backed by one or more databases, responsible for configuring discovery and coordinating discovery plugins. Discovery plugins are deployed to the customer's external environment and are responsible for collecting asset metadata and reporting it to the inventory control plane. Inventory involves storing metadata about assets and relationships discovered by the discovery component or imported by the customer. Inventory is implemented using the inventory control plane on the cloud infrastructure side. The inventory control plane consists of a customer-facing API deployed in an overlay layer and supported by one or more database-based data repositories.

[0040] In various embodiments, a computer-implemented process is provided that includes: deploying a remote agent device in a user's external environment, wherein the remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in; creating an asset source that specifies the location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, along with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository; creating a discovery strategy for discovering external assets within the asset source; generating a discovery job to retrieve asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source; executing the discovery job using the discovery plug-in to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery strategy, wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory includes an asset collection that includes asset metadata for the external assets; and providing the asset collection and associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user. In some cases, an asset analytics API is also provided to the user to help the user aggregate asset metadata to gain insights into the user's external environment (e.g., an on-premises deployment environment).

[0041] As used herein, when an action is "based on" something, it means that the action is based, at least in part, on at least a portion of that thing. As used herein, the terms "similarly," "substantially," "approximately," and "about" are defined as largely, but not necessarily completely, conforming to a specified range (and including completely conforming to a specified range), as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. In any disclosed embodiment, the terms "similarly," "substantially," "approximately," or "about" may be replaced with "within [percentage] of a specified range," where percentages include 0.1, 1, 5, and 10 percent.

[0042] Cloud Network Example

[0043] The term cloud service is generally used to refer to services made available on-demand (e.g., via a subscription model) to users (e.g., cloud service customers) by a cloud service provider (CSP) using the systems and infrastructure (cloud infrastructure) provided by the CSP. Typically, the servers and systems that make up the CSP's infrastructure are separate from the user's own on-premises servers and systems. Therefore, users can utilize the cloud services provided by the CSP without having to purchase separate hardware and software resources for the service. Cloud services are designed to provide subscribing users with simple, scalable access to applications and computing resources without requiring users to invest in the infrastructure used to provide the service.

[0044] Several cloud service providers offer various types of cloud services. As discussed herein, there are various types or models of cloud services, including SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. A user can subscribe to one or more cloud services provided by a CSP. A user can be any entity, such as an individual, organization, or enterprise. When a user subscribes to or registers for a service provided by a CSP, a lease or account is created for the user. The user can then access one or more subscribed cloud resources associated with the account through this account.

[0045] As mentioned above, IaaS is a specific type of cloud computing service. In the IaaS model, the CSP provides infrastructure (called Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure, or CSPI) that customers can use to build their own customizable networks and deploy their resources. Therefore, the user's resources and network are hosted in a distributed environment on the CSP's infrastructure. This differs from traditional computing, where the user's resources and network are hosted on user-provided infrastructure.

[0046] The CSPI may include interconnected high-performance computing resources, including various host machines, storage resources, and network resources, forming a physical network, also known as a base network or underlay network. The resources in the CSPI may be distributed across one or more data centers, which may be geographically distributed across one or more geographic regions. Virtualization software may be executed by these physical resources to provide a virtualized distributed environment. Virtualization creates an overlay network (also known as a software-based network, software-defined network, or virtual network) on the physical network. The CSPI physical network provides the underlying foundation for creating one or more overlay or virtual networks on top of the physical network. The physical network (or base network or underlay network) includes physical network devices such as physical switches, routers, computers, and host machines. An overlay network is a logical (or virtual) network running on top of the physical base network. A given physical network can support one or more overlay networks. Overlay networks typically use encapsulation technology to distinguish traffic belonging to different overlay networks. Virtual or overlay networks are also known as virtual cloud networks (VCNs). Virtual networks are implemented using software virtualization technologies (e.g., hypervisors, virtualization functions implemented by network virtualization devices (NVDs) (e.g., smartNICs), top-of-rack (TOR) switches, intelligent TORs that implement one or more functions performed by NVDs, and other mechanisms) to create a layer of network abstraction that can operate on top of the physical network. Virtual networks can take various forms, including peer-to-peer networks, IP networks, and others. Virtual networks are typically Layer 3 IP networks or Layer 2 VLANs. This approach to virtual or overlay networking is often referred to as a virtual or overlay Layer 3 network. Examples of protocols developed for virtual networks include IP-in-IP (or Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)), Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN—IETF RFC 7348), Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) (e.g., MPLS Layer 3 Virtual Private Networks (RFC 4364)), VMware's NSX, and GENEVE (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation).

[0047] For IaaS, the infrastructure provided by a CSP (CSPI) can be configured to provide virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the internet). In the IaaS model, a cloud computing service provider can host infrastructure components (e.g., servers, storage devices, network nodes (e.g., hardware), deployment software, platform virtualization (e.g., the hypervisor layer), etc.). In some cases, IaaS providers can also offer various services to accompany those infrastructure components (e.g., billing, monitoring, logging, security, load balancing, and clustering). Therefore, because these services can be policy-driven, IaaS users can implement policy-driven load balancing to maintain application availability and performance. CSPI provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable users to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available, managed, distributed environment. CSPI delivers high-performance computing resources and capabilities, as well as storage capacity, in a flexible virtual network that is securely accessible from a variety of networked locations, such as from the user's on-premises network. When a user subscribes to or signs up for an IaaS service provided by a CSP, the tenancy created for that user is a secure and isolated partition within CSPI where the user can create, organize, and manage their cloud resources.

[0048] Users can build their own virtual networks using the compute, storage, and networking resources provided by CSPI. One or more user resources or workloads, such as compute instances, can be deployed on these virtual networks. For example, users can use the resources provided by CSPI to build one or more customizable and private virtual networks, called virtual cloud networks (VCNs). Users can deploy one or more user resources, such as compute instances, on their VCNs. Compute instances can take the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, and so on. Thus, CSPI provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enables users to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available virtual hosted environment. Users do not manage or control the underlying physical resources provided by CSPI, but do have control over the operating system, storage, and deployed applications; and may also have limited control over selected networking components (e.g., firewalls).

[0049] The CSP may provide a console that enables users and network administrators to use CSPI resources to configure, access, and manage resources deployed in the cloud. In some embodiments, the console provides a web-based user interface that can be used to access and manage CSPI. In some implementations, the console is a web-based application provided by the CSP.

[0050] CSPI can support single-tenancy or multi-tenancy architectures. In a single-tenancy architecture, software (e.g., application, database) or hardware components (e.g., host machine or server) serve a single user or tenant. In a multi-tenancy architecture, software or hardware components serve multiple users or tenants. Therefore, in a multi-tenancy architecture, CSPI resources are shared among multiple users or tenants. In the multi-tenancy scenario, precautions and protections are implemented in CSPI to ensure that each tenant's data is isolated and invisible to other tenants.

[0051] In a physical network, a network endpoint ("endpoint") refers to a computing device or system that is connected to the physical network and communicates with the network to which it is connected. A network endpoint in a physical network can be connected to a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), or other types of physical networks. Examples of traditional endpoints in a physical network include modems, hubs, bridges, switches, routers, and other networking devices, physical computers (or host machines), etc. Each physical device in a physical network has a fixed network address that can be used to communicate with the device. This fixed network address can be a layer 2 address (e.g., a MAC address), a fixed layer 3 address (e.g., an IP address), etc. In a virtualized environment or virtual network, endpoints can include various virtual endpoints, such as virtual machines hosted by components of the physical network (e.g., hosted by a physical host machine). These endpoints in a virtual network are addressed using overlay addresses, such as overlay layer 2 addresses (e.g., overlay MAC addresses) and overlay layer 3 addresses (e.g., overlay IP addresses). Network overlays enable flexibility by allowing network administrators to move around overlay addresses associated with network endpoints using software management (e.g., via software implementing a control plane for the virtual network). Accordingly, unlike physical networks, in virtual networks, overlay addresses (e.g., overlay IP addresses) can be moved from one endpoint to another using network management software. Because virtual networks are built on top of physical networks, communication between components in a virtual network involves both the virtual network and the underlying physical network. To facilitate such communication, components of CSPI are configured to learn and store mappings that map overlay addresses in the virtual network to actual physical addresses in the base network, and vice versa. These mappings are then used to facilitate communication. User traffic is encapsulated to facilitate routing within the virtual network.

[0052] Accordingly, physical addresses (e.g., physical IP addresses) are associated with components in a physical network, and overlay addresses (e.g., overlay IP addresses) are associated with entities in a virtual or overlay network. A physical IP address is an IP address associated with a physical device (e.g., a network device) in a base or physical network. For example, each NVD has an associated physical IP address. An overlay IP address is an overlay address associated with an entity in an overlay network, such as an overlay address associated with a compute instance in a user's VCN. Two different users or tenants (each with their own private VCN) can potentially use the same overlay IP address in their VCN without knowing about each other. Both physical IP addresses and overlay IP addresses are types of real IP addresses. These addresses are separate from virtual IP addresses. A virtual IP address is typically a single IP address that represents or maps to multiple real IP addresses. A virtual IP address provides a one-to-many mapping between a virtual IP address and multiple real IP addresses. For example, a load balancer can use a VIP to map or represent multiple servers, each with its own real IP address.

[0053] Cloud infrastructure, or CSPI, is physically hosted in one or more data centers in one or more regions around the world. CSPI can include components within a physical or underlying network and virtualized components (e.g., virtual networks, compute instances, virtual machines, etc.) within a virtual network built on top of the physical network components. In certain embodiments, CSPI is organized and hosted within domains, regions, and availability domains. A region is typically a localized geographic area encompassing one or more data centers. Regions are generally independent of each other and can be separated by significant distances, for example, spanning countries or even continents. For example, a first region might be in Australia, another in Japan, another in India, and so on. CSPI resources are partitioned between regions, such that each region has its own independent subset of CSPI resources. Each region can provide a collection of core infrastructure services and resources, such as compute resources (e.g., bare metal servers, virtual machines, containers, and related infrastructure); storage resources (e.g., block volume storage, file storage, object storage, archive storage); networking resources (e.g., VCNs, load balancing resources, connections to on-premises networks); database resources; edge networking resources (e.g., DNS); and access management and monitoring resources. Each region typically has multiple paths connecting it to other regions within the domain.

[0054] Generally speaking, applications are deployed in the region where they are most frequently used (i.e., on the infrastructure associated with that region) because using nearby resources is faster than using more distant resources. Applications may also be deployed in different regions for various reasons, such as redundancy to mitigate the risk of region-wide events (such as large weather systems or earthquakes), to meet different requirements of legal jurisdictions, tax domains, and other business or social standards, etc.

[0055] Data centers within a region can be further organized and subdivided into availability domains (ADs). An availability domain can correspond to one or more data centers within a region. A region can be composed of one or more availability domains. In this distributed environment, CSPI resources are either region-specific, such as VCNs, or availability domain-specific, such as compute instances.

[0056] ADs within a region are isolated from each other, fault-tolerant, and configured so that it is extremely unlikely that they will fail simultaneously. This is achieved by ADs not sharing critical infrastructure resources (such as networking, physical cables, cable paths, cable entry points, etc.), making it unlikely that a failure at one AD within a region will affect the availability of other ADs in the same region. ADs within the same region can be connected to each other through a low-latency, high-bandwidth network, which makes it possible to provide high-availability connections to other networks (e.g., the Internet, the user's on-premises network, etc.) and build replication systems in multiple ADs to achieve both high availability and disaster recovery. Cloud services use multiple ADs to ensure high availability and prevent resource failures. As the infrastructure provided by the IaaS provider grows, more regions and ADs can be added, as well as additional capacity. Traffic between availability domains is typically encrypted.

[0057] In some embodiments, regions are grouped into domains. A domain is a logical collection of regions. Domains are isolated from each other and do not share any data. Regions in the same domain can communicate with each other, but regions in different domains cannot. A user's lease or account with a CSP exists within a single domain and can be spread across one or more regions belonging to that domain. Typically, when a user subscribes to an IaaS service, a lease or account is created for that user in a user-specified region within the domain (called the "home" region). The user can extend the user's lease to one or more other regions within the domain. A user cannot access regions that are not in the domain where the user's lease resides.

[0058] An IaaS provider can offer multiple domains, each domain catering to the needs of a user or a specific set of users. For example, a business domain can be offered for business users. As another example, for users within a specific country, a domain can be offered for that country. As yet another example, a government domain can be offered for a government, and so on. For example, a government domain can cater to the needs of a specific government and can have a higher level of security than the business domain. For example, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) currently offers a domain for the business region and two domains (e.g., FedRAMP-authorized and IL5-authorized) for the government cloud region.

[0059] In some embodiments, an AD can be subdivided into one or more fault domains. A fault domain is a grouping of infrastructure resources within an AD to provide anti-affinity. Fault domains allow the distribution of compute instances so that they are not located on the same physical hardware within a single AD. This is called anti-affinity. A fault domain refers to a collection of hardware components (computers, switches, etc.) that share a single point of failure. The compute pool is logically divided into fault domains. Therefore, a hardware failure or compute hardware maintenance event that affects one fault domain does not affect instances in other fault domains. Depending on the embodiment, the number of fault domains per AD can vary. For example, in some embodiments, each AD contains three fault domains. Fault domains act as logical data centers within an AD.

[0060] When a user subscribes to an IaaS service, resources from CSPI are provisioned to the user and associated with the user's lease. Users can use these provisioned resources to build private networks and deploy resources on these networks. User networks hosted by CSPI in the cloud are called VCNs. Users can use the CSPI resources allocated to them to set up one or more virtual cloud networks (VCNs). A VCN is a virtual or software-defined private network. User resources deployed in a user's VCN can include compute instances (e.g., virtual machines, bare metal instances) and other resources. These compute instances can represent various user workloads, such as applications, load balancers, and databases. Compute instances deployed on a VCN can communicate over public networks (such as the Internet) with publicly accessible endpoints ("public endpoints"), with other instances in the same VCN or other VCNs (e.g., the user's other VCNs or VCNs not owned by the user), with the user's on-premises data center or network, and with service endpoints and other types of endpoints.

[0061] CSPs can use CSPI to provide various services. In some cases, users of CSPI can behave like service providers themselves and use CSPI resources to provide services. Service providers can expose service endpoints characterized by identification information (e.g., IP address, DNS name, and port). Users' resources (e.g., computing instances) can use a specific service by accessing the service endpoint exposed by the service for that specific service. These service endpoints are generally endpoints that users can publicly access via a public communication network (such as the Internet) using a public IP address associated with the endpoint. Publicly accessible network endpoints are sometimes also called public endpoints.

[0062] In some embodiments, a service provider may expose a service via an endpoint for the service (sometimes referred to as a service endpoint). Users of the service can then use this service endpoint to access the service. In some embodiments, the service endpoint provided for a service can be accessed by multiple users who intend to consume the service. In other embodiments, a dedicated service endpoint can be provided to a user so that only the user can access the service using the dedicated service endpoint.

[0063] In certain embodiments, when a VCN is created, it is associated with a private overlay Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) address space, which is a range of private overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0 / 16) assigned to the VCN. A VCN includes associated subnets, routing tables, and gateways. A VCN resides within a single region but can span one or more or all of the availability domains in that region. A gateway is a virtual interface configured for the VCN and enables traffic to and from the VCN to one or more endpoints outside the VCN. One or more different types of gateways can be configured for a VCN to enable communication to and from different types of endpoints.

[0064] A VCN can be subdivided into one or more subnetworks, such as one or more subnets. Thus, a subnet is a unit or subdivision of a configuration that can be created within a VCN. A VCN can have one or more subnets. Each subnet within a VCN is associated with a contiguous range of overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0.0.0 / 24 and 10.0.1.0 / 24) that do not overlap with other subnets in that VCN and represent a subset of the address space within the VCN's address space.

[0065] Each compute instance is associated with a virtual network interface card (VNIC), which enables the compute instance to participate in the subnet of the VCN. A VNIC is a logical representation of a physical network interface card (NIC). Generally speaking, a VNIC is an interface between an entity (e.g., a compute instance, a service) and a virtual network. A VNIC exists in a subnet, has one or more associated IP addresses, and associated security rules or policies. A VNIC is equivalent to a layer 2 port on a switch. A VNIC is attached to a compute instance and a subnet within the VCN. The VNIC associated with the compute instance enables the compute instance to become part of the subnet of the VCN and enables the compute instance to communicate (e.g., send and receive data packets) with endpoints on the same subnet as the compute instance, with endpoints in different subnets within the VCN, or with endpoints outside the VCN. Therefore, the VNIC associated with the compute instance determines how the compute instance connects to endpoints inside and outside the VCN. When a compute instance is created and added to a subnet within the VCN, a VNIC for the compute instance is created and associated with the compute instance. For a subnet that includes a set of compute instances, the subnet contains VNICs corresponding to the set of compute instances, each VNIC attached to a compute instance within the set of compute instances.

[0066] Each compute instance is assigned a private overlay IP address via the VNIC associated with the compute instance. This private overlay network IP address is assigned to the VNIC associated with the compute instance when the compute instance is created and is used to route traffic to and from the compute instance. All VNICs in a given subnet use the same routing table, security list, and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) options. As described above, each subnet within a VCN is associated with a contiguous range of overlay IP addresses (e.g., 10.0.0.0 / 24 and 10.0.1.0 / 24) that do not overlap with other subnets in the VCN and represent a subset of the address space within the VCN's address space. For a VNIC on a particular subnet of the VCN, the private overlay IP address assigned to that VNIC is an address from the contiguous range of overlay IP addresses allocated for the subnet.

[0067] In some embodiments, in addition to the private overlay IP address, a compute instance can optionally be assigned additional overlay IP addresses, such as, for example, one or more public IP addresses if in a public subnet. These multiple addresses are either on the same VNIC or assigned across multiple VNICs associated with the compute instance. However, each instance has a primary VNIC, which is created during instance startup and is associated with the overlay private IP address assigned to the instance—this primary VNIC cannot be deleted. Additional VNICs, called secondary VNICs, can be added to an existing instance in the same availability domain as the primary VNIC. All VNICs are in the same availability domain as the instance. The secondary VNIC can be in a subnet in the same VCN as the primary VNIC, or in a different subnet in the same VCN or a different VCN.

[0068] If a compute instance is in a public subnet, it can optionally be assigned a public IP address. When creating a subnet, you can designate it as either public or private. A private subnet means that the resources (e.g., compute instances) and associated VNICs in the subnet cannot have public overlay IP addresses. A public subnet means that the resources in the subnet and associated VNICs can have public IP addresses. Users can specify that a subnet exists within a single availability domain or across multiple availability domains in a region or domain.

[0069] As described above, a VCN can be subdivided into one or more subnets. In some embodiments, a virtual router (VR) configured for the VCN (referred to as a VCN VR or simply a VR) enables communication between the subnets of the VCN. For a subnet within a VCN, the VR represents a logical gateway for that subnet, which enables the subnet (i.e., the compute instances on that subnet) to communicate with endpoints on other subnets within the VCN and with other endpoints outside the VCN. A VCN VR is a logical entity that is configured to route traffic between the VNICs in the VCN and the virtual gateway ("gateway") associated with the VCN. Figure 1Further describing the gateway. A VCN VR is a Layer 3 / IP layer concept. In one embodiment, there is one VCN VR for a VCN, where the VCN VR potentially has an unlimited number of ports addressable by IP addresses, one port for each subnet in the VCN. In this way, the VCN VR has a different IP address for each subnet in the VCN to which it is attached. The VR is also connected to various gateways configured for the VCN. In some embodiments, specific overlay IP addresses within the overlay IP address range for a subnet are reserved for use by the VCN VR for that subnet. For example, consider a VCN with two subnets, associated with address ranges 10.0 / 16 and 10.1 / 16, respectively. For the first subnet in the VCN with address range 10.0 / 16, addresses within this range are reserved for use by the VCN VR for that subnet. In some cases, the first IP address in the range may be reserved for use by the VCN VR. For example, for a subnet with overlay IP address range 10.0 / 16, the IP address 10.0.0.1 may be reserved for use by the VCN VR for that subnet. For a second subnet in the same VCN with an address range of 10.1 / 16, the VCN VR can have a port with an IP address of 10.1.0.1 for the second subnet. The VCN VR has a different IP address for each subnet in the VCN.

[0070] In some other embodiments, each subnet within a VCN may have its own associated VR, which can be addressed by the subnet using a reserved or default IP address associated with the VR. For example, the reserved or default IP address can be the first IP address in the IP address range associated with the subnet. The VNICs in the subnet can use this default or reserved IP address to communicate with (e.g., send and receive packets) the VR associated with the subnet. In such embodiments, the VR is the ingress / egress point for the subnet. A VR associated with a subnet within the VCN can communicate with other VRs associated with other subnets within the VCN. A VR can also communicate with a gateway associated with the VCN. The VR functions for a subnet run on or are performed by one or more NVDs that perform the VNIC functions for the VNICs in the subnet.

[0071] You can configure routing tables, security rules, and DHCP options for a VCN. A routing table is a virtual routing table for the VCN and contains rules for routing traffic from subnets within the VCN to destinations outside the VCN through a gateway or specially configured instances. A VCN's routing table can be customized to control how packets are forwarded / routed to and from the VCN. DHCP options are configuration information automatically provided to an instance when it boots.

[0072] The security rules configured for a VCN represent the overlay firewall rules for the VCN. Security rules can include ingress and egress rules and specify the type of traffic (e.g., based on protocol and port) that is allowed in and out of instances within the VCN. Users can choose whether a given rule is stateful or stateless. For example, a user can allow incoming SSH traffic from anywhere to a collection of instances by setting up a stateful ingress rule with source CIDR 0.0.0.0 / 0 and destination TCP port 22. Security rules can be implemented using network security groups or security lists. A network security group consists of a collection of security rules that apply only to resources in that group. On the other hand, a security list includes rules that apply to all resources in any subnet that uses the security list. A default security list with default security rules can be provided for a VCN. The DHCP options configured for a VCN provide configuration information that is automatically provided to instances in the VCN when the instances are launched.

[0073] In some embodiments, configuration information for a VCN is determined and stored by the VCN control plane. For example, the configuration information for the VCN may include information about the address range associated with the VCN, subnets within the VCN and associated information, one or more VRs associated with the VCN, compute instances in the VCN and associated VNICs, NVDs (e.g., VNICs, VRs, gateways) that perform various virtualized network functions associated with the VCN, state information for the VCN, and other VCN-related information. In some embodiments, the VCN distribution service publishes the configuration information, or portions thereof, stored by the VCN control plane to the NVD. The distributed information can be used to update information stored by the NVD and used to forward packets to and from the compute instances in the VCN (e.g., forwarding tables, routing tables, etc.).

[0074] In certain embodiments, the creation of VCNs and subnets is handled by the VCN control plane (CP), and the launch of compute instances is handled by the compute control plane. The compute control plane is responsible for allocating physical resources to compute instances and then invoking the VCN control plane to create and attach VNICs to the compute instances. The VCN CP also sends VCN data maps to the VCN data plane, which is configured to perform packet forwarding and routing functions. In certain embodiments, the VCN CP provides a distribution service responsible for providing updates to the VCN data plane.

[0075] Users can create one or more VCNs using resources hosted by CSPI. Compute instances deployed on user VCNs can communicate with different endpoints, including those hosted by CSPI and those external to CSPI.

[0076] Different architectures for implementing cloud-based services using CSPI are described in Figure 1-4C and described below. Figure 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment 100 illustrating an overlay or user VCN hosted by CSPI according to certain embodiments. Figure 1 The distributed environment depicted in includes multiple components in an overlay network. Figure 1 The distributed environment 100 depicted in FIG is merely an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, substitutions, and modifications are possible. For example, in some embodiments, Figure 1 The distributed environment depicted in Figure 1 More or fewer systems or components than those shown in FIG, two or more systems may be combined, or there may be different system configurations or arrangements.

[0077] like Figure 1 As shown in the example depicted in FIG, a distributed environment 100 includes a CSPI 101 that provides services and resources that users can subscribe to and use to build their VCNs. In some embodiments, CSPI 101 provides IaaS services to subscribing users. Data centers within CSPI 101 can be organized into one or more regions. Figure 1 An example region, "Region US," 102 is shown. A user has configured a user VCN (c / o Oracle International Corporation) for region 102. The user can deploy various compute instances on VCN 104, where the compute instances can include virtual machines or bare metal instances. Examples of instances include applications, databases, load balancers, and so on.

[0078] exist Figure 1 In the embodiment depicted in FIG, user VCN 104 includes two subnets, namely, “subnet-1” and “subnet-2”, each with its own CIDR IP address range. Figure 1 In the example, the covered IP address range for subnet-1 is 10.0 / 16, and the address range for subnet-2 is 10.1 / 16. VCN virtual router 105 represents the logical gateway for the VCN, enabling communication between subnets within VCN 104 and with other endpoints outside the VCN. VCN VR 105 is configured to route traffic between VNICs within VCN 104 and the gateway associated with VCN 104. VCN VR 105 provides a port for each subnet within VCN 104. For example, VR 105 may provide a port with IP address 10.0.0.1 for subnet-1 and a port with IP address 10.1.0.1 for subnet-2.

[0079] Multiple computing instances can be deployed on each subnet, where the computing instances can be virtual machine instances and / or bare metal instances. The computing instances in a subnet can be hosted by one or more host machines within CSPI 101. The computing instances participate in the subnet via the VNICs associated with the computing instances. For example, Figure 1 As shown in , compute instance C1 becomes part of subnet-1 via the VNIC associated with C1. Similarly, compute instance C2 becomes part of subnet-1 via the VNIC associated with C2. In a similar manner, multiple compute instances (which can be virtual machine instances or bare metal instances) can be part of subnet-1. Each compute instance is assigned a private overlay IP address and MAC address via its associated VNIC. For example, in Figure 1 In the example, compute instance C1 has an overlay IP address of 10.0.0.2 and a MAC address of M1, while compute instance C2 has a private overlay IP address of 10.0.0.3 and a MAC address of M2. Each compute instance in subnet-1 (including compute instances C1 and C2) has a default route to VCN VR 105 using IP address 10.0.0.1, which is the IP address of the port of VCN VR 105 for subnet-1.

[0080] Multiple computing instances can be deployed on subnet-2, including virtual machine instances and / or bare metal instances. For example, Figure 1 As shown in , compute instances D1 and D2 are part of subnet-2 via the VNICs associated with the respective compute instances. Figure 1 In the embodiment shown in FIG, the overlay IP address of compute instance D1 is 10.1.0.2 and the MAC address is MM1, while the private overlay IP address of compute instance D2 is 10.1.0.3 and the MAC address is MM2. Each compute instance in subnet-2 (including compute instances D1 and D2) has a default route to VCN VR 105 using IP address 10.1.0.1, which is the IP address of the port of VCN VR 105 for subnet-2.

[0081] VCN A 104 may also include one or more load balancers. For example, a load balancer may be provided for a subnet and configured to load balance traffic across multiple compute instances on the subnet. A load balancer may also be provided to load balance traffic across subnets within the VCN.

[0082] A particular compute instance deployed on VCN 104 can communicate with a variety of different endpoints. These endpoints can include endpoints managed by CSPI 101 and endpoints external to CSPI 101. Endpoints managed by CSPI 101 can include: endpoints on the same subnet as a particular compute instance (e.g., communication between two compute instances in subnet-1); endpoints on different subnets but within the same VCN (e.g., communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and a compute instance in subnet-2); endpoints in different VCNs in the same region (e.g., communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and an endpoint in a VCN in the same region 106 or 110, or communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and an endpoint in a service mesh point 110 in the same region); or endpoints in VCNs in different regions (e.g., communication between a compute instance in subnet-1 and an endpoint in a VCN in a different region 108). Compute instances in a subnet hosted by CSPI 101 can also communicate with endpoints that are not hosted by CSPI 101 (i.e., external to CSPI 101). These external endpoints include endpoints in the user's on-premises network 116, endpoints in other remote cloud-hosted networks 118, public endpoints 114 accessible via a public network (such as the Internet), and other endpoints.

[0083] Communication between compute instances on the same subnet is facilitated using VNICs associated with the source compute instance and the destination compute instance. For example, compute instance C1 in subnet-1 may want to send a packet to compute instance C2 in subnet-1. For a packet originating from the source compute instance and destined for another compute instance in the same subnet, the packet is first processed by the VNIC associated with the source compute instance. The processing performed by the VNIC associated with the source compute instance may include determining the destination information of the packet from the packet header, identifying any policies (e.g., security lists) configured for the VNIC associated with the source compute instance, determining the next hop for the packet, performing any packet encapsulation / decapsulation functions as needed, and then forwarding / routing the packet to the next hop in order to facilitate communication of the packet to its intended destination. When the destination compute instance is in the same subnet as the source compute instance, the VNIC associated with the source compute instance is configured to identify the VNIC associated with the destination compute instance and forward the packet to the VNIC for processing. The VNIC associated with the destination compute instance is then executed and the packet is forwarded to the destination compute instance.

[0084] For packets to be delivered from a compute instance in a subnet to an endpoint in a different subnet within the same VCN, communication is facilitated through the VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances and the VCN VRs. For example, if Figure 1Compute instance C1 in subnet-1 wants to send a packet to compute instance D1 in subnet-2. The packet is first processed by the VNIC associated with compute instance C1. The VNIC associated with compute instance C1 is configured to route the packet to VCN VR 105 using the default route or port 10.0.0.1 of the VCN VR. VCN VR 105 is configured to route the packet to subnet-2 using port 10.1.0.1. The VNIC associated with D1 then receives and processes the packet and forwards it to compute instance D1.

[0085] For packets to be transmitted from a compute instance in VCN 104 to an endpoint outside of VCN 104, communication is facilitated by the VNIC associated with the source compute instance, VCN VR 105, and a gateway associated with VCN 104. One or more types of gateways can be associated with VCN 104. A gateway is an interface between a VCN and another endpoint, where the other endpoint is external to the VCN. A gateway is a Layer 3 / IP layer concept and enables a VCN to communicate with endpoints outside of the VCN. Thus, a gateway facilitates the flow of traffic between a VCN and other VCNs or networks. A VCN can be configured with various different types of gateways to facilitate different types of communications with different types of endpoints. Depending on the gateway, communications can be conducted over a public network (e.g., the Internet) or over a private network. Various communication protocols can be used for these communications.

[0086] For example, compute instance C1 may want to communicate with an endpoint outside of VCN 104. The packet may first be processed by the VNIC associated with source compute instance C1. VNIC processing determines that the packet's destination is outside of C1's subnet-1. The VNIC associated with C1 may forward the packet to VCN VR 105 for VCN 104. VCN VR 105 then processes the packet and, as part of the processing, determines a specific gateway associated with VCN 104 as the next hop for the packet based on the packet's destination. VCN VR 105 may then forward the packet to the identified specific gateway. For example, if the destination is an endpoint within the user's on-premises network, the packet may be forwarded by VCN VR 105 to dynamic routing gateway (DRG) gateway 122 configured for VCN 104. The packet may then be forwarded from the gateway to the next hop to facilitate delivery of the packet to its ultimate intended destination.

[0087] A variety of different types of gateways can be configured for a VCN. Examples of gateways that can be configured for a VCN are in Figure 1 and described below. Figure 1As shown in the embodiment depicted in FIG, a dynamic routing gateway (DRG) 122 can be added to or associated with a user VCN 104 and provides a path for private network traffic between the user VCN 104 and another endpoint, where the other endpoint can be the user's on-premises network 116, a VCN 108 in a different region of CSPI 101, or another remote cloud network 118 not hosted by CSPI 101. The user's on-premises network 116 can be a user network built using the user's resources or a user data center. Access to the user's on-premises network 116 is typically very restricted. For users who have both an on-premises network 116 and one or more VCNs 104 deployed or hosted in the cloud by CSPI 101, they may want their on-premises network 116 and their cloud-based VCN 104 to communicate with each other. This enables users to build an extended hybrid environment that encompasses both the user's VCN 104 hosted by CSPI 101 and their on-premises network 116. DRG 122 enables this communication. To enable such communication, a communication channel 124 is established, wherein one endpoint of the channel is located in the user's on-premises network 116 and the other endpoint is located in the CSPI 101 and connected to the user's VCN 104. The communication channel 124 can pass through a public communication network (such as the Internet) or a private communication network. Various different communication protocols can be used, such as IPsec VPN technology over a public communication network (such as the Internet), Oracle's FastConnect technology that uses a private network instead of a public network, etc. The equipment or equipment that forms one endpoint of the communication channel 124 in the user's on-premises network 116 is called customer premises equipment (CPE), such as Figure 1 On the CSPI 101 side, the endpoint may be a host machine executing a DRG 122.

[0088] In some embodiments, remote peering (RPC) can be added to a DRG, which allows a user to peer a VCN with another VCN in a different region. Using this RPC, a user VCN 104 can connect to a VCN 108 in another region using a DRG 122. DRG 122 can also be used to communicate with other remote cloud networks 118 that are not hosted by CSPI 101 (such as Microsoft Azure Cloud, Amazon AWS Cloud, etc.).

[0089] like Figure 1As shown in FIG, an internet gateway (IGW) 120 can be configured for a user VCN 104, which enables computing instances on the VCN 104 to communicate with public endpoints 114 accessible via a public network, such as the Internet. The IGW 120 is a gateway that connects the VCN to a public network, such as the Internet. The IGW 120 enables public subnets within a VCN, such as VCN 104, where resources in the public subnet have public overlay IP addresses, to directly access public endpoints 112 on a public network, such as the Internet. Using the IGW 120, connections can be initiated from subnets within the VCN 104 or from the Internet.

[0090] A network address translation (NAT) gateway 128 can be configured for a user's VCN 104 and enables cloud resources in the user's VCN that do not have dedicated public overlay IP addresses to access the Internet, and it does so without exposing those resources to direct incoming Internet connections (e.g., L4-L7 connections). This enables private subnets within a VCN (such as private subnet-1 in VCN 104) to privately access public endpoints on the Internet. With a NAT gateway, connections can only be initiated from a private subnet to the public Internet, not from the Internet to the private subnet.

[0091] In some embodiments, a service gateway (SGW) 126 may be configured for a customer VCN 104 and provide a path for private network traffic between the VCN 104 and service endpoints supported in the service network 110. In some embodiments, the service network 110 may be provided by a CSP and may offer a variety of services. An example of such a service network is Oracle's service network, which provides a variety of services available to customers. For example, compute instances (e.g., database systems) in a private subnet of a customer VCN 104 can back up data to a service endpoint (e.g., object storage) without requiring a public IP address or internet access. In some embodiments, a VCN may have only one SGW, and connections can only be initiated from subnets within the VCN, not from the service network 110. If a VCN is peered with another, resources in the other VCN generally cannot access the SGW. Resources in an on-premises network connected to a VCN using FastConnect or VPN Connect can also use the service gateway configured for that VCN.

[0092] In some embodiments, the SGW 126 uses the concept of a service classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) label, which is a string representing the range of all regional public IP addresses used for a service or group of services of interest. Users use the service CIDR label when they configure the SGW and associated routing rules to control traffic to the service. Users can optionally use it when configuring security rules, eliminating the need to adjust security rules if the public IP addresses of the services change in the future.

[0093] A local peering gateway (LPG) 132 is a gateway that can be added to a customer's VCN 104, enabling the VCN 104 to peer with another VCN in the same region. Peering refers to VCNs communicating using private IP addresses without requiring traffic to traverse public networks (such as the internet) or be routed through the customer's on-premises network 116. In a preferred embodiment, a VCN has a separate LPG for each peering it establishes. Local peering, or VCN peering, is a common practice for establishing network connectivity between different applications or infrastructure management functions.

[0094] Service providers (such as providers of services in service network 110) can provide access to services using different access models. Under a public access model, services can be exposed as public endpoints that are publicly accessible to compute instances in a user's VCN via a public network (such as the Internet) and / or can be privately accessed via SGW 126. Under a specific private access model, services can be accessed as private IP endpoints in a private subnet in the user's VCN. This is called private endpoint (PE) access and enables service providers to expose their services as instances in the user's private network. Private endpoint resources represent services within the user's VCN. Each PE appears as a VNIC (called a PE-VNIC, with one or more private IPs) in a subnet selected by the user in the user's VCN. Therefore, PEs provide a way to present services in a private user VCN subnet using VNICs. Because the endpoints are exposed as VNICs, all features associated with VNICs (such as routing rules, security lists, etc.) are now available to the PE VNICs.

[0095] Service providers can register their services to enable access through PEs. Providers can associate policies with services, which limits the visibility of services to user tenants. Providers can register multiple services under a single virtual IP address (VIP), especially for multi-tenant services. There can be multiple such private endpoints (in multiple VCNs) representing the same service.

[0096] Compute instances in the private subnet can then access the service using the private IP address or service DNS name of the PE VNIC. Compute instances in the user VCN can access the service by sending traffic to the private IP address of the PE in the user VCN. The private access gateway (PAGW) 130 is a gateway resource that can be attached to a service provider VCN (e.g., a VCN in the service network 110) that acts as an entry / exit point for all traffic from / to the private endpoints of the user subnet. The PAGW 130 enables the provider to scale the number of PE connections without utilizing its internal IP address resources. The provider only needs to configure one PAGW for any number of services registered in a single VCN. The provider can represent services as private endpoints in multiple VCNs for one or more users. From the user's perspective, the PE VNIC is not attached to the user's instance, but appears to be attached to the service with which the user wishes to interact. Traffic destined for the private endpoint is routed to the service via the PAGW 130. These are referred to as user-to-service private connections (C2S connections).

[0097] The PE concept can also be used to extend private access to services to a user's on-premises network and data center by allowing traffic to flow through FastConnect / IPsec links and private endpoints in the user's VCN. Private access to services can also be extended to the user's peer VCN by allowing traffic to flow between the LPG 132 and the PEs in the user's VCN.

[0098] Users can control routing within a VCN at the subnet level, so they can specify which subnets within their VCN (such as VCN 104) use each gateway. The VCN's routing table is used to determine whether traffic is allowed to leave the VCN through a particular gateway. For example, in a specific example, the routing table for a public subnet within a user's VCN 104 can send non-local traffic through IGW 120. The routing table for a private subnet within the same user's VCN 104 can send traffic destined for CSP services through SGW 126. All remaining traffic can be sent via NAT gateway 128. The routing table only controls traffic leaving the VCN.

[0099] The security lists associated with a VCN are used to control traffic entering the VCN via the gateway via inbound connections. All resources in a subnet use the same routing table and security lists. Security lists can be used to control specific types of traffic allowed into and out of instances in the subnet of the VCN. Security list rules can include ingress (inbound) and egress (outbound) rules. For example, ingress rules can specify a range of allowed source addresses, while egress rules can specify a range of allowed destination addresses. Security rules can specify specific protocols (e.g., TCP, ICMP), specific ports (e.g., 22 for SSH, 3389 for Windows RDP), etc. In some embodiments, the operating system of the instance can enforce its own firewall rules that comply with the security list rules. Rules can be stateful (e.g., tracking connections and automatically allowing responses without explicit security list rules for response traffic) or stateless.

[0100] Access from a user's VCN (i.e., through resources or compute instances deployed on VCN 104) can be categorized as public access, private access, or dedicated access. Public access refers to an access model that uses a public IP address or NAT to access a public endpoint. Private access enables user workloads in VCN 104 with private IP addresses (e.g., resources in a private subnet) to access services without traversing a public network such as the Internet. In certain embodiments, CSPI 101 enables user VCN workloads with private IP addresses to access (public service endpoints of) services using a service gateway. Thus, the service gateway provides a private access model by establishing a virtual link between the user's VCN and the public endpoints of services residing outside the user's private network.

[0101] Additionally, CSPI can provide dedicated public access using technologies such as FastConnect public peering, where a user's on-premises instances can use a FastConnect connection to access one or more services in a user's VCN without traversing a public network such as the internet. CSPI can also provide dedicated private access using FastConnect private peering, where a user's on-premises instances with private IP addresses can use a FastConnect connection to access the user's VCN workloads. FastConnect is a network connectivity alternative to using the public internet to connect a user's on-premises network to CSPI and its services. FastConnect provides a simple, flexible, and cost-effective way to create dedicated and private connections with higher bandwidth options and a more reliable and consistent network experience compared to internet-based connections.

[0102] Figure 1and the accompanying description above describe various virtualized components in an example virtual network.As described above, a virtual network is built on an underlying physical or substrate network. Figure 2 A simplified architecture diagram depicts the physical components of a physical network within CSPI 200, which provides the underlying infrastructure for virtual networks, according to certain embodiments. As shown, CSPI 200 provides a distributed environment, including components and resources (e.g., compute, storage, and network resources) provided by the CSP. These components and resources are used to deliver cloud services (e.g., IaaS services) to subscribers (i.e., users who have subscribed to one or more services provided by the CSP). Based on the services subscribed to by the user, a subset of CSPI 200's resources (e.g., compute, storage, and network resources) is provisioned to the user. Users can then use the physical compute, storage, and networking resources provided by CSPI 200 to build their own customizable, private, cloud-based (i.e., CSPI-hosted) virtual networks. As previously indicated, these user networks are referred to as VCNs. Users can deploy one or more user resources, such as compute instances, on these user VCNs. Compute instances can take the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, and so on. CSPI 200 provides a collection of infrastructure and complementary cloud services that enable users to build and run a wide range of applications and services in a highly available, hosted environment.

[0103] exist Figure 2 In the example embodiment depicted in FIG, the physical components of CSPI 200 include one or more physical host machines or physical servers (e.g., 202, 206, 208), network virtualization devices (NVDs) (e.g., 210, 212), top-of-rack (TOR) switches (e.g., 214, 216), and physical networks (e.g., 218), as well as switches in physical network 218. The physical host machines or servers can host and execute various computing instances that participate in one or more subnets of the VCN. The computing instances can include virtual machine instances and bare metal instances. For example, Figure 1 The various computational instances depicted in Figure 2 The physical host machine depicted in the figure hosts the virtual machine compute instances in the VCN. Virtual machine compute instances in the VCN can be executed by a single host machine or by multiple different host machines. Physical host machines can also host virtual host machines, container-based hosts or functions, and so on. Figure 1 The VNIC and VCN VR depicted in the figure can be represented by Figure 2 The NVD implementation depicted in . Figure 1 The gateway depicted in the figure can be operated by a host machine and / or Figure 2 The NVD implementation described in .

[0104] A host machine or server may execute a hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor or VMM) that creates and enables a virtualized environment on the host machine. Virtualization or a virtualized environment facilitates cloud-based computing. One or more computing instances may be created, executed, and managed by a hypervisor on the host machine. The hypervisor on the host machine enables the physical computing resources (e.g., compute, memory, and network resources) of the host machine to be shared among the various computing instances executed by the host machine.

[0105] For example, Figure 2 As depicted in FIG, host machines 202 and 208 execute hypervisors 260 and 266, respectively. These hypervisors may be implemented using software, firmware, or hardware, or a combination thereof. Typically, a hypervisor is a process or software layer that sits on top of the host machine's operating system (OS), which in turn executes on the host machine's hardware processors. A hypervisor provides a virtualized environment by enabling the host machine's physical computing resources (e.g., processing resources such as processors / cores, memory resources, network resources) to be shared among various virtual machine computing instances executed by the host machine. For example, in Figure 2 In

[0045] , hypervisor 260 can sit on top of the OS of host machine 202 and enable computing resources (e.g., processing, memory, and network resources) of host machine 202 to be shared between computing instances (e.g., virtual machines) executed by host machine 202. A virtual machine can have its own operating system (referred to as a guest operating system), which can be the same as or different from the OS of the host machine. The operating system of a virtual machine executed by a host machine can be the same as or different from the operating system of another virtual machine executed by the same host machine. Thus, the hypervisor enables multiple operating systems to be executed simultaneously while sharing the same computing resources of the host machine. Figure 2 The host machines depicted in can have the same or different types of hypervisors.

[0106] Compute instances can be virtual machine instances or bare metal instances. Figure 2 , compute instance 268 on host machine 202 and compute instance 274 on host machine 208 are examples of virtual machine instances. Host machine 206 is an example of a bare metal instance 272 provided to a user.

[0107] In some cases, an entire host machine can be supplied to a single user, and one or more computing instances (or virtual machines or bare metal instances) hosted by the host machine all belong to the same user. In other cases, the host machine can be shared between multiple users (i.e., multiple tenants). In this multi-tenancy scenario, the host machine can host virtual machine computing instances belonging to different users. These computing instances can be members of different VCNs for different users. In certain embodiments, the bare metal computing instance is hosted by a bare metal server without a hypervisor. When supplying a bare metal computing instance, a single user or tenant maintains control of the physical CPU, memory, and network interface of the host machine hosting the bare metal instance, and the host machine is not shared with other users or tenants.

[0108] As previously described, each compute instance that is part of a VCN is associated with a VNIC that enables the compute instance to be a member of a subnet of the VCN. The VNIC associated with a compute instance facilitates the communication of packets or frames to and from the compute instance. The VNIC is associated with the compute instance when the compute instance is created. In some embodiments, for a compute instance executed by a host machine, the VNIC associated with the compute instance is executed by an NVD connected to the host machine. For example, in Figure 2 , host machine 202 executes a virtual machine compute instance 268 that is associated with VNIC 276, and VNIC 276 is executed by NVD 210 connected to host machine 202. As another example, bare metal instance 272 hosted by host machine 206 is associated with VNIC 280, which is executed by NVD 212 connected to host machine 206. As yet another example, VNIC 284 is associated with compute instance 274 executed by host machine 208, and VNIC 284 is executed by NVD 212 connected to host machine 208.

[0109] For compute instances hosted by a host machine, the NVD connected to that host machine also executes the VCN VR corresponding to the VCN of which the compute instance is a member. Figure 2 In the embodiment depicted in , NVD 210 executes VCN VR 277 corresponding to the VCN of which compute instance 268 is a member. NVD 212 may also execute one or more VCN VRs 283 corresponding to VCNs corresponding to compute instances hosted by host machines 206 and 208.

[0110] The host machine may include one or more network interface cards (NICs) that enable the host machine to connect to other devices. The NICs on the host machine may provide one or more ports (or interfaces) that enable the host machine to communicatively connect to another device. For example, the host machine may connect to the NVD using one or more ports (or interfaces) provided on the host machine and on the NVD. The host machine may also connect to other devices (such as another host machine).

[0111] For example, in Figure 2 , host machine 202 is connected to NVD 210 using link 220, which extends between port 234 provided by NIC 232 of host machine 202 and port 236 of NVD 210. Host machine 206 is connected to NVD 212 using link 224, which extends between port 246 provided by NIC 244 of host machine 206 and port 248 of NVD 212. Host machine 208 is connected to NVD 212 using link 226, which extends between port 252 provided by NIC 250 of host machine 208 and port 254 of NVD 212.

[0112] The NVD is in turn connected to top-of-rack (TOR) switches via communication links, which are connected to the physical network 218 (also referred to as a switch fabric). In some embodiments, the links between the host machine and the NVD and between the NVD and the TOR switches are Ethernet links. For example, in Figure 2 , NVDs 210 and 212 are connected to TOR switches 214 and 216 using links 228 and 230, respectively. In some embodiments, links 220, 224, 226, 228, and 230 are Ethernet links. A collection of host machines and NVDs connected to a TOR is sometimes referred to as a rack.

[0113] The physical network 218 provides a communication fabric that enables the TOR switches to communicate with each other. The physical network 218 can be a multi-layer network. In some embodiments, the physical network 218 is a multi-layer Clos network of switches, where the TOR switches 214 and 216 represent leaf nodes of the multi-layer and multi-node physical switching network 218. Different Clos network configurations are possible, including but not limited to 2-layer networks, 3-layer networks, 4-layer networks, 5-layer networks, and general "n"-layer networks. Examples of Clos networks are described in Figure 5 and described below.

[0114] There may be various connection configurations between the host machine and the NVD, such as one-to-one configuration, many-to-one configuration, one-to-many configuration, etc. In a one-to-one configuration implementation, each host machine is connected to its own separate NVD. Figure 2 In , host machine 202 is connected to NVD 210 via NIC 232 of host machine 202. In a many-to-one configuration, multiple host machines are connected to one NVD. Figure 2 , host machines 206 and 208 are connected to the same NVD 212 via NICs 244 and 250, respectively.

[0115] In a one-to-many configuration, one host machine connects to multiple NVDs. Figure 3 An example within CSPI 300 is shown, where a host machine is connected to multiple NVDs. Figure 3 As shown in FIG, a host machine 302 includes a network interface card (NIC) 304 that includes multiple ports 306 and 308. The host machine 300 is connected to a first NVD 310 via port 306 and link 320, and to a second NVD 312 via port 308 and link 322. Ports 306 and 308 can be Ethernet ports, and the links 320 and 322 between the host machine 302 and the NVDs 310 and 312 can be Ethernet links. NVD 310 is in turn connected to a first TOR switch 314, and NVD 312 is connected to a second TOR switch 316. The links between NVDs 310, 312 and the TOR switches 314, 316 can be Ethernet links. TOR switches 314 and 316 represent layer 0 switching devices in a multi-layer physical network 318.

[0116] Figure 3 The arrangement depicted in FIG provides two separate physical network paths to and from the physical switch network 318 to the host machine 302: a first path traversing the TOR switch 314 to the NVD 310 and then to the host machine 302, and a second path traversing the TOR switch 316 to the NVD 312 and then to the host machine 302. The separate paths provide enhanced availability (referred to as high availability) for the host machine 302. If a problem occurs with one of the paths (e.g., a link in one of the paths is down) or a device (e.g., a particular NVD is not functioning), the other path can be used for communications to and from the host machine 302.

[0117] exist Figure 3 In the configuration depicted in , the host machine connects to two different NVDs using two different ports provided by the host machine's NIC. In other embodiments, the host machine may include multiple NICs that enable the host machine to connect to multiple NVDs.

[0118] Return to reference Figure 2An NVD is a physical device or component that performs one or more network and / or storage virtualization functions. An NVD can be any device with one or more processing units (e.g., a CPU, a network processing unit (NPU), an FPGA, a packet processing pipeline, etc.), memory including cache, and ports. Various virtualization functions can be performed by software / firmware executed by one or more processing units of the NVD.

[0119] NVD can be implemented in a variety of different forms. For example, in some embodiments, NVD is implemented as an interface card called a smartNIC or an intelligent NIC with an onboard embedded processor. The smartNIC is a device separate from the NIC on the host machine. Figure 2 , NVDs 210 and 212 may be implemented as smartNICs connected to host machine 202 and host machines 206 and 208, respectively.

[0120] However, smartNIC is just one example of an NVD implementation. Various other implementations are possible. For example, in some other implementations, NVD or one or more functions performed by NVD can be integrated into or performed by one or more host machines, one or more TOR switches, and other components of CSPI 200. For example, NVD can be implemented in a host machine, where the functions performed by NVD are performed by the host machine. As another example, NVD can be part of a TOR switch, or a TOR switch can be configured to perform the functions performed by NVD, enabling the TOR switch to perform various complex packet conversions for public clouds. A TOR that performs the functions of NVD is sometimes referred to as a smart TOR. In other implementations that provide users with virtual machine (VM) instances rather than bare metal (BM) instances, the functions performed by NVD can be implemented within the host machine's hypervisor. In some other implementations, some of the NVD's functions can be offloaded to a centralized service running on a group of host machines.

[0121] In some embodiments, such as when implemented as Figure 2 When using the smartNIC shown in Figure 1, the NVD can include multiple physical ports that enable it to connect to one or more host machines and one or more TOR switches. Ports on the NVD can be classified as host-facing ports (also known as "south ports") or network-facing or TOR-facing ports (also known as "north ports"). The host-facing ports of the NVD are the ports used to connect the NVD to the host machines. Figure 2 Examples of host-facing ports include port 236 on NVD 210 and ports 248 and 254 on NVD 212. The network-facing ports of NVD are the ports used to connect NVD to a TOR switch. Figure 2 Examples of network-facing ports include port 256 on NVD 210 and port 258 on NVD 212. Figure 2 As shown in FIG, NVD 210 is connected to TOR switch 214 using link 228 extending from port 256 of NVD 210 to TOR switch 214. Similarly, NVD 212 is connected to TOR switch 216 using link 230 extending from port 258 of NVD 212 to TOR switch 216.

[0122] NVD receives packets and frames (e.g., packets and frames generated by compute instances hosted by the host machine) from the host machine via the host-facing port, and after performing necessary packet processing, may forward the packets and frames to the TOR switch via the network-facing port of NVD. NVD may receive packets and frames from the TOR switch via the network-facing port of NVD, and after performing necessary packet processing, may forward the packets and frames to the host machine via the host-facing port of NVD.

[0123] In some embodiments, there may be multiple ports and associated links between the NVD and the TOR switch. These ports and links can be aggregated to form a link aggregate group (called a LAG) of multiple ports or links. Link aggregation allows multiple physical links between two endpoints (for example, between the NVD and the TOR switch) to be treated as a single logical link. All physical links in a given LAG can operate at the same speed in full-duplex mode. LAGs help increase the bandwidth and reliability of the connection between the two endpoints. If one of the physical links in the LAG fails, traffic is dynamically and transparently reassigned to one of the other physical links in the LAG. Aggregated physical links deliver higher bandwidth than each individual link. Multiple ports associated with a LAG are treated as a single logical port. Traffic can be load balanced across the multiple physical links of the LAG. One or more LAGs can be configured between two endpoints. The two endpoints can be located between the NVD and the TOR switch, between a host machine and the NVD, and so on.

[0124] NVD implements or performs network virtualization functions. These functions are performed by software / firmware executed by NVD. Examples of network virtualization functions include, but are not limited to, packet encapsulation and decapsulation functions; functions for creating VCN networks; functions for implementing network policies, such as VCN security lists (firewall) functionality; functions for facilitating routing and forwarding of packets to and from compute instances in the VCN; and the like. In certain embodiments, upon receiving a packet, NVD is configured to execute a packet processing pipeline for processing the packet and determining how to forward or route the packet. As part of this packet processing pipeline, NVD may execute one or more virtual functions associated with overlay networks, such as executing VNICs associated with compute instances in the VCN, executing virtual routers (VRs) associated with the VCN, encapsulating and decapsulating packets to facilitate forwarding or routing within the virtual network, executing certain gateways (e.g., local peer gateways), implementing security lists, network security groups, network address translation (NAT) functionality (e.g., translating public IP addresses to private IP addresses on a per-host basis), throttling functions, and other functions.

[0125] In some embodiments, the packet processing data path in NVD may include multiple packet pipelines, each consisting of a series of packet transformation stages. In some embodiments, after a packet is received, it is parsed and classified into a single pipeline. The packet is then processed in a linear manner, one stage after another, until the packet is discarded or sent out through the NVD interface. These stages provide basic functional packet processing building blocks (e.g., validating headers, enforcing throttling, inserting new layer 2 headers, enforcing L4 firewalls, VCN encapsulation / decapsulation, etc.), so that new pipelines can be built by combining existing stages, and new functionality can be added by creating new stages and plugging them into existing pipelines.

[0126] NVD can perform both control plane and data plane functions corresponding to the control plane and data plane of the VCN. Control plane functions include functions for configuring the network that controls how data is forwarded (e.g., setting up routes and routing tables, configuring VNICs, etc.). In some embodiments, a VCN control plane is provided that centrally calculates all overlay-to-substrate mappings and publishes them to NVD and virtual network edge devices (such as various gateways, such as DRGs, SGWs, IGWs, etc.). Firewall rules can also be published using the same mechanism. In some embodiments, NVD only obtains mappings relevant to that NVD. Data plane functions include functions for actually routing / forwarding packets based on the configuration established using the control plane. The VCN data plane is implemented by encapsulating the user's network packets before they traverse the substrate network. The encapsulation / decapsulation functionality is implemented on the NVD. In some embodiments, the NVD is configured to intercept all network packets entering and leaving the host machine and perform network virtualization functions.

[0127] As indicated above, NVD performs various virtualization functions, including VNIC and VCN VR. NVD can execute VNICs associated with computing instances hosted by one or more host machines connected to the VNIC. For example, Figure 2 , NVD 210 executes functionality of VNIC 276 associated with compute instance 268 hosted by host machine 202 connected to NVD 210. As another example, NVD 212 executes VNIC 280 associated with bare metal compute instance 272 hosted by host machine 206, and executes VNIC 284 associated with compute instance 274 hosted by host machine 208. The host machines may host compute instances belonging to different VCNs (which belong to different users), and the NVD connected to the host machines may execute VNICs corresponding to the compute instances (i.e., perform VNIC-related functionality).

[0128] NVD also implements a VCN virtual router corresponding to the VCN of the compute instance. For example, Figure 2 In the embodiment depicted in FIG, NVD 210 executes VCN VR 277 corresponding to the VCN to which compute instance 268 belongs. NVD 212 executes one or more VCN VRs 283 corresponding to one or more VCNs to which the compute instances hosted by host machines 206 and 208 belong. In some embodiments, the VCN VR corresponding to the VCN is executed by all NVDs connected to the host machine that hosts at least one compute instance belonging to the VCN. If the host machine hosts compute instances belonging to different VCNs, then the NVDs connected to the host machine can execute VCN VRs corresponding to those different VCNs.

[0129] In addition to VNICs and VCN VRs, NVD may also execute various software (e.g., daemons) and include components, which are one or more hardware components that facilitate the various network virtualization functions performed by NVD. For simplicity, these various components are grouped together as Figure 2 . For example, NVD 210 includes packet processing component 286 and NVD 212 includes packet processing component 288. For example, the packet processing component for NVD may include a packet processor configured to interact with the ports and hardware interfaces of NVD to monitor all packets received by NVD and transmitted using NVD and store network information. The network information may include, for example, network flow information identifying different network flows handled by NVD and per-flow information (e.g., per-flow statistics). In some embodiments, network flow information may be stored on a per-VNIC basis. The packet processor may perform per-packet manipulation and implement stateful NAT and L4 firewall (FW). As another example, the packet processing component may include a replication agent configured to replicate information stored by NVD to one or more different replication target repositories. As yet another example, the packet processing component may include a logging agent configured to perform the logging function of NVD. The packet processing component may also include software for monitoring the performance and health of NVD and possibly also monitoring the status and health of other components connected to NVD.

[0130] Figure 1 Components of an example virtual or overlay network are shown, including a VCN, subnets within the VCN, compute instances deployed on the subnets, VNICs associated with the compute instances, VRs for the VCN, and a set of gateways configured for the VCN. Figure 1 The overlay component depicted in can be represented by Figure 2 For example, a compute instance in a VCN can be executed or hosted by one or more of the physical components depicted in the Figure 2 The VCN VR functionality for a VCN is performed by all NVDs connected to the host machines hosting or executing compute instances as part of the VCN. Gateways associated with a VCN can be performed by one or more different types of NVDs. For example, some gateways can be performed by smartNICs, while other gateways can be performed by one or more host machines or other implementations of NVDs.

[0131] As described above, a compute instance in a user VCN can communicate with a variety of endpoints, where the endpoint can be in the same subnet as the source compute instance, in a different subnet but in the same VCN as the source compute instance, or outside the source compute instance's VCN. These communications are facilitated using the VNICs associated with the compute instance, the VCN VRs, and the gateways associated with the VCN.

[0132] For communication between two compute instances on the same subnet in a VCN, communication is facilitated using VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances. The source and destination compute instances can be hosted by the same host machine or different host machines. Packets originating from the source compute instance can be forwarded from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to an NVD connected to the host machine. On the NVD, the packet is processed using a packet processing pipeline, which can include the execution of the VNIC associated with the source compute instance. Because the destination endpoint of the packet is within the same subnet, the execution of the VNIC associated with the source compute instance causes the packet to be forwarded to the NVD executing the VNIC associated with the destination compute instance, which then processes the packet and forwards it to the destination compute instance. The VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances can execute on the same NVD (e.g., when the source and destination compute instances are hosted by the same host machine) or on different NVDs (e.g., when the source and destination compute instances are hosted by different host machines connected to different NVDs). The VNIC can use the routing / forwarding table stored by the NVD to determine the next hop for the packet.

[0133] For packets destined for delivery from a compute instance in a subnet to an endpoint in a different subnet within the same VCN, the packet originating from the source compute instance is delivered from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to an NVD connected to that host machine. On the NVD, the packet is processed using a packet processing pipeline, which may include the execution of one or more VNICs and VRs associated with the VCN. For example, as part of the packet processing pipeline, the NVD executes or calls functionality associated with the VNIC associated with the source compute instance (also referred to as executing the VNIC). The functionality executed by the VNIC may include checking for VLAN tags on the packet. Since the packet's destination is outside the subnet, the NVD then calls and executes VCN VR functionality. The VCN VR then routes the packet to the NVD executing the VNIC associated with the destination compute instance. The VNIC associated with the destination compute instance then processes the packet and forwards it to the destination compute instance. The VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances can execute on the same NVD (e.g., when the source and destination compute instances are hosted by the same host machine) or on different NVDs (e.g., when the source and destination compute instances are hosted by different host machines connected to different NVDs).

[0134] If the destination of the packet is outside the VCN of the source compute instance, then the packet originating from the source compute instance is transmitted from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to the NVD connected to the host machine. The NVD executes the VNIC associated with the source compute instance. Since the destination endpoint of the packet is outside the VCN, the packet is then processed by the VCN VR for that VCN. The NVD invokes the VCN VR functionality, which may cause the packet to be forwarded to the NVD executing the appropriate gateway associated with the VCN. For example, if the destination is an endpoint within the user's on-premises network, then the packet may be forwarded by the VCN VR to the NVD executing the DRG gateway configured for the VCN. The VCN VR may execute on the same NVD as the NVD executing the VNIC associated with the source compute instance, or by a different NVD. The gateway may be executed by an NVD, which may be a smartNIC, a host machine, or other NVD implementation. The packet is then processed by the gateway and forwarded to the next hop, which facilitates delivery of the packet to its intended destination endpoint. For example, in Figure 2In the embodiment depicted in FIG, a packet originating from compute instance 268 may be transmitted from host machine 202 to NVD 210 via link 220 (using NIC 232). On NVD 210, VNIC 276 is invoked because it is the VNIC associated with source compute instance 268. VNIC 276 is configured to inspect information encapsulated in the packet and determine a next hop for forwarding the packet, with the goal of facilitating delivery of the packet to its intended destination endpoint, and then forward the packet to the determined next hop.

[0135] Compute instances deployed on a VCN can communicate with a variety of different endpoints. These endpoints can include endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 and endpoints external to CSPI 200. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 can include instances in the same VCN or other VCNs, which can be the user's VCN or a VCN that does not belong to the user. Communication between endpoints hosted by CSPI 200 can be performed over physical network 218. Compute instances can also communicate with endpoints that are not hosted by CSPI 200 or external to CSPI 200. Examples of these endpoints include endpoints within the user's on-premises network or data center, or public endpoints accessible via a public network (such as the Internet). Communication with endpoints external to CSPI 200 can be performed over a public network (e.g., the Internet) using various communication protocols. Figure 2 Not shown) or a dedicated network ( Figure 2 (not shown) to execute.

[0136] Figure 2 The architecture of the CSPI 200 depicted in FIG. 1 is merely an example and is not intended to be limiting. In alternative embodiments, variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some embodiments, the CSPI 200 may have a Figure 2 The systems or components shown in FIG may include more or fewer systems or components, may combine two or more systems, or may have different system configurations or arrangements. Figure 2 The systems, subsystems, and other components depicted in the present disclosure may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the corresponding system, using hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device).

[0137] Cloud Bridge and Cloud Migration Service Architecture

[0138] CSPI (e.g., about Figure 1 and Figure 2The CSPI (101 and 200) described above can be configured to provide cloud integration services. At least a portion of these cloud integration services is provided using a cloud bridge service (e.g., Oracle Cloud Bridge (OCB)) for managing and configuring remote resources that interact with other cloud services provided by CSPI. Cloud Bridge addresses key aspects of this integration, including automated discovery and identification of remote resources, representation of remote resources as assets within a user's tenancy, secure network connectivity between remote resources and CSPI, lifecycle management of agent technologies running in remote environments, and assistance in migrating existing user workloads from external environments to CSPI. Cloud Bridge enables users to give remote resources (e.g., databases, compute nodes, etc.) a virtual presence within CSPI for seamless interaction with other cloud services provided by CSPI. To enable this virtual presence, Cloud Bridge provides remote resources with unique cloud identifiers (CloudID, resource principles, etc.) and remote network connectivity for service interaction. This allows Cloud Bridge to become a single location for users to orchestrate and manage CSPI agent functionality on remote resources. For users, Cloud Bridge provides a unified, cloud-centric experience between cloud-native and remote resources, minimizing the need to set up remote environments. For CSPI service teams, Cloud Bridge simplifies environment integration by allowing services to interact with remote resources as if they were cloud resources and by providing a standardized framework for deploying and managing remote agent functions. This allows CSPI service teams to focus on the core cloud experience without having to worry about remote connectivity or software lifecycle management.

[0139] Cloud Bridge via the console (for example, Figure 1 and Figure 2 Cloud Bridge is managed and configured using the CSPI console, application programming interface (API), and software development kit (SDK) described in [1]. Cloud Bridge management and configuration focuses on three basic resource types: environments, agents, and assets. Users create an environment for each location where they want to access other cloud services provided by CSPI. Environments serve as containers for assets and define the scope of default policies that govern that location.

[0140] An agent is part of a virtual machine that a user creates from an image provided by Cloud Bridge. The agent acts as an extension of the Cloud Bridge service in a remote environment and is monitored, updated, and operated by CSPI based on the configuration of the associated environment. The agent provides basic Cloud Bridge services, such as remote asset discovery and inventory integration, and includes a framework for executing service-specific plug-ins in the environment. For example, the Oracle Cloud Migration service deploys a replication plug-in that creates a virtual machine snapshot and uploads it to OCI for migration to OCI compute. Cloud Bridge allows users to select from a catalog of agent-based services and automatically deploys associated functionality to the environment. Cloud Bridge will monitor the deployed agents and software versions and provide manually triggered or automated lifecycle management. For redundancy and performance reasons, there may be multiple agents in the same environment.

[0141] An asset is a CSPI resource that represents a remote resource discovered by the agent, captures its characteristics in the remote environment, and provides CSPI features (e.g., CloudID, resource principles, etc.) for use in other cloud services provided by CSPI. Users can manually add assets or trigger automatic discovery in the environment through integration with infrastructure / system management products such as Oracle Enterprise Manager and Microsoft Active Directory. CSPI applies default access policies based on asset type. For example, a database asset may default to only allowing SSL-encrypted SQLNet connections. Environments and discovered assets can be managed through an asset inventory exposed to users via the console. Users can choose to perform any action on an asset depending on the asset type and the service plugins available for that asset type. For example, a virtual machine asset type may support multiple actions: cloud migration (e.g., using Oracle Cloud Migration as described in detail herein), exposure as a VNIC with virtual networking, or shipping metrics to CSPI for observability. Similarly, a database asset type may support integration with various database services, such as Data Safe and Database Migration. Cloud Bridge can also integrate with various data management services, such as Management Agent Cloud Service (MACS) agents, which provide on-guest agent and agent plug-in capabilities that collect additional metadata about assets. MACS agents can use the Cloud Bridge agent framework, so the integration and capabilities are seamless to users.

[0142] Figure 4A4 is a high-level diagram illustrating a distributed environment 400 of a Cloud Bridge architecture for managing and configuring remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to certain embodiments. Figure 4A As shown in the example depicted in FIG, a distributed environment 400 includes a cloud infrastructure 402 (CSPI) that is physically hosted in one or more global regions 403 (i.e., data centers managed by a cloud service provider such as Oracle) and provides high-performance computing capabilities (as physical or virtual hardware instances) and storage capacity in a flexible overlay virtual network that is securely accessible from a user's on-premises network (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406). CSPI 402 includes a console 408 that enables users and network administrators to configure, access, and manage remote resources and resources deployed in the cloud using CSPI resources. In certain embodiments, console 408 provides a web-based user interface that can be used to access and manage CSPI 402 and various service functions, including cloud bridge and migration services. In some implementations, console 408 is a web-based application provided by the CSP.

[0143] CSPs can use CSPI 402 to provide various services. In some cases, users of CSPI 402 can themselves behave like service providers and offer services using CSPI 402 resources. Service providers can expose service endpoints characterized by identifying information (e.g., IP addresses, DNS names, and ports). User resources (e.g., computing instances, on-premises resources, off-premises resources, etc.) can access a particular service by accessing the service endpoints exposed by the service for that particular service. These service endpoints are generally publicly accessible to users via a public communication network (such as the Internet) using the public IP addresses associated with the endpoints. In some embodiments, a service provider can expose a service (e.g., CSA, CSB, CSC, CSD, CSE) via an endpoint for the service (sometimes referred to as a service endpoint) (e.g., Cloud Service A, Cloud Service B, Cloud Service C, Cloud Service D, Cloud Service E). Users of the service can then access the service using this service endpoint. In some embodiments, the service endpoint provided for a service can be accessed by multiple users who intend to consume the service. In other embodiments, a dedicated service endpoint can be provided to a user so that only that user can access the service using the dedicated service endpoint.

[0144] CSPI 402 provides services and resources that users can subscribe to and use to build their VCN. In some embodiments, CSPI 402 provides IaaS and iPaaS services to subscribing users. In this example, the user has configured VCN 410 for the global zone 403. The user can deploy various computing instances on VCN 410, where the computing instances can include virtual machines or bare metal instances. Examples of instances include applications, databases, load balancers, etc. Multiple computing instances can be deployed on each subnet. Figure 4A In the embodiment depicted in FIG402, VCN 410 includes a single subnet 412; however, it should be understood that VCN 410 can be configured with any number of subnets. Compute instances in a subnet can be hosted by one or more host machines within CSPI 402. A compute instance participates in a subnet via a VNIC associated with the compute instance, as described with respect to FIG402. Figure 1 Described in detail.

[0145] Compute instances deployed on a subnet (such as subnet 412 of VCN 410) can communicate with a variety of different endpoints. These endpoints can include endpoints hosted by CSPI 402 and endpoints external to CSPI 402. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 402 can include: endpoints on the same subnet as a particular compute instance; endpoints on different subnets but within the same VCN; endpoints in different VCNs in the same region; or endpoints in VCNs in different regions. Compute instances in subnets hosted by CSPI 402 can also communicate with endpoints that are not hosted by CSPI 402 (i.e., external to CSPI 402). These external endpoints include endpoints in the user's on-premises network (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406), endpoints in other remote cloud-hosted networks, public endpoints accessible via public networks (such as the Internet), and other endpoints.

[0146] The user's internal deployment network 404 and / or the internal network 406 can be a user network or a user data center built using the user's resources. Figure 4AThe user's external resources are shown as being on-premises, but it should be understood that these resources can also be externally deployed, such as as part of a VCN in a CSPI of a different CSP. Access to on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406 is generally very restricted. For users who have both user on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406 and one or more VCNs 410 deployed or hosted in the cloud by CSPI 402, the user may want to allow cloud services (e.g., cloud service AEs) to interact with the user's external resources (e.g., on-premises database 416, on-premises virtual machines 418, on-premises database 420, etc.). This enables users to build an extended hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environment that encompasses the user's VCN 104 hosted by CSPI 101 and their external resources. The Cloud Bridge service enables this interaction. To enable this interaction, a communication channel 422 is established, with one endpoint of the channel located in on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406, and the other endpoint located in CSPI 402 and connected to user VCN 410. Communication channel 422 can pass through a public communication network (such as the Internet) or a private communication network. Various communication protocols can be used, such as IPsec VPN technology over a public communication network (such as the Internet), Oracle's FastConnect technology using a private network instead of a public network, etc. The software or virtual machine in user on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406 that forms one endpoint of communication channel 422 is called agent 424. On the CSPI 402 side, the endpoints (e.g., DB1, DB2, VM1) can be host machines executing a gateway (such as DRG).

[0147] Cloud Bridge services include the following three main functions: agent, asset discovery, and asset inventory.

[0148] The proxy functionality enables the cloud services provided by CSPI 402 to interact with a user's external resources (e.g., on-premises database 416, on-premises virtual machines 418, and on-premises database 420). The proxy functionality is implemented using agents 424 and their corresponding Cloud Bridge control plane 425 (also referred to as a proxy or device control plane). Agents 424 are specialized software components that serve as a platform for deploying cloud service functionality to interact with external resources. Each agent 424 has a corresponding agent identifier (e.g., a CSPI identifier used to identify an asset as a CSPI 402 resource), and this agent identifier is associated with an external site identifier (e.g., externalSiteId) of the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406) in which the agent 424 is deployed. The external site identifier is used to identify the external environment in which the external resources and agents are deployed. The agent control plane 425 provides management and orchestration across the Cloud Bridge architecture, such as agent registration and agent lifecycle management.

[0149] The asset discovery functionality enables users to understand resources in the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406) and create / update assets representing these resources in the Cloud Bridge inventory 426. Assets are CSPI 402 resources that represent metadata about resources in the external environment, such as vSphere VMs, EC2 instances, and databases. Each asset has an asset type that defines different types of assets, an asset identifier (e.g., a CSPI identifier used to identify the asset as a CSPI 402 resource), an associated external site identifier, and a source identifier that identifies the discovery plugin that discovered the resources associated with the asset. The asset discovery functionality is implemented using discovery plugins 427 integrated with agent 425 and its corresponding discovery control plane 428. Discovery plugins 427 are software components deployed in the external environment and provide functionality such as asset discovery, metadata and metrics collection, and reporting of resources and metadata to the inventory 426. The discovery control plane 428 comprises one or more applications deployed in an overlay layer, supported by a data repository (e.g., an autonomous transaction processing (ATP) data repository), and is responsible for handling asset discovery-related requests received from user-facing APIs, as well as communication and coordination of tasks for the discovery plug-in 427.

[0150] The asset inventory functionality enables the storage of metadata about assets and relationships discovered by asset discovery or imported by users. The asset inventory also exposes user-facing APIs for creating, retrieving, searching, and analyzing various assets. Asset inventory is implemented using an inventory 426 and its corresponding inventory control plane 430. Inventory 426 is a region-specific CSPI 402 resource (e.g., a data table or database) that supports standard CRUDL operations. Inventory control plane 430 is an application deployed in an overlay layer and supported by a data repository (e.g., an ATP data repository). It is responsible for handling asset inventory-related requests received from the user-facing APIs, as well as communicating and coordinating tasks related to inventory 426 and assets. In some embodiments, the asset inventory functionality is limited to a single inventory per region. Advantageously, this helps eliminate duplicate assets within a lease. Avoiding duplicate assets helps downstream services, such as migration and replication services, avoid replicating the same VM data multiple times and avoid creating multiple CSPI 402 resources for the same asset. This also provides users with a global view of their assets across diverse external environments (e.g., multi-cloud services).

[0151] like Figure 4B and 4C As shown in FIG, agent 424 is deployed as part of a virtual appliance 432 within a user's external environment (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406). Virtual appliance 432 is a virtual machine pre-configured with agent software, plug-ins, and management components. The main components of virtual appliance 432 are agent service subsystem 434, update service subsystem 436, and security service subsystem 438. Agent service subsystem 434 provides lifecycle management for agent core functionality and plug-ins (such as discovery plug-in 427 and replication plug-in 440). This includes collecting plug-in status and reporting it back to agent control plane 425, generating and communicating agent metrics (e.g., CPU, memory, etc.) to CSPI monitoring, publishing local logs (e.g., the device, agent, and its plug-ins) to CSPI logging, and executing local console application functions (e.g., local console 445 for agent registration).

[0152] Plug-ins are self-contained / standalone applications that integrate with agent 424 as part of a virtual appliance 432 created by a user on an external environment based on an Open Virtualization Application (OVA) template. OVA templates are virtual appliances in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) format used by virtualization applications such as VMware Workstation and Oracle VM Virtualbox. Users can use OVA templates to create multiple virtual machines (e.g., multiple VMs for agent functionality in multiple external environments). In some embodiments, OVA templates are sealed (preventing remote user access) and do not allow users to execute arbitrary code using virtual appliance 432. Users can only interact with OVA templates via local console 445 for registration, and all other management operations are coordinated from CSPI 402 using virtual appliance 432. Agent 424 provides plug-ins with environment / configuration information (e.g., CSPI 402 region, external site identifier, agent identifier, agent type, etc.) as well as information required for the plug-in to obtain resource principal session token(s) for communication with CSPI 402. The agent 424 also provides monitoring capabilities (metrics and logging) and reports the status of the plug-ins back to the agent control plane 425. The agent 424 itself is not publicly accessible from the internet, and the agent 424 and associated plug-ins initiate connections to the CSPI 402 API endpoint (via direct connectivity or a corporate proxy).

[0153] As about Figure 4A As described, discovery plugin 427 facilitates understanding of a user's resources in the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 404 and / or on-premises network 406) and creates / updates assets representing those resources in Cloud Bridge inventory 426. Replication plugin 440 is deployed to external environment 404 and is responsible for replicating data from on-premises VMs to the user's CSPI 402 tenancy (i.e., migrating) using asset replication tasks. An asset replication task is the atomic unit of work by replication plugin 440 to import a user's assets into the CSPI 402 object store. This approach lowers the barrier to entry for migration because it does not require the user to establish on-premises connectivity to CSPI 402 for each asset source (e.g., vCenter) or open a port back to communicate with CSPI 402. Replication plugin 440 is distributed in binary form and then deployed to the corresponding devices by the CSPI 402 service. Although only discovery plug-in 427 and replication plug-in 440 are shown and described herein with respect to virtual appliance 432, it should be understood that other types of plug-ins may be integrated with agent 424 as part of virtual appliance 432 to facilitate providing one or more functions (e.g., cloud services).

[0154] For some functions, the agent 424 requires third-party libraries / packages that cannot be distributed as part of the agent package and require user consent and special actions. For example, for the cloud migration scope, the replication plug-in 440 requires the Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) to generate snapshots of VMware VM disks. The agent dependency processing initiated by the user includes: the user downloads the third-party library / package from the associated third-party site, accepts the terms of service, and uploads the library / package to a pre-configured CSPI 402 object storage bucket. In some cases, public documentation provided by the CSP provides users with links and specific instructions on how to perform the download / upload operation, and this can be performed once for each dependency version. The user then logs into console 408, navigates to proxy dependency setup, creates a new proxy dependency for the library / package (which includes providing the object location in the object store (namespace, bucket, object name, etc.), and selects the type of library / package. This causes proxy control plane 425 to initiate a dependency signature verification workflow that downloads and calculates the signature (checksum) of the library / package and compares the library / package signature to the whitelist signatures in the database to identify and verify the library / package. Once the library / package is identified and verified, the user goes to console 408, navigates to external site setup, and adds the proxy dependency identifier to the external site identifier. Proxy 424 then obtains this information from proxy control plane 425 and installs the dependency locally and makes it available for consumption by the plugin.

[0155] The update service subsystem 436 updates the software and parameters of the proxy service subsystem 434 and the virtual device 432. The update service subsystem 436 includes an updater 440, which is a software component running on the virtual device 432 and is responsible for keeping the virtual device 432 up to date. The components of the agent 424 are managed by cloud bridge engineers. The release of new code (e.g., a new agent security update) causes a new bundle to be created for a given component of the agent 424 (e.g., the security service subsystem 438). The updater 440 maintains a list of currently used components and the version of the bundle used by each component. A bundle is a specific implementation or instance of a component. The description of the bundle is stored in the database or embeddable key / value storage library of the proxy control plane 425, while the data portion is a BLOB stored in the object storage of the proxy control plane 425. A BLOB is a binary file that contains executable files, configurations, and other data required to update the component. The updater 440 polls the proxy control plane 425 periodically. When a new bundle is available, the agent control plane 425 replies to the poll with an "update" command containing information about the new bundle to be installed. Upon receiving the "update" command, the updater 440 downloads the BLOB, creates a rollback snapshot, prepares a new file system (e.g., a subvolume) with the update based on the BLOB, stops the agent 424 processing, and reboots the agent 424 into the new file system.

[0156] The security service subsystem 438 implements security and compliance controls for the proxy service subsystem 434 and the virtual device 432 using firewalls, anti-virus scanning tools, auditing tools, and system configuration.

[0157] The following use cases are provided to facilitate understanding of the Cloud Bridge architecture; however, it should be understood that these use cases are non-limiting and that other use cases are contemplated and may be implemented by Cloud Bridge within CSPI.

[0158] Use Case 1: Private access to a remote database for database security cloud services.

[0159] 1. A user uses the console 408 to create an external environment: the on-premises network 404.

[0160] 2. The user downloads the OVA template for the virtual appliance 432 and deploys the agent 424 in the on-premises network 404.

[0161] 3. The user accesses the local console 445 of the agent 424 to register the agent 424 with the cloud bridge.

[0162] 4. The user initiates discovery from the console 408 to discover resources including the on-premises database 416 in the on-premises network 404 .

[0163] 5. The agent 424 collects host, database, and database object metadata and creates or updates database assets in the inventory 426 using the discovery plugin 427 , discovery control plane 428 , and inventory control plane 430 .

[0164] 6. The user views the discovered database assets in inventory 426 via console 408, identifies the assets associated with on-premises database 416, and creates a database private endpoint (DB1) in VCN 410 to enable private network access to the assets associated with on-premises database 416 that the user wants to use with the database security cloud service (Cloud Service A) (e.g., Data Safe).

[0165] 7. The user creates a private endpoint (CSA) for the Database Security Cloud Service (Cloud Service A) in VCN 410 and configures it to protect assets associated with the on-premises database 416 based on CloudID or IP address, just as the user protects a cloud-native database in their VCN 410.

[0166] 8. Optionally, the user configures a compute instance in VCN 410 to connect to on-premises database 416 via a private endpoint ( DB1 ) and communication channel 422 .

[0167] Use case 2: Private access to a remote virtual machine hosting a data repository.

[0168] 1. A user uses the console 408 to create an external environment: the on-premises network 404.

[0169] 2. The user downloads the OVA template for the virtual appliance 432 and deploys the agent 424 in the on-premises network 404.

[0170] 3. The user accesses the local console 445 of the agent 424 to register the agent 424 with the cloud bridge.

[0171] 4. The user initiates discovery from the console 408 to discover resources including the on-premises virtual machine 418 running the self-hosted Bitbucket Server in the on-premises network 404.

[0172] 5. The agent 424 collects host, database, and database object metadata and creates or updates database assets in the inventory 426 using the discovery plugin 427 , discovery control plane 428 , and inventory control plane 430 .

[0173] 6. The user views the discovered VM assets in inventory 426 via console 408, identifies the assets associated with on-premises virtual machine 418, and creates a VM private endpoint (VM1) in VCN 410 to enable private network access to the assets associated with on-premises virtual machine 418 that the user wants to use with the VM cloud service (Cloud Service B) (e.g., CSP DevOps service).

[0174] 7. The user creates a private endpoint (CSB) in VCN 410 for the CSP DevOps service (e.g., self-hosted Bitbucket Server) and selects the newly created VM private endpoint (VM1) to configure the connection URL and add authentication credentials.

[0175] 8. The user configures the CSP DevOps "Managed Build Stage" to use the private endpoint (CSB) and the VM private endpoint (VM1) as part of the DevOps CI / CD pipeline.

[0176] 9. The user executes a pipeline that can access the data repository from the remote self-hosted Bitbucket server through the private endpoint (CSB), the VM private endpoint (VM1) and the communication channel 422.

[0177] In some embodiments, the cloud integration service facilitates migrating workloads from external environments to CSPI (e.g., Figure 1 and Figure 2 CSPI 101 and 200 described above) or other environments, such as other CSPIs. Workload migration services help users with all aspects of cloud migration: whether migrating multi-tier applications, specific data centers, or specific categories of infrastructure. Cloud migration services (e.g., Oracle Cloud Migration (OCB)) work with cloud bridge services (e.g., Oracle Cloud Bridge (OCB)) to manage and configure remote resources that interact with other cloud services provided by CSPI. Cloud Bridge addresses key aspects of this integration, including automatic discovery and cloud identity of remote resources, representation of remote resources as assets in the user's tenancy, secure network connectivity between remote resources and CSPI, and lifecycle management of agent technologies running in remote environments.

[0178] In some embodiments, the Cloud Migration Service provides an end-to-end, fully self-service experience for migrating existing VMware virtual machine-based workloads from on-premises deployments to CSPI. The Cloud Migration Service enables users to identify virtual machine workloads hosted in an environment external to CSPI, plan the migration, and automate the migration workflow. For example, the Cloud Migration Service can provide the following tasks:

[0179] Automatically discover virtual machines outside of CSPI.

[0180] Organize the VMs to be migrated.

[0181] Copy the virtual machine data to CSPI.

[0182] Plan the redeployment of virtual machines.

[0183] Reconfigure the virtual machine to automatically and successfully boot into a CSPI compute instance.

[0184] Use the copied data to launch the virtual machine as a CSPI compute instance.

[0185] A successful migration can include using a framework to discover and explore existing assets (such as on-premises assets), and then planning the migration, copying data, and launching the target environment. Top-level containers are used as migration service resources to track all aspects of the migration from discovery to launch. From discovery to migration execution, the cloud migration service will maintain a normalized asset inventory and provide a unified experience to migrate to any suitable cloud service regardless of the asset type. For example, VM instances in the cloud migration inventory can be migrated to a virtual machine interface (VMI), bare metal, or VMware on CSPI. The cloud migration service can provide recommendations and cost estimates to maximize user benefits. For example, the CSP can recommend that a user should consider migrating its logical database to DBaaS instead of migrating the database server as a VM.

[0186] Figure 5 5. As depicted, the exemplary migration 500 includes managing migrated assets 505, analyzing and migrating assets 510, and verifying migration success 515. Management of migrated assets 505 includes connecting to a source environment 520, deploying virtual agents 525, and discovering assets on the source environment 530. The source environment represents an on-premises environment (external to CSPI), such as an on-premises data center within a VMware vCenter deployment. To connect 520 an external source environment to CSPI, a user uses a console (a browser-based interface, such as the Figures 4A-4CThe source environment can be set up using the console 408 described above), the CSPI command line interface (CLI), or the REST API. For example, a user can open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as the migration service. Under the migration service, the user can select remote connection and then select Create Source Environment. The user can then enter the name of the source environment, select the compartment created on CSPI to be associated with the source environment (providing a global logical namespace in which policies can be enforced, just like folders in a file system), and execute the creation of the source environment. Once the source environment is created, the user can now download the appropriate remote agent device (e.g., OVA file) and install the agent device, as described in Figures 4A-4C The agent device is then registered and verified for use in the source environment. To enable remote agent device operation, the agent dependency can be added to the source environment as a third-party library dependency on the agent device. For example, the agent dependency can be added using VDDK, as described in Figures 4A-4C Described in detail.

[0187] Asset discovery 530 allows for the identification and metadata collection of various assets, including VMs from external environments, and represents the assets and associated metadata in an inventory asset to facilitate the migration process. Asset discovery 530 is performed using connectors and includes creating an asset source and discovery work request, as well as launching and executing one or more plug-ins in the on-premises environment, including, for example, a discovery plug-in for performing external asset discovery. The discovery plug-in uses environment-specific connectors and APIs to search for assets in the source environment. This document describes the discovery plug-in as supporting VMware via a Cloud Bridge-based connector and an agent deployed directly on the VM to be migrated. However, it should be understood that other connectors can be built and used to support other assets, clouds, and environments, such as Hyper-V or Enterprise Manager. Users can configure connectors for one-time use or continuous monitoring to extract runtime metrics for cloud monitoring and track changes to external assets. External assets will contain metadata and metrics, as well as their history and how they were discovered / imported. Tracking metadata history allows users to monitor the evolution of assets during their long-running migration process, allowing the cloud migration service to highlight any changes that may require revisiting the migration plan.

[0188] The asset is found in the inventory subsystem (e.g., Figures 4A-4CThe inventory subsystem retrieves and tracks metadata information about the tracked assets, including the physical and runtime characteristics of the virtual machines, such as the operating system, hardware, and resource utilization. The inventory subsystem then stores them as a collection of assets and associated metadata (i.e., an inventory) in a table or database. The inventory subsystem is used to store information about assets discovered in the on-premises environment that can be migrated. These assets are added to the inventory subsystem by using the API and importing CSV files, or by running automated discovery in external environments via discovery plugins.

[0189] After discovering external assets and collecting the required data, asset analysis and migration 510 can be performed to create a migration project 535, one or more migration plans 540, and / or replicate migration assets 545. More specifically, once users have discovered their external assets, they can create a migration project 535, which groups related and interdependent assets for migration. Project composition is agnostic: users may wish to migrate applications or specific layers of infrastructure. Users can query the inventory for suggested groupings based on observed runtime dependencies or other metadata extracted from the source environment. Migration assets located in the inventory subsystem can then be added to the migration project. The migration project can be used to replicate all associated migration assets for migration. Migration assets within a project can be configured to reference replication policies in CSPI that describe how assets should be moved. Replication policies allow for the replication of full images or incremental asset snapshots, either manually or based on connectors, on demand or on a user-specified schedule. Users can also specify whether replicated data overwrites or augments previous snapshots to manage storage costs.

[0190] Users can manage their grouped inventory assets from within a project. For example, they can set a default replication policy, or refresh external assets from discovery. Within a project, users can create launch plans 540. A launch plan is a mapping of source assets to target resource types in CSPI, and the context in which to launch them, including compartments, subnets, and launch dependencies. For various reasons, users may want to create multiple launch plans for a single migration project. They may want to create an initial launch with minimal scale compute to simply test the post-migration functionality, then create another plan for performance testing, and yet another plan to dial in the right scale. Each plan can be launched in a different environment to ensure isolation.

[0191] When users create a new launch plan, they can instruct the cloud migration service to pre-populate the target resource selection with recommendations based on inventory and measurement metadata. For example, they may want the cloud migration service to select the target compute configuration shape using minimum size, average utilization, or peak utilization. Users will be able to override any target selection, delete individual assets from the launch, or select an existing CSPI instance if an out-of-band migration has already been performed. The plan will provide updated costs and other assessments (such as throttling impact) of the CSPI deployment when editing it, and highlight any potential compatibility or capacity issues. Users will be able to launch, restart (terminating the existing one and using the latest restart), and terminate from the launch plan.

[0192] Replication 545 of the migrated assets includes creating an asset in CSPI that replicates the asset in an external user environment (such as, for example, an on-premises environment). In some embodiments, this replication is performed in part by a replication plug-in that can manage the replication of external asset snapshots. This includes managing one or more full images and / or incremental virtual machine snapshots. Users indirectly control replication by defining replication policies. Each policy corresponds to a migration project and specifies the assets to be replicated into CSPI and the frequency of replication. Several workflows within the migration and replication control plane monitor replication policies, schedule replication tasks based on existing replication policies, and monitor the progress of each replication. During each replication execution, a snapshot of the asset is taken and imported into CSPI. Users enable the replication plug-in on their Cloud Bridge device by providing the required credentials and metadata via Cloud Bridge device setup. The installation process is handled by the Cloud Bridge device. After the replication plug-in is enabled, it registers with the replication service and begins polling for replication tasks using the replication service API.

[0193] Migration can be a long-running process and can include one or several test-launch iterations using various configurations. In some embodiments, these iterations can include continuously refreshing source data from the source environment before the final migration, as well as activating the migrated system within CSPI. For example, in embodiments where a user is migrating information from the source environment into CSPI (and specifically, into the user's tenancy in CSPI), the user can repeatedly discover and / or capture on-premises assets, and the migration plan can be generated during some or all of the discovery of on-premises assets. For example, in embodiments where a user changes one or more on-premises assets, these changes can be captured and / or discovered through repeated iterative discovery of these assets. In such embodiments, a migration can be planned that captures each of these versions of the user's assets. In some embodiments, only the final version of the asset is migrated, and in some embodiments, the user can control which version of the asset is replicated in CSPI.

[0194] In some embodiments, the migration plan includes evaluating the capabilities of the CSPI compared to the capabilities of the on-premises environment and / or on-premises assets. The evaluation includes determining whether and to what extent the on-premises capabilities differ from and / or exceed the capabilities of the CSPI. Based on this determination, the asset migration plan can be modified.

[0195] Specifically, for example, during the planning step, the capabilities of the user's on-premises VMs are identified, and one or more VM configurations (recommended) within the OCI are presented. This includes identifying the attributes of each on-premises VM, including hardware, capabilities, and actual usage metrics. Attributes may include the number of CPUs, average CPU usage, maximum CPU usage, memory, average memory usage, maximum memory usage, number of VNICs, number of GPUs, and / or network bandwidth.

[0196] Based on this information, a plurality of suggested OCI VM configuration specifications are presented. These VM configuration specifications can be generated and presented based in part on information related to the user, such as the user's preferences for optimal pricing or optimal performance.

[0197] The properties of the on-premises VM are compared with the identified properties of the OCI VM configuration specification, and a difference score is generated that characterizes the difference between the properties of the OCI VM configuration specification and the properties of the on-premises VM. When the difference score indicates that the difference between the properties of the OCI VM configuration specification and the on-premises VM is too great, an incompatibility error is generated.

[0198] The user-selected VM configuration specifications are combined to form a migration plan, which may take the form of a topographical representation of the migration plan.

[0199] Once the migration plan is complete, the replication step of the migration can be performed. In some embodiments, the replication step is performed once, and in other embodiments, the replication step can be repeated as the on-premises assets change and / or are modified. In some embodiments, the replication step can include creating one or more snapshots of the assets to be replicated and storing the snapshots. In some embodiments, the snapshots can be stored in a golden volume group (GVG). Copies of the snapshots stored in the GVG can be created, modified, and then used to create an executable stack, such as a terrain stack. In some embodiments, the executable stack can be provided to the user, and the user can modify the executable stack before executing it, thereby replicating the assets in CSPI, specifically in the user's lease in CSPI.

[0200] Verifying migration success 515 includes launching the target asset into a CSPI instance 550, verifying instance creation in CSPI 555, and marking the migration project as completed 560. Launching the target asset into the CSPI instance 550 includes the cloud migration service launching a compute instance to run hydration agents during the data replication. The target asset can be launched into the CSPI instance using a resource manager, such as Oracle Resource Manager (ORM). Hydration agents are pooled together based on replication location. To load balance replication processing across the object pool, hydration agents are automatically launched. These agents are then automatically terminated when they are idle and have no pending replication jobs. During the replication workflow, volume snapshots of the VM are stored in object storage. After the hydration agents write data to the block volumes, the snapshot data is deleted from object storage. During the replication workflow, a temporary VCN is created to provide connectivity to the object storage for the hydration agents. After all hydration agents are no longer active, the VCN is stopped. A set of block volumes exists in the user's tenancy throughout the lifetime of the migrated asset. A golden volume is created for each boot volume and data volume attached to the source asset (such as a VM). The golden volume is kept in sync with the snapshot created in the source environment. As part of each replication update, a new set of volumes is created and used to launch the compute instance into CSPI. The launch of the compute instance includes the launch of assets such as the VM (including compartments, subnets, and launch dependencies). The VM is replicated on the OCI instance. The user can then mark the project as complete. This action prevents the migration module from attempting to discover further changes to the source environment or suggesting new recommendations. After the project is marked as complete, the cloud migration service decouples the production environment from the migration workflow and archives the migrated inventory.

[0201] Figure 6 An exemplary embodiment of an architecture 600 that can be implemented for migration is depicted in FIG. Architecture 600 includes an external user environment 602 and a CSPI 604. External user environment 602 includes any environment distinct from CSPI 604. In some embodiments, external user environment 602 can include an on-premises environment and / or can include a CSPI that is separate from CSPI 602. CSPI 604 and external user environment 602 are communicatively coupled via a public network 606. Public network 606 can be a wired and / or wireless communication network and can include, for example, the public Internet.

[0202] The user environment 602 includes a virtual device 610 (e.g., Figures 4A-4CDetailed description), which may include a replication plug-in 612. The replication plug-in 608 is an application developed by the cloud migration service and deployed to the user's virtual device 610 by the cloud bridge service. The installation, registration, and lifecycle management of the replication plug-in 612 can be performed by the cloud bridge service. After the replication plug-in 612 is started, it registers with the replication control plane 615 and repeatedly polls the replication control plane 615 for replication tasks. Each task describes a single asset to be replicated (such as a VMware VM), metadata for the corresponding asset source (such as vCenter), and a destination in the object store 618 (for example, an object storage bucket for uploading disk snapshots). The replication plug-in 608 uses the metadata to retrieve the asset source credentials directly from the CSPI vault or data store; the replication control plane 615 does not access the credentials. The credentials are only maintained in memory and are retrieved when the replication plug-in 608 is restarted.

[0203] During task execution, the replication plug-in 608 periodically updates the task status and progress of the replication plug-in 608, which are then aggregated by the replication workflow and propagated to the user interface. The progress is reported to the user interface as part of the overall migration iteration progress. Replication task scheduling is performed by the replication control plane 615 according to the replication policy specified by the customer during migration setup, such as Figure 5 As discussed, policies specify which customer assets should be migrated, how they are mapped to CSPI assets, and the frequency of migration. A separate replication task can be created for each asset in a single iteration of the migration. This allows for maximum replication concurrency when multiple Cloud Bridge devices are connected to the same asset source and can execute replication tasks for the same migration in parallel.

[0204] Given the cyclic nature of replication, the replication plug-in 608 will perform incremental snapshots whenever possible. Specifically, if the asset source allows the replication plug-in 608 to calculate and access asset disk changes since the most recent imported snapshot, only these changes, along with the corresponding metadata, will be imported into CSPI 604 by the plug-in and subsequently used by the replication server 620 to create the latest golden volume group (the volume group corresponding to the most recent imported snapshot of the customer asset's disk as is). This optimization significantly improves performance and reduces costs. It should be noted that the replication plug-in 608 is an optional part of the replication component / workflow. In some cases, for data centers where migration and replication services can access assets directly (e.g., AWS Elastic BlockStore direct API) and disk snapshots can be imported directly into CSPI 604, the replication plug-in 608 is not required.

[0205] CSPI 604 includes a user lease 622 and a service lease 624. User lease 622 includes object storage 618, replication server 620, and block storage 625. Object storage 618 is an internet-scale storage platform that provides reliable and cost-effective data persistence for persisting assets during replication. In some cases, object storage 618 can store large amounts of unstructured data. This unstructured data can be of any content type, including analytical data and rich content such as images and videos. For example, an asset analytics API can be provided to users to help them aggregate asset metadata in object storage 618 to gain insights into their external environment (e.g., on-premises). Replication server 620 is a virtual machine that, in some embodiments, can read one or more asset snapshots and write these snapshots to one or more volumes. In some embodiments, this can actually save the snapshots to one or more desired locations. In some embodiments, the location or locations where the assets are written can be volumes corresponding to one or more properties or all or part of each asset. In some embodiments, and after some modifications, these volumes can then be used to launch one or more assets in CSPI 604 that are identical to the source assets. Block storage 625 is a storage for structured storage and / or structured data and is used to persist migrated assets after replication. In some embodiments, block storage can, for example, store data in one or a few equally sized blocks. These blocks can be stored in the underlying physical storage in a manner optimized for fast access and retrieval.

[0206] The service lease 624 includes a device control plane 630, a migration and replication control plane 632, a replication control plane 615, an inventory control plane 634, and a discovery control plane 640. The device control plane 630 includes a customer-facing API deployed in an overlay layer that provides management and orchestration of the cross-cloud bridge architecture (such as agent registration and agent lifecycle management), as described in detail in the following sections. Figures 4A-4C described. The migration and replication control plane 632 is the primary endpoint for all tasks related to migration planning, migration execution, and replication. More specifically, the migration and replication control plane 632 includes a customer-facing API deployed in the overlay layer that is responsible for managing migration resources, scheduling and triggering asset migrations, and coordinating asset replication. The replication control plane 615 includes a customer-facing API deployed in the overlay layer that is responsible for replicating one or several source assets. The inventory control plane 634 includes a customer-facing API deployed in the overlay layer that is responsible for managing assets in the inventory and their metadata. The discovery control plane 640 includes a customer-facing API deployed in the overlay layer that is responsible for configuring discovery and coordinating discovery plugins.

[0207] Discovery and inventory control for remote resource integration with cloud services

[0208] like Figure 7 As shown in [ ], a general workflow 700 for using the discovery and inventory service includes the following, which is described in detail herein. First, a user writes an Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy to allow all components of the cloud migration service to operate on the customer's tenancy. An IAM policy is a document with a set of rules that define permissions for actions, regardless of the method used by the user to perform the actions. At block 705, the user initializes the inventory as a means of joining the inventory service. At block 710, the user can decide to upload assets directly to the inventory using a CSV (block 715) (or grant permissions to the migration user). At block 720, the user creates a Cloud Bridge external site, which is a container (pool) for devices in the external environment. At block 725, the user deploys a remote agent from the OVA, which will act as the discovery host in the external environment. The actions of discovering assets will be executed from the deployed virtual device. At block 730, the user creates an asset source, which contains the location of a service for accessing asset metadata from a source within the external environment, along with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository (such as KMS, an Oracle Cloud service for storing customer-provided credentials required to query external asset sources). At block 735, if the user needs to retrieve asset information on a regular basis, they create a discovery schedule or policy (block 740) and assign it to the created asset source (block 745). At block 750, the user creates a discovery job (triggered manually or via a schedule) to retrieve asset metadata. Once the discovery job is complete, at block 755, the user can see their discovered assets within the inventory. The user can then use the inventory to search and analyze all imported and discovered assets (e.g., to plan and execute migrations).

[0209] Discover

[0210] Discovery involves understanding the user's environment. For example, a user may want to discover its resources or assets, such as virtual machines that are part of an on-premises VMware environment. In the context of cloud migration services, asset discovery identifies and collects metadata for assets from the external environment. Discovery then represents the relevant metadata in inventory assets to facilitate the migration process. In some cases, the discovery process collects historical metrics for CSPI inventory and real-time metrics for CSPI monitoring. This data can help provide meaningful recommendations for sizing migration assets based on the current use of the assets. The types of metrics collected from assets can include: (i) historical metrics collected automatically; and (ii) monitoring or real-time metrics, which are more accurate than historical metrics and use monitoring services.

[0211] In order to use discovery, the user creates a source of assets (i.e., an asset source or source environment). However, before the user creates an asset source and runs discovery, the user will need to install a remote agent and register the agent with the migration environment within CSPI. Figure 4A and 4C As described above, an agent is a specialized software component that serves as a platform for deploying cloud service functions to interact with external resources. Each agent has a corresponding agent identifier (e.g., a CSPI identifier used to identify the asset as a CSPI 402 resource), and this identifier is associated with an external site identifier (e.g., externalSiteId) of the external environment in which the agent is deployed. The external site identifier is used to identify the external environment in which the external resources and agent are deployed.

[0212] Installation of the agent may include the following exemplary workflow steps. The CSPI console navigation menu may be opened, and a remote connection may be selected. The user may select the environment name link from the list of possible environments in which the user wishes to install the remote agent. On the environment details page, the user may select the options to download the agent VM and download the remote agent OVA file. In the Download Agent VM Information box, the user may select the appropriate remote agent from the agent list and download the appropriate remote agent. The user may then log in to the external environment's server virtualization client (such as the vSphere client) and deploy the remote agent OVA file, which will execute a script to create the remote agent VM on the external environment. Once the remote agent VM is created on the external environment, the device may be started by selecting the remote agent VM under the object pool. To verify that the remote agent VM is running, the user may select to launch a web console under the VM. A properly running agent will display usage messages and a login prompt on the console.

[0213] Once installed, the agent can be registered with the source environment. Agent registration can include the following exemplary workflow steps. A user can log in to a server virtualization client (such as the vSphere Client) in the external environment and select a device VM. To identify the IP address of the remote agent device, the server virtualization client's web console can be launched by selecting the virtual machine. The console will then display or provide the user with the IP address of the remote agent device. The user can then open the CSPI console navigation menu and select Cloud Services (such as Migration). Under Cloud Services, the user selects Remote Connection and, from the list of possible environments, selects the link for the environment in which the user wants to register the remote agent device. The user then performs registration by selecting the Register Agent toggle button in the user interface. The user is then presented with a registration page where they can name the agent and provide agent information, such as the remote agent device's IP address. Once the name and information are entered, the user is redirected to their lease and agent registration confirmation page in the CSPI console. The user can then confirm the completion of the registration process. Agent details may be visible in the CSPI console. After a short duration, the agent heartbeat will display as "Healthy" and the status will be "Active." The user can now use the source environment to discover assets.

[0214] During the registration process, the user is directed via redirects between various components in the cloud infrastructure and the external environment (e.g., between the local (web console of the server virtualization client) and the cloud infrastructure console (CSPI console)) to register the agent in the external environment. It should be understood that the registration process can have multiple workflows. For example, the first workflow can start from the local device console of the device (virtual machine) running the agent and use a combination of a public / private key pair as an identifier and the cloud infrastructure as an intermediate trust source for user authentication to register the agent with the cloud infrastructure. The second workflow can start at the cloud infrastructure console and use a combination of a public / private key pair as an identifier and the cloud infrastructure as an intermediate trust source for user authentication to register the agent with the cloud infrastructure. During the registration process, the agent cannot directly access the control plane for setup because it does not have an identity (e.g., a CloudID such as an OCID). Instead, a public / private key pair is used to provide an identity for the agent until a cloud infrastructure identifier can be obtained from the cloud infrastructure. This has the following advantages: no secrets are stored in the control plane of the proxy on the cloud infrastructure; no secrets are transferred between the proxy deployed in the external environment and the control plane of the proxy on the cloud infrastructure; users do not need to manage / distribute secrets to the virtual machine / device running the proxy; and private keys associated with the proxy never leave the virtual machine / device. Furthermore, because the proxy has no identity, there is no trust between the virtual machine and the proxy. Instead, the techniques described herein use the identity of the registered user at the cloud infrastructure console (e.g., authenticated via identity SOUP) as an intermediate trust source to register the proxy with the cloud infrastructure.

[0215] Once the remote agent is active, the user can proceed to create an asset source. The Asset Source resource allows the user to specify where asset metadata should be read from and the credentials used to access the metadata. The Asset Source resource also exposes information about the state of any connections established within the external environment to read the user's asset metadata. The external environment access credentials required by the discovery service to access the user's asset metadata can be stored in a data repository within the user's tenancy, such as a KMS. Before the credentials can be used to create an asset source, the user can authorize the discovery service to read the created credentials through an IAM policy.

[0216] Creation of an asset source may include the following exemplary workflow steps. A user may open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, the user may select Discovery and then select Create Asset Source. In the creation interface, the user may be prompted to enter information about the asset source, such as the name, vCenter endpoint, compartment, and target compartment, as well as information about the remote connection, such as the source environment. The user may then enter discovery credentials to perform one of the following actions: to read metadata for the asset from the source environment, the user may select an existing secret and select a vault and secret containing login credentials for a server virtualization client (such as a vSphere client); and / or create a secret and enter a username and password for login credentials for a server virtualization client (such as a vSphere client). In some cases, the user may use their copied credentials to perform one of the following actions: select Discovery Credentials to continue using the selected discovery credentials; select Use Existing Secret and select a vault for the discovery credentials; and / or create a secret and enter a username and password for the discovery credentials.

[0217] In the creation interface, the user may be further prompted to select one of the following to execute / schedule the discovery job: to perform on-demand or manual asset discovery, select "No discovery schedule"; to use an existing discovery schedule, select "Existing schedule"; and / or to create a discovery schedule, select "Create schedule". Users can keep asset information up to date as a recurring task by using the discovery scheduling mechanism. After creating a discovery schedule, users can attach or detach it to an existing asset source to start or stop scheduling discovery jobs for external asset discovery and metadata collection. Under the "Metrics" section of the interface, options for collecting historical metrics and real-time metrics are enabled by default, but can be toggled on and off by the user. The user can then perform the creation of the asset source based on the input and information provided in the creation interface of the console. Under the Connections section of the console navigation menu, the user can view each connector to the source environment. These connectors are automatically instantiated using the discovery plug-in in the external environment. The connector changes its status to active (e.g., Active) after verifying its connection and credentials using a centralized management utility (such as a vCenter server). Figure 6 ). The user can now proceed to create a discovery job or work request for the asset source. In some cases, the user can return to the console navigation menu to move the source asset to another compartment, delete the source asset, or edit the source asset (including asset source information, discovery credentials, replication credentials, discovery timeline, metrics information) and save the changes.

[0218] Creation of a discovery work request can include the following exemplary workflow steps. A user can open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, the user can select Discovery and then select Create Asset Source for Discovery. In the creation interface, the user can be prompted to select an active asset source from a list of asset sources. The asset source details page within the browser can then open, and the user can view the active connectors that connect the discovery plug-in with the source environment. The user can then select Run Discovery to create and run a discovery job using the selected active asset source. Under Resources within the creation interface, the user can select Work Requests and find the discovery job. The user can then wait for the status of the work request to become successful. Additionally, under Resources within the creation interface, the user can select Assets to view the mapping between assets (such as VMs in the source environment) and the discovered assets.

[0219] Figure 8 A high-level diagram of an overall discovery architecture 800 according to various embodiments is shown. Table 1 provides a brief description of the components and terms used with reference to the high-level diagram, which are also described in detail herein.

[0220] Table 1:

[0221]

[0222]

[0223]

[0224] The following is a list of example data flows for a discovery service. Each part of the flow is potentially referenced by a number in parentheses. Figure 8 The connection channels in the overall discovery architecture 800 are shown in FIG.

[0225] Discover CP typical request data flow:

[0226] 1. The client sends an HTTPS request to SPLAT (1)

[0227] 2. SPLAT performs authentication / authorization (not shown, this is owned by another team and is standard)

[0228] 3. SPLAT forwards the request to the load balancer via HTTPS (2)

[0229] 4. The load balancer forwards the request via HTTPS to one of the discovery control plane hosts (3)

[0230] 5. Request to read / update the discovery control plane in / from ATP via HTTPS (4)

[0231] 6. Success / failure is returned to the client (1)

[0232] Discover the typical CP synchronization request data flow:

[0233] 1. User sends an HTTPS request to SPLAT (1)

[0234] 2. SPLAT performs authentication / authorization (not shown, this is owned by another team and is standard)

[0235] 3. SPLAT forwards the request to the load balancer via HTTPS (2)

[0236] 4. The load balancer forwards the request via HTTPS to one of the discovery control plane hosts (3)

[0237] 5. Discovery control plane API validates requests and resources (specific to each request)

[0238] 6. Discover the control plane API in ATP via HTTPS to create / read from ATP

[0239] Update / delete / list corresponding resources and / or data(13)

[0240] 7. Success / failure and response data are returned to the client (1)

[0241] Discover the typical asynchronous request data flow of CP:

[0242] 1. User sends an HTTPS request to SPLAT (1)

[0243] 2. SPLAT performs authentication / authorization (not shown, this is the responsibility of another team and is standard)

[0244] 3. SPLAT forwards the request to the load balancer via HTTPS (2)

[0245] 4. The load balancer forwards the request via HTTPS to one of the discovery control plane hosts (3)

[0246] 5. Discovery control plane API validates requests and resources (specific to each request)

[0247] 6. Discovery control plane API registers new work requests in the Workflow Kiev DB via HTTPS (15)

[0248] 7. The created work request id is returned to the client (1)

[0249] 8. The workflow is executed in the worker in the background:

[0250] 1. Discovery control plane worker picks up workflow from workflow service via HTTPS (17)

[0251] 2. Discovery control plane worker gets (deque) from Kiev DB via HTTPS

[0252] Workflow Parameters (16)

[0253] 3. Discovery control plane workers report workflow step execution status to the workflow service via HTTPS (17)

[0254] 4. Discovery control plane worker updates work request lifecycle status in Kiev DB via HTTPS (16)

[0255] Discover CP asset source and create data process:

[0256] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical synchronization request data flow

[0257] 1. The user-provided external site CloudID is verified against OCB CP (6)

[0258] 2. The user-provided Inventory CloudID is verified against the inventory service in the user's territory (18)

[0259] Discover the CP asset source and read data process:

[0260] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical synchronization request data flow

[0261] 1. The asset source CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0262] Discover CP asset source and update data process:

[0263] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical synchronization request data flow

[0264] Discover the CP asset source and delete data process:

[0265] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical asynchronous request data flow

[0266] 1. The asset source CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0267] Discover CP asset source list data process:

[0268] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical synchronization request data flow

[0269] Asset source refresh data process:

[0270] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical asynchronous request data flow

[0271] 1. The asset source CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0272] Asset Source Attach Discovery Timeline Data Process:

[0273] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical asynchronous request data flow

[0274] 1. The asset source CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0275] 2. The asset source is verified via HTTPS. No discovery schedule is attached in ATP (13)

[0276] Asset source separation discovery timeline data flow:

[0277] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical asynchronous request data flow

[0278] 1. The asset source CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0279] 2. The asset source is verified via HTTPS and the discovery timeline is attached in ATP (13)

[0280] Discover CP Discovery Schedule Creation Data Process:

[0281] 1. Reference: Execute the typical synchronization request data flow of the discovery CP

[0282] Discover CP, discover schedule and read data process:

[0283] 1. Reference: Execute the typical synchronization request data flow of the discovery CP

[0284] Discovery CP discovery schedule update data process:

[0285] 1. Reference: Execute the typical synchronization request data flow of the discovery CP

[0286] 1. Discover that the schedule CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0287] 2. (It is found that the schedule changes are applied to the background tasks in a timely manner)

[0288] Discovery CP discovery schedule deletion data process:

[0289] 1. Reference: Execute the typical synchronization request data flow of the discovery CP

[0290] 1. Discover that the schedule CloudID is verified to exist via HTTPS and is correctly identified in ATP (13)

[0291] 2. Schedules are separated from all sources in ATP via HTTPS (13)

[0292] Discover CP discovery schedule list data process:

[0293] 1. Reference: Execute the typical synchronization request data flow of the discovery CP

[0294] The plug-in discovers typical data flow polling tasks and configurations from CP:

[0295] 1. The plugin makes a request to the discovery CP to obtain tasks or configurations

[0296] 1. Refer to: Discover CP Typical Synchronization Request Data Flow 2. If a new or updated source configuration is received, perform the following steps once for each new or updated credential:

[0297] 1. The plugin requests the user-provided credentials from the KMS service in the user's domain (14)

[0298] 2. The credentials are returned to the plugin and stored in memory (this happens when the plugin is running as a process in the CB device, without network)

[0299] The plugin discovers assets and pushes data to the inventory service data flow:

[0300] 1. Plug-in acquisition tasks and configuration

[0301] 1. Reference: Plugin Discovery CP Typical Data Process Polling Tasks and Configuration

[0302] 2. The plugin retrieves asset metadata from the vCenter in the user's external environment via an HTTPS connection (10, the network is completely controlled by the user)

[0303] 3. Metadata is converted into the appropriate format (this happens in the plugin, no network)

[0304] 4. The plugin sends an HTTPS request with tracking information to the discovery service

[0305] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical synchronization request data flow

[0306] 5. The plugin sends an HTTPS request with metadata to the inventory service (8)

[0307] 6. The plugin executes the task status update request authenticated by the resource subject provided by the cloud bridge to the discovery CP

[0308] 1. Reference: Discover CP typical request data flow

[0309] 7. Tasks and overall job status are updated in the Discovery CP (13)

[0310] The plugin collects real-time metrics and pushes them into the monitoring service data flow:

[0311] 1. Plug-in acquisition configuration

[0312] 1. Reference: Plugin Discovery CP Typical Data Process Polling Tasks and Configuration

[0313] 2. The plugin retrieves asset metrics from vCenter in the user's external environment via HTTPS (10, the network is completely controlled by the user)

[0314] 3. Convert the metrics into the appropriate format (this happens in the plugin, no network)

[0315] 4. The plugin sends an HTTPS request with metrics to the monitoring service (9)

[0316] The plugin collects historical metrics and pushes them into the monitoring service data flow:

[0317] 1. Plug-in acquisition configuration

[0318] 1. Reference: Plugin Discovery CP Typical Data Process Polling Tasks and Configuration

[0319] 2. The plugin retrieves asset metrics from vCenter in the user's external environment via HTTPS (10, the network is completely controlled by the user)

[0320] 3. Convert the metrics into the appropriate format (this happens in the plugin, no network)

[0321] 4. Historical metrics are pushed to the inventory service and stored as part of the metadata (8)

[0322] Service Operator Troubleshooting Process (coverage):

[0323] 1. The service engineer logs into the SecEdge Overlay Bastion.

[0324] 2. Establish an SSH connection to the bastion host (11)

[0325] 3. The bastion host forwards the connection to the service host (12)

[0326] in stock

[0327] The inventory contains a collection of assets and associated metadata. This data is collected during external asset discovery, and users can browse discovered assets and initiate planned services, such as migration processes. To use the inventory for these services, users must access the inventory to import, view, and search for assets. However, before users can access the inventory to import, view, and search for assets, they must create an inventory, install a remote agent, register the agent with the migration environment within CSPI, and run a discovery job to populate the inventory with assets.

[0328] Creating an inventory can include the following example workflow steps. A user can open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, the user can select Inventory and then select Create Inventory. The system can then automatically create the inventory. A tenant can only have one inventory in a region, which is created during the inventory initialization process. The inventory resource is a standard CSPI resource, but with the added restriction that there can only be a maximum of one inventory at a given time. Limiting inventories to one per tenant is primarily for two reasons: (i) It helps eliminate duplicate assets within the tenancy. Avoiding duplicate assets helps downstream services, such as Migration and Replication, avoid replicating the same VM data multiple times and creating multiple CSPI resources for the same asset. (ii) This will provide users with a global view of their assets across different external environments (multi-cloud services) in the future. However, it should be understood that this approach also provides the flexibility to have multiple inventories if needed. The inventory resource supports standard CSPI CRUDL operations, meaning that users can delete their inventory. The delete process removes all user data and schemas that exist in the database (such as ATP). The user can then recreate the inventory, generating a new inventory cloud ID.

[0329] Generally speaking, assets can have the following states: (i) ACTIVE - the asset is discovered in the external environment. (ii) DELETED - the external asset has been deleted from the external environment. The discovery service deletes the asset after determining that the external resource it represents has been deleted. In some cases, users may only be allowed to delete an asset if it was manually imported (e.g., using a CSV file) or if there is no asset source associated with the asset (if one exists, the discovery service may recreate it). In other cases, users can still delete assets from the UI / SDK / CLI as long as they have permission to use the discovery plugin. However, if the asset still exists in the on-premises environment, the discovery plugin will recreate the same asset with a different cloud ID. If an asset is deleted using the Synchronize Delete Asset API, it will be marked with a "DELETED" state. The state in the inventory eventually matches the state of the physical asset; however, outdated states may exist due to connectivity issues that make the asset inaccessible. Users can check the state of the discovered asset source to identify outdated assets. CSPI also tracks the last updated property of an asset, potentially identifying outdated assets. Deleted assets may initially be retained as tombstones and removed after a predetermined period of time.

[0330] Viewing inventory can include the following exemplary workflow steps. A user can open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, the user can select Inventory and then select Inventory Assets. The Inventory Assets page lists all assets discovered by the asset discovery plug-in from the external environment. The listed assets contain metadata collected by the discovery plug-in from the external environment assets. In order to view the metadata of an asset, the user can select an interface toggle button (such as a down arrow for an active asset) and expand the information about the asset. From the action menu for the asset, the user can select View Details to see more information about the asset. Under Resources, the user can select to view real-time metrics such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, etc. Remote agent devices collect this metric information. Under Resources, the user can select Historical Metrics to view metrics collected by centralized management utilities (such as VMware vCenter).

[0331] In the cloud migration service, users can choose to import assets from a CSV file instead of setting up a source environment. In this scenario, users cannot take advantage of the automated discovery and replication modules. Manually importing assets into the inventory may include the following example workflow steps. Users can open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, users can select Inventory and then select Inventory Assets. Users can choose to import assets and optionally download a CSV template. Users can then use the import interface to edit the CSV template to add asset information for the assets that the user wants to import into the inventory and save the CSV template as a CSV file. Users can then execute / upload the CSV file to import the assets into the inventory. The import of assets may take some time, for example, several minutes, and users can find the asset status changed to Active under the Status column on the Inventory Assets page. Users can also navigate under Inventory, select Work Requests, and view new import jobs and their status. In order for users to modify the entries of inventory assets, users can update the CSV file and upload the CSV file again.

[0332] Each asset imported into the inventory (either manually or automatically through discovery) will have the constraint that the tuple of external identifier and source identifier must be unique across the entire inventory (a deduplication constraint). However, it is possible for an asset with the same external identifier to have multiple representations as identified by different sources. For example, a user may choose to manually import an asset from a CSV source that is also discovered from a VMware source, resulting in the creation of two different assets. Consuming the asset may be when the logic deduplication is performed for such instances. For example, two assets may be presented to the user and the user selects one of them. Alternatively, the deduplication logic can handle more complex scenarios, both for actual deduplication and for handling different possible asset information sources for the same asset.

[0333] Assets in the inventory are treated as CSPI resources with CloudID, so they inherit standard CSPI features such as permissions, compartments, and tags. Users write policies to control access to create, update, and other operations. The discovery plugin uses resource principals (RPs) belonging to the customer to create, update, and read assets, so users will have to provide management permissions to the plugin's dynamic groups. The following are examples of such permissions (each permission may be prefixed with CB_INVENTORY_):

[0334] CHECK-ASSET_INSPECT

[0335] Read - ASSET_READ, ASSET_METRICS_READ + all of the above

[0336] Use - ASSET_UPDATE, ASSET_MOVE+ASSET_IMPORT+all of the above

[0337] Management - ASSET_CREATE, ASSET_DISCOVERY_UPDATE + ASSET_METRICS_CREATE + all of the above

[0338] This restriction helps avoid any conflicts that might occur between plugins' update calls for the same asset. In the metaaverb mapping above, a user with the ASSET_UPDATE_TAGS permission can call the Update Asset API to update only the tags, while plugins with the ASSET_UPDATE permission will be able to call the Update API to update the asset's complete metadata.

[0339] One of the core features of the inventory is the ability to explore and analyze asset metadata. It's anticipated that users may have over 10,000 assets per data center, so the need for search functionality is significant. In some cases, the inventory may provide one or more APIs for searching assets and analyzing metadata. Searching inventory assets may include the following exemplary workflow steps. A user may open the console navigation menu and select a service, such as Migration. Under Migration, the user may select Inventory, then Inventory Assets. The Inventory Assets page lists all assets discovered from the external environment by asset discovery. The listed assets contain metadata collected from the assets in the external environment by the discovery plugin. A user interface may be used to call a query service (such as the RQS service) to list the user's assets, supporting free-text search syntax from the inventory. For example, a search box (such as a free-form query text field) may be provided in the inventory asset interface, which uses the query service and syntax to list assets for the user. In some cases, one or more compartments and the type of resource may be selected in the search box. In some cases, the user may select a search feature from the interface to retrieve a list of all assets based on a compartment ID.

[0340] The user can then provide a query to search all the assets of the compartment by using the Quick Start Query option. In the Quick Start Query option, the user selects the desired <fieldname>Make a query (where the query field names can appear under custom filters), and the user selects <value>To complete the query, you can use the Editor Mode option to provide a query that searches for all assets in a compartment. In the Editor Mode option, you specify the conditions for your search in the search box. For example, you can use a where clause to apply conditions that filter the results returned by the search. You can specify one or more conditional statements. In a query, a condition consists of: <fieldname> ； <operation>;as well as <value> 。

[0341] <fieldname>Keywords are resource attributes, <operation>and the selected resource attributes <value>The resource attributes will be evaluated based on that resource. Each field is associated with a field type. The field type tells the user the expected format of any value in that field. The user can use <operation>The type depends on the field type. In the query condition, <operation>It is used in the statement <value>comparison operators. <value>Keywords are user-specified <fieldname>The search is based on <operation>Evaluates whether the specified attribute of the selected resource type matches <value>Once a query is executed via the quick-start query option or the editor mode option, the user can then view and save a list of assets based on the set query. To instantly populate the list of discovered assets, the user can select Saved Searches and choose a query from previously saved queries. In some cases, the inventory will also integrate with other query systems and / or query languages (such as SQL and RQS) to support searching for assets and relationships via these systems and query languages.

[0342] Analysis of inventory assets can include basic viewing, sorting, filtering, and saving operations. In addition to these basic functions, an aggregation API can be implemented to apply aggregation operators such as max, min, count, and groupby to asset metadata to help users analyze their inventory. For example, users can run queries to find the total main memory allocated to all VMs, or the total number of CPU or GPU cores used by each asset type, or the number of different types of OS used. This type of analysis will help users make the best decisions about how to carry out services (such as migration planning and execution).

[0343] Figure 9 A high-level diagram of an overall inventory architecture 900 according to various embodiments is shown. Table 1 provides a brief description of the components and terminology used with reference to this high-level diagram, which are also described in detail herein. The inventory service is a control plane service and can be used in the overlay layer. The control plane can use a database (such as an ATP database) to store a persistent list of imported assets and their metadata. In some cases, two types of databases are used in inventory, and both may be regional: (i) Tenant database: This database is used to store user metadata, such as assets and metrics. Each tenant can use a single schema created during the user onboarding process that stores metadata for all tenants. In addition to metadata, this schema also contains feature view (PG view) tables (vertices and edges). PG views allow users to model data as a graph on a given database. It allows data entities (such as assets) to be vertices and the relationships between them to be edges in the graph. Graph information is stored in metadata tables in the database. The graph can be queried using a query language (such as PGQL graph queries), and queries on the feature graph views are translated into queries that are run on the database. (ii) Service Database: This database is used to store tenant pluggable database (PDB) configurations, such as JDBC URLs, schema names, and so on. All instances can cache the service ATP configuration locally to avoid any additional database calls. The Inventory service exposes an API layer (e.g., Inventory Service API) for creating, retrieving, searching, and analyzing assets on both types of databases. Some operations, such as join (create) and inventory, as well as CSV import and export, are asynchronous and use standard work requests against the database.

[0344] The following is a sample data flow listing for the Inventory Service. Each part of the flow is potentially referenced by a number in parentheses. Figure 9 The connection channels in the overall discovery architecture 900 are shown in FIG.

[0345] Inventory asset creation process

[0346] 1. The client sends a request to SPLAT (1)

[0347] 2. SPLAT performs authentication / authorization / auditing / tagging / metrics / throttling (not shown)

[0348] 3. SPLAT forwards the request to the load balancer (2) via HTTPS.

[0349] 4. The load balancer forwards the request to one of the inventory API servers (3).

[0350] 5. The request is processed and data is read from / written to the ATP DB via HTTPS (5).

[0351] Inventory asset read / update / delete process

[0352] 1. The client sends a request to SPLAT (1)

[0353] 2. SPLAT performs authentication / authorization / auditing / tagging / metrics / throttling (not shown)

[0354] 3. SPLAT forwards the request to the load balancer (2) via HTTPS.

[0355] 4. The load balancer forwards the request to one of the inventory API servers (3).

[0356] 5. Processing is requested and data is read from / written to the ATP DB via HTTPS (5).

[0357] Discover and inventory technology

[0358] Figure 10 Depicted is a simplified flowchart 1000 depicting discovery and inventory control techniques for integrating with remote resources of a cloud service, according to various embodiments. Figure 10 The processes described in the can be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the corresponding system, hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device). Figure 10 The techniques presented in and described below are intended to be illustrative and non-limiting. Figure 10 The various processing steps that occur in a particular order or sequence are described, but this is not intended to be limiting. In some alternative embodiments, these steps can be performed in a different order, or some steps can be performed in parallel.

[0359] At block 1005, a remote agent device is deployed to a user's external environment. The remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in.

[0360] At block 1010 , an asset source is created that specifies the location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, as well as references to credentials stored in a data repository.

[0361] In some cases, in response to creating the asset source, a connector is generated between the discovery plug-in and the location of the external environment. Asset metadata for the external asset is retrieved using the connector. In some cases, use of the connector includes using an API to retrieve asset metadata for the external asset.

[0362] At block 1015, a discovery policy is created for discovering external assets within an asset source. In some cases, the discovery policy is a schedule that identifies when a computing system performs discovery jobs.

[0363] At block 1020 , a discovery job is generated for retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source.

[0364] At block 1025, a discovery job is executed to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy. Executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata. The inventory contains an asset collection that includes the asset metadata for the external assets.

[0365] In some cases, the inventory is generated on a cloud infrastructure that communicates with a remote agent device.

[0366] At block 1030 , the collection of assets within the inventory and associated asset metadata are provided to the user.

[0367] In some cases, providing the collection of assets within the inventory and the associated asset metadata to the user includes displaying the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata to the user in a graphical user interface. In some cases, an asset analytics API is also provided to the user to help the user aggregate the asset metadata to gain insights into the user's external environment (e.g., an on-premises deployment environment).

[0368] In some cases, once the asset collection and associated asset metadata become at least part of the inventory, a query regarding the asset metadata can be received from a user, the query can be executed on the inventory, and results of the query can be provided to the user based on execution of the query.

[0369] In some cases, once the asset collection and associated asset metadata become at least part of the inventory, a migration project can be generated based on one or more assets within the asset collection and the associated asset metadata, and migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure can be performed based on the migration project.

[0370] Descriptive System

[0371] As noted above, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a specific type of cloud computing. IaaS can be configured to provide virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the Internet). In the IaaS model, a cloud computing provider can host infrastructure components (e.g., servers, storage devices, network nodes (e.g., hardware), deployment software, platform virtualization (e.g., hypervisor layer), etc.). In some cases, IaaS providers can also supply various services to accompany these infrastructure components (example services include billing software, monitoring software, logging software, load balancing software, and clustering software, etc.). Therefore, since these services may be policy-driven, IaaS users can implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance.

[0372] In some cases, IaaS users can access resources and services over a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet and can use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining elements of the application stack. For example, users can log in to the IaaS platform to create virtual machines (VMs), install an operating system (OS) on each VM, deploy middleware such as a database, create storage buckets for workloads and backups, and even install enterprise software into that VM. Users can then use the provider's services to perform a variety of functions, including balancing network traffic, troubleshooting application problems, monitoring performance, managing disaster recovery, and more.

[0373] In most cases, the cloud computing model will require the involvement of a cloud provider. A cloud provider may, but need not, specialize in providing (e.g., provisioning, renting, selling) IaaS third-party services. An entity may also choose to deploy a private cloud, thereby becoming its own infrastructure service provider.

[0374] In some examples, IaaS deployment is the process of placing a new application or a new version of an application onto a prepared application server or the like. It may also include the process of preparing the server (e.g., installing libraries, daemons, etc.). This is typically managed by the cloud provider, below the hypervisor layer (e.g., servers, storage, network hardware, and virtualization). Thus, the user may be responsible for handling (OS), middleware, and / or application deployment (e.g., on a self-service virtual machine (e.g., that can be launched on demand)).

[0375] In some examples, IaaS provisioning can refer to obtaining computers or virtual hosts for use, and even installing required libraries or services on them. In most cases, deployment does not include provisioning, and provisioning may need to be performed first.

[0376] In some cases, there are two distinct challenges with IaaS provisioning. First, there is the initial challenge of provisioning the initial set of infrastructure before anything is running. Second, once everything has been provisioned, there is the challenge of evolving the existing infrastructure (e.g., adding new services, changing services, removing services, etc.). In some cases, both of these challenges can be addressed by enabling configuration that defines the infrastructure in a declarative manner. In other words, the infrastructure (e.g., which components are required and how they interact) can be defined by one or more configuration files. Thus, the overall topology of the infrastructure (e.g., which resources depend on which other resources, and how they work together) can be described in a declarative manner. In some cases, once the topology is defined, workflows can be generated that create and / or manage the different components described in the configuration files.

[0377] In some examples, the infrastructure can have many interconnected elements. For example, there may be one or more virtual private clouds (VPCs) (e.g., potential on-demand pools of configurable and / or shared computing resources), also referred to as a core network. In some examples, one or more inbound / outbound traffic group rules can also be provided to define how to set up inbound / outbound traffic for the network and one or more virtual machines (VMs). Other infrastructure elements such as load balancers, databases, etc. can also be provided. The infrastructure can evolve gradually as more and more infrastructure elements are desired and / or added.

[0378] In some cases, continuous deployment techniques can be employed to enable deployment of infrastructure code across various virtual computing environments. Furthermore, the described techniques can enable infrastructure management within these environments. In some examples, a service team can write code that is intended to be deployed to one or more, but typically many, different production environments (e.g., across various geographic locations, sometimes across the world). However, in some examples, the infrastructure on which the code will be deployed must first be set up. In some cases, provisioning can be done manually, resources can be provisioned using a provisioning tool, and / or code can be deployed using a deployment tool once the infrastructure is provisioned.

[0379] Figure 11 1 is a block diagram 1100 illustrating an example schema for an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1102 can be communicatively coupled to a secure host lease 1104 that can include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1106 and a secure host subnet 1108. In some examples, the service operator 1102 can use one or more client computing devices, which can be portable handheld devices (e.g., Cellular phones, computing tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or wearable devices (e.g., Google head-mounted display), running software (such as Microsoft Windows ) and / or various mobile operating systems (such as iOS, Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry 8, Palm OS, etc.), and supports Internet, email, short message service (SMS), Alternatively, the client computing device may be a general-purpose personal computer, including, for example, a computer running various versions of Microsoft Apple The client computing device may be a personal computer and / or laptop computer running various commercially available or UNIX-like operating systems, including but not limited to any of the various GNU / Linux operating systems (such as, for example, Google Chrome OS). Alternatively or additionally, the client computing device may be any other electronic device, such as a thin client computer, an Internet-enabled gaming system (e.g., with or without gesture input device), and / or a personal messaging device capable of communicating over a network that can access VCN 1106 and / or the Internet.

[0380] VCN 1106 may include a local peer gateway (LPG) 1110, which may be communicatively coupled to a secure shell (SSH) VCN 1112 via LPG 1110 contained in an SSH VCN 1112. SSH VCN 1112 may include an SSH subnet 1114, and SSH VCN 1112 may be communicatively coupled to a control plane VCN 1116 via LPG 1110 contained in a control plane VCN 1116. Furthermore, SSH VCN 1112 may be communicatively coupled to a data plane VCN 1118 via LPG 1110. Control plane VCN 1116 and data plane VCN 1118 may be contained in a service lease 1119, which may be owned and / or operated by an IaaS provider.

[0381] The control plane VCN 1116 may include a control plane demilitarized zone (DMZ) layer 1120 that serves as a perimeter network (e.g., a portion of a company network between a company's intranet and an external network). DMZ-based servers can have limited liability and help control vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the DMZ layer 1120 may include one or more load balancer (LB) subnets 1122, a control plane application layer 1124 that may include (one or more) application subnets 1126, and a control plane data layer 1128 that may include (one or more) database (DB) subnets 1130 (e.g., (one or more) front-end DB subnets and / or (one or more) back-end DB subnets). The LB subnet(s) 1122 included in the control plane DMZ layer 1120 can be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1126 included in the control plane application layer 1124 and the internet gateway 1134 that can be included in the control plane VCN 1116, and the application subnet(s) 1126 can be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1130 included in the control plane data layer 1128, as well as the service gateway 1136 and the network address translation (NAT) gateway 1138. The control plane VCN 1116 can include the service gateway 1136 and the NAT gateway 1138.

[0382] The control plane VCN 1116 may include a data plane mirror application layer 1140, which may include application subnet(s) 1126. The application subnet(s) 1126 contained in the data plane mirror application layer 1140 may include a virtual network interface controller (VNIC) 1142 that may execute a compute instance 1144. The compute instance 1144 may communicatively couple the application subnet(s) 1126 of the data plane mirror application layer 1140 to the application subnet(s) 1126 that may be contained in the data plane application layer 1146.

[0383] The data plane VCN 1118 may include a data plane application layer 1146, a data plane DMZ layer 1148, and a data plane data layer 1150. The data plane DMZ layer 1148 may include (one or more) LB subnets 1122, which may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1126 of the data plane application layer 1146 and the internet gateway 1134 of the data plane VCN 1118. The application subnet(s) 1126 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1136 of the data plane VCN 1118 and the NAT gateway 1138 of the data plane VCN 1118. The data plane data layer 1150 may also include (one or more) DB subnets 1130, which may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1126 of the data plane application layer 1146.

[0384] The internet gateway 1134 of the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118 can be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1152, which can be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1154. The public internet 1154 can be communicatively coupled to the NAT gateway 1138 of the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118. The service gateway 1136 of the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118 can be communicatively coupled to a cloud service 1156.

[0385] In some examples, service gateway 1136 of control plane VCN 1116 or data plane VCN 1118 can make application programming interface (API) calls to cloud services 1156 without going through public internet 1154. API calls from service gateway 1136 to cloud services 1156 can be one-way: service gateway 1136 can make API calls to cloud services 1156, and cloud services 1156 can send requested data to service gateway 1136. However, cloud services 1156 may not initiate API calls to service gateway 1136.

[0386] In some examples, secure host lease 1104 can be directly connected to service lease 1119, which can otherwise be isolated. Secure host subnet 1108 can communicate with SSH subnet 1114 via LPG 1110, which can enable two-way communication on otherwise isolated systems. Connecting secure host subnet 1108 to SSH subnet 1114 can enable secure host subnet 1108 to access other entities within service lease 1119.

[0387] Control plane VCN 1116 can allow users of service leases 1119 to set up or otherwise provision desired resources. The desired resources provisioned in control plane VCN 1116 can be deployed or otherwise used in data plane VCN 1118. In some examples, control plane VCN 1116 can be isolated from data plane VCN 1118, and a data plane mirror application layer 1140 of control plane VCN 1116 can communicate with a data plane application layer 1146 of data plane VCN 1118 via a VNIC 1142, which can be included in both data plane mirror application layer 1140 and data plane application layer 1146.

[0388] In some examples, a user or users of the system may make a request, such as a create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) operation, via the public internet 1154, which may transmit the request to the metadata management service 1152. The metadata management service 1152 may transmit the request to the control plane VCN 1116 via the internet gateway 1134. The request may be received by the LB subnet(s) 1122 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1120. The LB subnet(s) 1122 may determine that the request is valid, and in response to this determination, the LB subnet(s) 1122 may transmit the request to the application subnet(s) 1126 contained in the control plane application layer 1124. If the request is validated and requires a call to the public internet 1154, the call to the public internet 1154 may be transmitted to the NAT gateway 1138, which may make the call to the public internet 1154. The metadata that the request may desire to be stored may be stored in the DB subnet(s) 1130.

[0389] In some examples, data plane mirror application layer 1140 can facilitate direct communication between control plane VCN 1116 and data plane VCN 1118. For example, it may be desirable to apply a configuration change, update, or other appropriate modification to the resources contained in data plane VCN 1118. Control plane VCN 1116, via VNIC 1142, can communicate directly with the resources contained in data plane VCN 1118 and thereby perform the configuration change, update, or other appropriate modification.

[0390] In some embodiments, control plane VCN 1116 and data plane VCN 1118 may be included in service lease 1119. In this case, the user or users of the system may not own or operate control plane VCN 1116 or data plane VCN 1118. Alternatively, the IaaS provider may own or operate control plane VCN 1116 and data plane VCN 1118, both of which may be included in service lease 1119. This embodiment may enable the isolation of networks that may prevent a user or users from interacting with other users or their resources. Furthermore, this embodiment may allow a user or users of the system to store databases privately without relying on the public internet 1154, which may not have the desired level of threat protection.

[0391] In other embodiments, the LB subnet(s) 1122 contained in the control plane VCN 1116 can be configured to receive signals from the service gateway 1136. In this embodiment, the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118 can be configured to be called by users of the IaaS provider without calling the public internet 1154. Users of the IaaS provider may desire this embodiment because the database(s) used by the users can be controlled by the IaaS provider and can be stored on the service lease 1119, which may be isolated from the public internet 1154.

[0392] Figure 12 is a block diagram 1200 illustrating another example model of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1202 (e.g., Figure 11 The service operator 1102) can be communicatively coupled to the secure host lease 1204 (e.g., Figure 11 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1206 (e.g., Figure 11 VCN 1106) and secure host subnet 1208 (e.g., Figure 11 The VCN 1206 may include a local peer gateway (LPG) 1210 (e.g., Figure 11 110 ), which may be communicatively coupled to a secure shell (SSH) VCN 1212 (e.g., Figure 11 SSH VCN 1112). SSH VCN 1212 may include SSH subnet 1214 (e.g., Figure 11 SSH subnet 1114), and SSH VCN 1212 may be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 1216 via LPG 1210 contained in control plane VCN 1216 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1116). The control plane VCN 1216 can be included in the service lease 1219 (e.g., Figure 11 service lease 1119), and the data plane VCN 1218 (e.g., Figure 11 The data plane VCN 1118) may be contained in a user lease 1221 which may be owned or operated by a user or users of the system.

[0393] The control plane VCN 1216 may include a LB subnet 1222 (e.g., Figure 11 (one or more) LB subnets 1122) of the control plane DMZ layer 1220 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane DMZ layer 1120 may include (one or more) application subnets 1226 (e.g., Figure 11 (one or more) application subnets 1126) of the control plane application layer 1224 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane application layer 1124 of FIG. 1 may include (one or more) database (DB) subnets 1230 (e.g., similar to Figure 11 (one or more) DB subnet 1130) of the control plane data layer 1228 (e.g., Figure 11 1228). The LB subnet(s) 1222 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1220 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1226 contained in the control plane application layer 1224 and the internet gateway 1234 (e.g., Figure 11 1134), and the application subnet(s) 1226 can be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1230 and the service gateway 1236 (e.g., Figure 11 Serving gateway 1136) and network address translation (NAT) gateway 1238 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1216 may include a serving gateway 1236 and a NAT gateway 1238.

[0394] The control plane VCN 1216 may include a data plane mirror application layer 1240 (e.g., Figure 11 The data plane image application layer 1140). The application subnet(s) 1226 included in the data plane image application layer 1240 may include a computing instance 1244 (e.g., similar to Figure 11 The compute instance 1244 can facilitate the application subnet(s) 1226 of the data plane mirroring application layer 1240 and can be included in the data plane application layer 1246 (e.g., Figure 11 Communication between (one or more) application subnets 1226 in the data plane application layer 1146) via the VNIC 1242 contained in the data plane mirror application layer 1240 and the VNIC 1242 contained in the data plane application layer 1246.

[0395] The internet gateway 1234 included in the control plane VCN 1216 can be communicatively coupled to the metadata management service 1252 (e.g., Figure 11 1152) that can be communicatively coupled to the public Internet 1254 (e.g., Figure 11 The public internet 1254 can be communicatively coupled to a NAT gateway 1238 included in the control plane VCN 1216. The service gateway 1236 included in the control plane VCN 1216 can be communicatively coupled to cloud services 1256 (e.g., Figure 11 Cloud service 1156).

[0396] In some examples, the data plane VCN 1218 can be contained in the user lease 1221. In this case, the IaaS provider can provide a control plane VCN 1216 for each user, and the IaaS provider can set up a unique compute instance 1244 for each user contained in the service lease 1219. Each compute instance 1244 can allow communication between the control plane VCN 1216 contained in the service lease 1219 and the data plane VCN 1218 contained in the user lease 1221. The compute instance 1244 can allow resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1216 contained in the service lease 1219 to be deployed or otherwise used in the data plane VCN 1218 contained in the user lease 1221.

[0397] In another example, a user of the IaaS provider may have a database that resides in user tenancy 1221. In this example, control plane VCN 1216 may include a data plane mirror application layer 1240, which may include application subnet(s) 1226. Data plane mirror application layer 1240 may reside in data plane VCN 1218, but data plane mirror application layer 1240 may not be in data plane VCN 1218. That is, data plane mirror application layer 1240 may access user tenancy 1221, but data plane mirror application layer 1240 may not reside in data plane VCN 1218 or be owned or operated by a user of the IaaS provider. Data plane mirror application layer 1240 may be configured to make calls to data plane VCN 1218, but may not be configured to make calls to any entity contained in control plane VCN 1216. A user may desire to deploy or otherwise use resources provisioned in control plane VCN 1216 in data plane VCN 1218, and data plane mirror application layer 1240 may facilitate the user's desired deployment or other use of resources.

[0398] In some embodiments, a user of an IaaS provider can apply filters to data plane VCN 1218. In this embodiment, the user can determine what data plane VCN 1218 can access, and the user can restrict access from data plane VCN 1218 to the public internet 1254. The IaaS provider may not apply filters or otherwise control access to any external networks or databases by data plane VCN 1218. The user applying filters and controls to data plane VCN 1218 included in the user's lease 1221 can help isolate data plane VCN 1218 from other users and the public internet 1254.

[0399] In some embodiments, cloud services 1256 can be called by service gateway 1236 to access services that may not exist on the public internet 1254, control plane VCN 1216, or data plane VCN 1218. The connection between cloud services 1256 and control plane VCN 1216 or data plane VCN 1218 may not be real-time or continuous. Cloud services 1256 may exist on different networks owned or operated by the IaaS provider. Cloud services 1256 can be configured to receive calls from service gateway 1236 and not to receive calls from the public internet 1254. Some cloud services 1256 may be isolated from other cloud services 1256, and control plane VCN 1216 may be isolated from cloud services 1256 that may not be in the same region as control plane VCN 1216. For example, control plane VCN 1216 may be located in "Region 1," and cloud service "Deployment 11" may be located in both Region 1 and Region 2. If a service gateway 1236 contained in a control plane VCN 1216 located in region 1 makes a call to deployment 11, the call may be transmitted to deployment 11 in region 1. In this example, control plane VCN 1216 or deployment 11 in region 1 may not be communicatively coupled or otherwise in communication with deployment 11 in region 2.

[0400] Figure 13 is a block diagram 1300 illustrating another example model of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. Figure 11 The service operator 1102) can be communicatively coupled to the secure host lease 1304 (e.g., Figure 11 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1306 (e.g., Figure 11 VCN 1106) and secure host subnet 1308 (e.g., Figure 11 VCN 1306 may include LPG 1310 (e.g., Figure 11 110 ), which may be communicatively coupled to the SSH VCN 1312 via the LPG 1310 contained in the SSH VCN 1312 (e.g., Figure 11 SSH VCN 1312). SSH VCN 1312 may include SSH subnet 1314 (e.g., Figure 11 SSH subnet 1114), and SSH VCN 1312 may be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 1316 via LPG 1310 contained in control plane VCN 1316 (e.g., Figure 11 1316) and is coupled to the data plane VCN 1318 via the LPG 1310 contained in the data plane VCN 1318 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1316 and the data plane VCN 1318 may be included in a service lease 1319 (e.g., Figure 11 Service lease 1119).

[0401] The control plane VCN 1316 may include a subnet 1322 that may include (one or more) load balancers (LBs) (e.g., Figure 11 (one or more) LB subnets 1122) of the control plane DMZ layer 1320 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane DMZ layer 1120 may include (one or more) application subnets 1326 (e.g., similar to Figure 11 (one or more) application subnets 1126) of the control plane application layer 1324 (e.g., Figure 11 ), a control plane application layer 1124 that may include a control plane data layer 1328 (e.g., Figure 11 1328). The LB subnet(s) 1322 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1320 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1326 contained in the control plane application layer 1324 and the internet gateway 1334 (e.g., Figure 11 1324 ), and the application subnet(s) 1326 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1330 and the service gateway 1336 (e.g., Figure 11 Serving gateway) and Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1338 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1316 may include a serving gateway 1336 and a NAT gateway 1338.

[0402] The data plane VCN 1318 may include a data plane application layer 1346 (e.g., Figure 11 Data plane application layer 1146), data plane DMZ layer 1348 (e.g., Figure 11 Data plane DMZ layer 1148), and data plane data layer 1350 (e.g., Figure 11 1350). The data plane DMZ layer 1348 may include trusted application subnet(s) 1360 and untrusted application subnet(s) 1362 that may be communicatively coupled to the data plane application layer 1346, and LB subnet(s) 1322 of the internet gateway 1334 included in the data plane VCN 1318. The trusted application subnet(s) 1360 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1336 included in the data plane VCN 1318, the NAT gateway 1338 included in the data plane VCN 1318, and the DB subnet(s) 1330 included in the data plane data layer 1350. The untrusted application subnet(s) 1362 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1336 included in the data plane VCN 1318 and the DB subnet(s) 1330 included in the data plane data layer 1350. Data plane data layer 1350 may include DB subnet(s) 1330 that may be communicatively coupled to a service gateway 1336 included in data plane VCN 1318 .

[0403] The untrusted application subnet(s) 1362 may include one or more primary VNICs 1364(1)-(N) that may be communicatively coupled to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 1366(1)-(N). Each tenant VM 1366(1)-(N) may be communicatively coupled to a corresponding application subnet 1367(1)-(N) that may be contained in a corresponding container egress VCN 1368(1)-(N), which may be contained in a corresponding user lease 1370(1)-(N). Corresponding secondary VNICs 1372(1)-(N) may facilitate communication between the untrusted application subnet(s) 1362 contained in the data plane VCN 1318 and the application subnets contained in the container egress VCNs 1368(1)-(N). Each container egress VCN 1368(1)-(N) may include a NAT gateway 1338 that may be communicatively coupled to the public Internet 1354 (e.g., Figure 11 public Internet 1154).

[0404] An internet gateway 1334 included in the control plane VCN 1316 and included in the data plane VCN 1318 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1352 (e.g., Figure 11 13), which can be communicatively coupled to a public internet 1354. The public internet 1354 can be communicatively coupled to a NAT gateway 1338 contained in the control plane VCN 1316 and contained in the data plane VCN 1318. A service gateway 1336 contained in the control plane VCN 1316 and contained in the data plane VCN 1318 can be communicatively coupled to a cloud service 1356.

[0405] In some embodiments, data plane VCN 1318 can be integrated with user lease 1370. In some cases, such integration may be useful or desirable for users of the IaaS provider, such as when support may be desired when executing code. A user may provide code to be executed that may be destructive, may communicate with other user resources, or may otherwise cause undesirable effects. In response, the IaaS provider may determine whether to execute the code provided by the user to the IaaS provider.

[0406] In some examples, a user of an IaaS provider may grant temporary network access to the IaaS provider and request functionality attached to the data plane application layer 1346. The code running the functionality may be executed in a VM 1366(1)-(N), and the code may not be configured to run anywhere else on the data plane VCN 1318. Each VM 1366(1)-(N) may be connected to one user lease 1370. The corresponding container 1371(1)-(N) contained in the VM 1366(1)-(N) may be configured to run the code. In this case, there may be double isolation (e.g., the container 1371(1)-(N) runs the code, where the container 1371(1)-(N) may be contained at least in a VM 1366(1)-(N) contained in (one or more) untrusted application subnets 1362), which may help prevent incorrect or otherwise undesirable code from damaging the IaaS provider's network or damaging a different user's network. Containers 1371(1)-(N) may be communicatively coupled to user lease 1370 and may be configured to transmit or receive data from user lease 1370. Containers 1371(1)-(N) may not be configured to transmit or receive data from any other entity in data plane VCN 1318. After running the code, the IaaS provider may terminate or otherwise dispose of containers 1371(1)-(N).

[0407] In some embodiments, the trusted application subnet(s) 1360 may run code that may be owned or operated by the IaaS provider. In this embodiment, the trusted application subnet(s) 1360 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1330 and configured to perform CRUD operations in the DB subnet(s) 1330. The untrusted application subnet(s) 1362 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1330, but in this embodiment, the untrusted application subnet(s) may be configured to perform read operations in the DB subnet(s) 1330. Containers 1371(1)-(N), which may be included in each user's VM 1366(1)-(N) and may run code from the user, may not be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1330.

[0408] In other embodiments, control plane VCN 1316 and data plane VCN 1318 may not be directly communicatively coupled. In this embodiment, there may be no direct communication between control plane VCN 1316 and data plane VCN 1318. However, communication may occur indirectly through at least one method. LPG 1310 may be established by an IaaS provider, which may facilitate communication between control plane VCN 1316 and data plane VCN 1318. In another example, control plane VCN 1316 or data plane VCN 1318 may invoke cloud service 1356 via service gateway 1336. For example, the call from control plane VCN 1316 to cloud service 1356 may include a request for a service that can communicate with data plane VCN 1318.

[0409] Figure 14 is a block diagram 1400 illustrating another example model of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1402 (e.g., Figure 11 The service operator 1102) can be communicatively coupled to the secure host lease 1404 (e.g., Figure 11 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1406 (e.g., Figure 11 VCN 1106) and secure host subnet 1408 (e.g., Figure 11 The VCN 1406 may include an LPG 1410 (e.g., Figure 11 LPG 1110), which can be accessed via an SSH VCN 1412 (e.g., Figure 11 The LPG 1410 in the SSH VCN 1112 of FIG. 1412 is communicatively coupled to the SSH VCN 1412. The SSH VCN 1412 may include an SSH subnet 1414 (e.g., Figure 11 SSH subnet 1114), and SSH VCN 1412 may be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 1416 via LPG 1410 contained in control plane VCN 1416 (e.g., Figure 11 1416) and is coupled to the data plane VCN 1418 via the LPG 1410 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1416 and the data plane VCN 1418 may be included in a service lease 1419 (e.g., Figure 11 Service lease 1119).

[0410] The control plane VCN 1416 may include a LB subnet(s) 1422 (e.g., Figure 11 (one or more) LB subnets 1122) of the control plane DMZ layer 1420 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane DMZ layer 1120 may include (one or more) application subnets 1426 (e.g., Figure 11 (one or more) application subnets 1126) of the control plane application layer 1424 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane application layer 1124 of FIG. 1124 may include (one or more) DB subnets 1430 (e.g., Figure 13 (one or more) DB subnet 1330) of the control plane data layer 1428 (e.g., Figure 11 1428). The LB subnet(s) 1422 contained in the control plane DMZ layer 1420 may be communicatively coupled to the application subnet(s) 1426 contained in the control plane application layer 1424 and the internet gateway 1434 (e.g., Figure 11 1434), and the application subnet(s) 1426 may be communicatively coupled to the DB subnet(s) 1430 and the service gateway 1436 (e.g., Figure 11 Serving gateway) and Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 1438 (e.g., Figure 11 The control plane VCN 1416 may include a serving gateway 1436 and a NAT gateway 1438.

[0411] The data plane VCN 1418 may include a data plane application layer 1446 (e.g., Figure 11 Data plane application layer 1146), data plane DMZ layer 1448 (e.g., Figure 11 Data plane DMZ layer 1148)), and data plane data layer 1450 (e.g., Figure 11 The data plane DMZ layer 1448 may include trusted application subnet(s) 1460 (e.g., Figure 13 Trusted application subnet(s) 1360) and untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 (e.g., Figure 13 1430 . The data plane data layer 1450 may include the untrusted application subnet(s) 1460 and the LB subnet(s) 1422 of the internet gateway 1434 contained in the data plane VCN 1418. The trusted application subnet(s) 1460 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1436 contained in the data plane VCN 1418, the NAT gateway 1438 contained in the data plane VCN 1418, and the DB subnet(s) 1430 contained in the data plane data layer 1450. The untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1436 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 and the DB subnet(s) 1430 contained in the data plane data layer 1450. The data plane data layer 1450 may include the DB subnet(s) 1430 that may be communicatively coupled to the service gateway 1436 contained in the data plane VCN 1418.

[0412] The untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 may include primary VNICs 1464(1)-(N) that may be communicatively coupled to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 1466(1)-(N) residing within the untrusted application subnet(s) 1462. Each tenant VM 1466(1)-(N) may run code in a corresponding container 1467(1)-(N) and may be communicatively coupled to an application subnet 1426 that may be contained in a data plane application layer 1446 contained in a container egress VCN 1468. Corresponding secondary VNICs 1472(1)-(N) may facilitate communications between the untrusted application subnet(s) 1462 contained in the data plane VCN 1418 and the application subnets contained in the container egress VCN 1468. The container egress VCN may include a primary VNIC that may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1454 (e.g., Figure 11 NAT gateway 1438 of the public Internet 1154).

[0413] The internet gateway 1434 included in the control plane VCN 1416 and included in the data plane VCN 1418 can be communicatively coupled to the metadata management service 1452 (e.g., Figure 11 1452) can be communicatively coupled to a metadata management system 1452 of the control plane VCN 1416, which can be communicatively coupled to a public internet 1454. The public internet 1454 can be communicatively coupled to a NAT gateway 1438 contained in the control plane VCN 1416 and contained in the data plane VCN 1418. A service gateway 1436 contained in the control plane VCN 1416 and contained in the data plane VCN 1418 can be communicatively coupled to a cloud service 1456.

[0414] In some examples, Figure 14 The architecture model shown in block diagram 1400 can be considered as Figure 13 1468 . The example embodiment of the present invention is an exception to the pattern shown in the architecture of block diagram 1300 , and may be desired by users of the IaaS provider if the IaaS provider cannot communicate directly with the user (e.g., in a disconnected region). The user can access the corresponding container 1467 (1)-(N) contained in each user's VM 1466 (1)-(N) in real time. The container 1467 (1)-(N) can be configured to make calls to the corresponding secondary VNIC 1472 (1)-(N) in the application subnet(s) 1426 contained in the data plane application layer 1446, which can be contained in the container egress VCN 1468. The secondary VNIC 1472 (1)-(N) can transmit the call to the NAT gateway 1438, which can transmit the call to the public internet 1454. In this example, containers 1467(1)-(N), which may be accessed by users in real time, may be isolated from control plane VCN 1416 and may be isolated from other entities contained in data plane VCN 1418. Containers 1467(1)-(N) may also be isolated from resources from other users.

[0415] In another example, a user can use containers 1467(1)-(N) to call cloud service 1456. In this example, the user can run code in containers 1467(1)-(N) that requests a service from cloud service 1456. Containers 1467(1)-(N) can transmit the request to secondary VNICs 1472(1)-(N), which can transmit the request to a NAT gateway, which can transmit the request to the public internet 1454. The public internet 1454 can transmit the request to LB subnet(s) 1422 contained in control plane VCN 1416 via internet gateway 1434. In response to determining that the request is valid, the LB subnet(s) can transmit the request to application subnet(s) 1426, which can transmit the request to cloud service 1456 via service gateway 1436.

[0416] It should be appreciated that the IaaS architectures 1100, 1200, 1300, and 1400 depicted in the various figures may have other components than those depicted. Furthermore, the embodiments shown in the various figures are merely examples of cloud infrastructure systems that may incorporate embodiments of the present disclosure. In some other embodiments, the IaaS system may have more or fewer components than shown in the various figures, may combine two or more components, or may have a different configuration or component arrangement.

[0417] In certain embodiments, the IaaS system described herein may include application suites, middleware, and database service offerings delivered to users in a self-service, subscription-based, elastically scalable, reliable, highly available, and secure manner. An example of such an IaaS system is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provided by the assignee.

[0418] Figure 15 The diagram illustrates an example computer system 1500 in which various embodiments may be implemented. System 1500 may be used to implement any of the computer systems described above. As shown, computer system 1500 includes a processing unit 1504 that communicates with a plurality of peripheral subsystems via a bus subsystem 1502. These peripheral subsystems may include a processing acceleration unit 1506, an I / O subsystem 1508, a storage subsystem 1518, and a communication subsystem 1524. Storage subsystem 1518 includes tangible computer-readable storage media 1522 and system memory 1510.

[0419] Bus subsystem 1502 provides a mechanism for allowing the various components and subsystems of computer system 1500 to communicate with each other by intention. Although bus subsystem 1502 is schematically shown as a single bus, alternative embodiments of the bus subsystem can utilize multiple buses. Bus subsystem 1502 can be any of several types of bus structures, including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of various bus architectures. For example, this architecture can include an industry standard architecture (ISA) bus, a microchannel architecture (MCA) bus, an enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, a video electronics standards association (VESA) local bus, and a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus, which can be implemented as a Mezzanine bus manufactured according to the IEEE P1386.1 standard.

[0420] The processing unit 1504, which may be implemented as one or more integrated circuits (e.g., conventional microprocessors or microcontrollers), controls the operation of the computer system 1500. One or more processors may be included in the processing unit 1504. These processors may include single-core or multi-core processors. In certain embodiments, the processing unit 1504 may be implemented as one or more independent processing units 1532 and / or 1534, each of which includes a single-core or multi-core processor. In other embodiments, the processing unit 1504 may also be implemented as a quad-core processing unit formed by integrating two dual-core processors into a single chip.

[0421] In various embodiments, the processing unit 1504 can execute various programs in response to program code and can maintain multiple concurrently executing programs or processes. At any given time, some or all of the program code to be executed may reside in (one or more) processors 1504 and / or in the storage subsystem 1518. Through appropriate programming, (one or more) processors 1504 can provide the various functions described above. The computer system 1500 can additionally include a processing acceleration unit 1506, which can include a digital signal processor (DSP), a special-purpose processor, or the like.

[0422] I / O subsystem 1508 may include user interface input devices and user interface output devices. User interface input devices may include a keyboard, a pointing device such as a mouse or trackball, a touchpad or touch screen incorporated into a display, a scroll wheel, a click wheel, a dial, buttons, switches, a keypad, an audio input device with a voice command recognition system, a microphone, and other types of input devices. User interface input devices may include, for example, motion sensing and / or gesture recognition devices such as Microsoft Motion sensors that enable users to control devices such as Microsoft The user interface input devices may also include eye gesture recognition devices, such as detecting eye activity from the user (e.g., a "wink" when taking a picture and / or making a menu selection) and translating eye gestures to the input device (e.g., Google ) in the input Google In addition, the user interface input device may include an input device that enables the user to communicate with the voice recognition system (e.g., Navigator) interactive voice recognition sensing device.

[0423] The user interface input device may also include, but is not limited to, a three-dimensional (3D) mouse, a joystick or pointing stick, a game panel and a drawing board, and audio / video equipment such as a speaker, a digital camera, a digital video camera, a portable media player, a webcam, an image scanner, a fingerprint scanner, a barcode reader 3D scanner, a 3D printer, a laser rangefinder, and a sight tracking device. In addition, the user interface input device may include, for example, a medical imaging input device such as a computed tomography scan, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a positron emission tomography (PET), a medical ultrasound device. The user interface input device may also include, for example, an audio input device such as a MIDI keyboard, a digital musical instrument, etc.

[0424] User interface output devices may include a display subsystem, indicator lights, or non-visual displays such as audio output devices, among others. The display subsystem may be a cathode ray tube (CRT), a flat panel device such as one using a liquid crystal display (LCD) or plasma display, a projection device, a touch screen, and the like. In general, the use of the term "output device" is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for outputting information from the computer system 1500 to a user or another computer. For example, user interface output devices may include, but are not limited to, various display devices that visually convey text, graphics, and audio / video information, such as monitors, printers, speakers, headphones, car navigation systems, plotters, voice output devices, and modems.

[0425] Computer system 1500 may include a storage subsystem 1518 that provides a tangible, non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for storing software and data structures that provide the functionality of the embodiments described in this disclosure. The software may include programs, code modules, instructions, scripts, etc., which, when executed by one or more cores or processors of processing unit 1504, provide the functionality described above. Storage subsystem 1518 may also provide a repository for storing data used in accordance with the present disclosure.

[0426] like Figure 15 As shown in the example of , storage subsystem 1518 may include various components, including system memory 1510, computer-readable storage media 1522, and computer-readable storage media reader 1520. System memory 1510 may store program instructions that may be loaded and executed by processing unit 1504. System memory 1510 may also store data used during the execution of instructions and / or data generated during the execution of program instructions. Various different types of programs may be loaded into system memory 1510, including but not limited to client applications, web browsers, middle-tier applications, relational database management systems (RDBMS), virtual machines, containers, and the like.

[0427] System memory 1510 may also store an operating system 1516. Examples of operating system 1516 may include various versions of Microsoft Apple and / or Linux operating systems, various commercially available or UNIX-like operating systems (including but not limited to various GNU / Linux operating systems, Google OS, etc.) and / or mobile operating systems such as iOS, Phone, OS, OS and In some embodiments where computer system 1500 executes one or more virtual machines, the virtual machines along with a guest operating system (GOS) may be loaded into system memory 1510 and executed by one or more processors or cores of processing unit 1504 .

[0428] The system memory 1510 can be configured in different ways, depending on the type of computer system 1500. For example, the system memory 1510 can be volatile memory, such as random access memory (RAM), and / or non-volatile memory, such as read-only memory (ROM), flash memory, etc. Different types of RAM configurations can be provided, including static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), etc. In some embodiments, the system memory 1510 can include a basic input / output system (BIOS), which contains basic routines that help transfer information between elements within the computer system 1500, such as during startup.

[0429] Computer-readable storage media 1522 may represent remote, local, fixed, and / or removable storage devices and storage media for temporarily and / or more permanently containing and storing computer-readable information for use by computer system 1500 , including instructions executable by processing unit 1504 of computer system 1500 .

[0430] Computer-readable storage media 1522 may include any suitable media known or used in the art, including storage media and communication media, such as, but not limited to, volatile and non-volatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage and / or transmission of information. This may include tangible computer-readable storage media such as RAM, ROM, electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disk (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or other tangible computer-readable media.

[0431] As examples, computer-readable storage media 1522 may include a hard drive that reads from or writes to non-removable nonvolatile magnetic media, a magnetic disk drive that reads from or writes to removable nonvolatile magnetic disks, and a removable nonvolatile optical disk drive such as a CD ROM, a DVD, and a DVD. Computer readable storage media 1522 may include, but are not limited to, The computer system 1500 may include a disk drive, a flash memory card, a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, a secure digital (SD) card, a DVD disk, a digital audio tape, and the like. The computer-readable storage medium 1522 may also include a solid-state drive (SSD) based on non-volatile memory (such as an SSD based on flash memory, an enterprise flash drive, a solid-state ROM, etc.), an SSD based on volatile memory (such as solid-state RAM, dynamic RAM, static RAM), a DRAM-based SSD, a magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) SSD, and a hybrid SSD using a combination of DRAM and flash memory-based SSDs. The disk drive and its associated computer-readable media may provide non-volatile storage of computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, and other data for the computer system 1500.

[0432] Machine-readable instructions executable by one or more processors or cores of processing unit 1504 may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium may include a physically tangible memory or storage device, including a volatile memory storage device and / or a non-volatile storage device. Examples of non-transitory computer-readable storage media include magnetic storage media (e.g., disks or tapes), optical storage media (e.g., DVDs, CDs), various types of RAM, ROM, or flash memory, a hard drive, a floppy disk drive, a removable memory drive (e.g., a USB drive), or other types of storage devices.

[0433] The communication subsystem 1524 provides an interface to other computer systems and networks. The communication subsystem 1524 serves as an interface for receiving data from other systems and sending data from the computer system 1500 to other systems. For example, the communication subsystem 1524 can enable the computer system 1500 to be connected to one or more devices via the Internet. In some embodiments, the communication subsystem 1524 may include a radio frequency (RF) transceiver component for accessing a wireless voice and / or data network (e.g., using cellular phone technology, advanced data network technology such as 3G, 4G or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), WiFi (IEEE 802.11 family of standards), or other mobile communication technologies, or any combination thereof), a global positioning system (GPS) receiver component, and / or other components. In some embodiments, in addition to or in lieu of a wireless interface, the communication subsystem 1524 can provide a wired network connection (e.g., Ethernet).

[0434] In some embodiments, the communication subsystem 1524 may also receive incoming communications in the form of structured and / or unstructured data feeds 1526 , event streams 1528 , event updates 1530 , and the like on behalf of one or more users who may use the computer system 1500 .

[0435] As an example, the communication subsystem 1524 may be configured to receive data feeds 1526 in real time from users of social networks and / or other communication services, such as feed, Updates, web feeds such as Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, and / or real-time updates from one or more third-party information sources.

[0436] Additionally, the communication subsystem 1524 may also be configured to receive data in the form of continuous data streams, which may include event streams 1528 and / or event updates 1530, which may be continuous or unbounded in nature, without a clear end to real-time events. Examples of applications that generate continuous data may include, for example, sensor data applications, financial quote machines, network performance measurement tools (e.g., network monitoring and traffic management applications), clickstream analysis tools, automotive traffic monitoring, and the like.

[0437] The communication subsystem 1524 may also be configured to output structured and / or unstructured data feeds 1526 , event streams 1528 , event updates 1530 , etc. to one or more databases that may be in computer communication with one or more streaming data source computers coupled to the computer system 1500 .

[0438] Computer system 1500 can be of various types, including a handheld portable device (e.g., Cellular phones, computing tablets, PDAs), wearable devices (e.g. Glass head-mounted display), PC, workstation, mainframe, kiosk, server rack, or any other data processing system.

[0439] Due to the ever-changing nature of computers and networks, the description of the computer system 1500 depicted in the figure is intended only as a specific example. Many other configurations with more or fewer components than the system depicted in the figure are possible. For example, customized hardware may also be used and / or specific elements may be implemented with hardware, firmware, software (including applets) or a combination thereof. In addition, connections to other computing devices such as network input / output devices may also be employed. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided herein, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize other ways and / or methods of implementing the various embodiments.

[0440] While specific embodiments have been described, various modifications, variations, alternative constructions, and equivalents are encompassed within the scope of this disclosure. The embodiments are not limited to operating within a particular data processing environment, but rather can operate freely within a variety of data processing environments. Furthermore, while the embodiments have been described using a specific series of transactions and steps, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the scope of this disclosure is not limited to the described series of transactions and steps. The various features and aspects of the above-described embodiments may be used individually or in combination.

[0441] In addition, although embodiments have been described using specific combinations of hardware and software, it will be appreciated that other combinations of hardware and software are also within the scope of this disclosure. Embodiments may be implemented using only hardware, or only software, or a combination thereof. The various processes described herein may be implemented in any combination on the same processor or on different processors. Accordingly, where a component or service is described as being configured to perform certain operations, such configuration may be accomplished by, for example, designing electronic circuits to perform the operations, programming programmable electronic circuits (such as microprocessors) to perform the operations, or any combination thereof. Processes may communicate using a variety of techniques, including but not limited to conventional techniques for inter-process communication, and different pairs of processes may use different techniques, or the same pair of processes may use different techniques at different times.

[0442] Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded as illustrative rather than restrictive. However, it will be apparent that additions, subtractions, deletions, and other modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope set forth in the claims. Therefore, while specific disclosed embodiments have been described, these are not intended to be limiting. Various modifications and equivalents are within the scope of the following claims.

[0443] The use of the terms "a," "an," "the," and similar referents in the context of describing the disclosed embodiments (especially in the context of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The terms "comprising," "having," "including," and "containing" are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning "including, but not limited to,") unless otherwise noted. The term "connected" should be interpreted as partly or wholly contained in, attached to, or connected together, even if there are things in between. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the recitation of ranges of values herein is merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range, and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples or exemplary language (e.g., "such as") provided herein is intended merely to better illuminate the embodiments and does not limit the scope of the disclosure unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the disclosure.

[0444] Disjunctive language, such as the phrase "at least one of X, Y, or Z," is intended to be understood in the context generally used to indicate that an item, term, etc., can be X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and / or Z), unless expressly stated otherwise. Thus, such disjunctive language is generally not intended to, and should not, imply that certain embodiments require that at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z each be present.

[0445] Preferred embodiments of the present disclosure are described herein, including the best mode known for implementing the present disclosure. Variations of those preferred embodiments will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the above description. Those of ordinary skill should be able to appropriately adopt such variations and may practice the present disclosure in a manner different from that specifically described herein. Accordingly, the present disclosure includes all modifications and equivalent forms of the subject matter recited in the appended claims where permitted by applicable law. In addition, unless otherwise indicated herein, the present disclosure includes any combination of the above-mentioned elements in all possible variations thereof.

[0446] All references, including publications, patent applications, and patents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein.

[0447] In the foregoing description, various aspects of the present disclosure are described with reference to their specific embodiments, but it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the present disclosure is not limited thereto. Each feature and aspect disclosed above can be used individually or in combination. In addition, without departing from the broader spirit and scope of this description, the embodiments can be used in any number of environments and applications other than those described herein. Accordingly, this description and the accompanying drawings should be considered to be illustrative rather than restrictive.< / value> < / operation> < / fieldname> < / value> < / value> < / operation> < / operation> < / value> < / operation> < / fieldname> < / value> < / operation> < / fieldname> < / value> < / fieldname>

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising: deploying, by the computing system, a remote agent device in an external environment of a user, wherein the remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in; creating, by a computing system, an asset source that specifies a location of an external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, along with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository; creating, by the computing system, a discovery strategy for discovering external assets within the asset source; generating, by a computing system, a discovery job for retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within an asset source; executing, by the computing system using the discovery plug-in, a discovery job to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory includes an asset collection that includes the asset metadata for the external assets; as well as The set of assets within the inventory and associated asset metadata are provided to a user by a computing system.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising generating, by the computing system, the inventory on a cloud infrastructure, wherein the cloud infrastructure is in communication with the remote agent device. 3 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the discovery policy is a schedule identifying times when the computing system is to perform discovery jobs.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising: Receiving, by a computing system, a query from a user regarding asset metadata; The query of inventory is performed by the computing system; Results of the query are provided to the user by the computing system based on the execution.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising generating, by the computing system, a connector between the discovery plug-in and the location of the external environment in response to generating the asset source, wherein the asset metadata of the external asset is retrieved using the connector.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising: generating, by a computing system, a migration project based on one or more assets within the set of assets within the inventory and associated asset metadata; as well as Migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure is performed by the computing system based on the migration project.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein providing the set of assets within an inventory and associated asset metadata to a user comprises displaying the set of assets and associated asset metadata to the user in a graphical user interface.

8. A system comprising: one or more processors; as well as One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations including: Deploying a remote agent device in a user's external environment, wherein the remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in; creating an asset source that specifies a location of an external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, along with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository; Create discovery strategies for discovering external assets within asset sources; generating a discovery job for retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source; executing, by the discovery plug-in, a discovery job to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory includes an asset collection that includes the asset metadata for the external assets; and The set of assets within the inventory and associated asset metadata are provided to a user.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise generating an inventory on a cloud infrastructure, and wherein the cloud infrastructure is in communication with a remote agent device.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the discovery policy is a schedule identifying times when the computing system is to perform discovery jobs.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving queries from users regarding asset metadata; Perform a query on inventory; Results of the query are provided to the user based on the execution.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise generating, by the computing system, a connector between the discovery plug-in and the location of the external environment in response to generating the asset source, and wherein asset metadata for the external asset is retrieved using the connector.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise: generating a migration project based on one or more assets within the asset collection and associated asset metadata within the inventory; as well as Migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure is performed based on the migration project.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein providing the set of assets and associated asset metadata within the inventory to a user comprises displaying the set of assets and associated asset metadata to the user in a graphical user interface.

15. A computer program product tangibly embodied in one or more non-transitory machine-readable media, comprising instructions configured to cause one or more data processors to: Deploying a remote agent device in a user's external environment, wherein the remote agent device includes a discovery plug-in; creating an asset source that specifies a location of an external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, along with a reference to credentials stored in a data repository; Create discovery strategies for discovering external assets within asset sources; generating a discovery job for retrieving asset metadata for external assets discovered within the asset source; executing, by the discovery plug-in, a discovery job to discover external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory includes an asset collection that includes the asset metadata for the external assets; as well as The set of assets within the inventory and associated asset metadata are provided to a user.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise generating an inventory on a cloud infrastructure, and wherein the cloud infrastructure is in communication with a remote agent device.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the discovery policy is a schedule identifying times when the computing system is to perform discovery jobs.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving queries from users regarding asset metadata; Perform a query on inventory; Results of the query are provided to the user based on the execution.

19. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise generating, by the computing system, a connector between the discovery plug-in and the location of the external environment in response to generating the asset source, and wherein asset metadata for the external asset is retrieved using the connector.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise: generating a migration project based on one or more assets within the asset collection and associated asset metadata within the inventory; as well as Migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure is performed based on the migration project.

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