Secure two-way network connection system between private networks

Abstract

A secure private network connectivity system (SNCS) within a cloud service provider infrastructure (CSPI) is described that provides secure private network connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's on-premises environment and the customer's resources residing in the cloud. The SNCS provides secure private bidirectional network connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's external site representation and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN in the cloud, without requiring enterprise users (e.g., administrators) to explicitly configure the external resources, advertise routes, or set up site-to-site network connectivity. The SNCS provides high-performance, scalable, and highly available site-to-site network connectivity for handling network traffic between the customer's on-premises environment and the CSPI by implementing a robust infrastructure of network elements and computing nodes used to provide the secure site-to-site network connectivity.

Description

[Technical Field]

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This application is a continuation of, and claims the benefit of priority to, U.S. Patent Application No. 17 / 515,093, filed October 29, 2021 (now U.S. Patent No. 11,558,245), which is a continuation of, and claims the benefit of priority to, U.S. Patent Application No. 18 / 078,897, filed December 9, 2022, which claims the benefit of and priority to, and a continuation-in-part of, U.S. Patent Application No. 18 / 373,698, filed September 27, 2023, which claims the benefit of and priority to, the entire contents of each of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. This application is a continuation of, and claims the benefit of and priority to, the following applications: (1) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 457,695, "SECURE NETWORK CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN SECURE NETWORKS," filed April 6, 2023; (2) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 457,700, "OCB NETWORK SERVICE ECAR-DATAPLANE," filed April 6, 2023; (3) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 434,879, "CLOUD BRIDGE TECHNIQUES," filed December 22, 2022; (4) Claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 434,846, "CLOUD MIGRATION TECHNIQUES," filed December 22, 2022. The entire contents of the above-referenced provisional application are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

[0002] Field The present disclosure relates generally to resource integration with cloud services, and more particularly to techniques for extending the reach of cloud services to on-premise or off-premise environments and other cloud platforms to enable migration and multi-cloud use cases. [Background technology]

[0003] background Cloud computing has been a staple of many organizations for many years, providing a suite of online services such as collaboration, communication, data storage and backup, and user relationship management tools—essentially all the technological elements needed to run a business. Currently, there are four main types of cloud computing: private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud. A private cloud architecture is a cloud environment dedicated to a single user, group, or organization, which may be on-premises or off-premises. A public cloud architecture is a cloud environment dedicated to multiple users, groups, or organizations, which may be on-premises or off-premises. A hybrid cloud architecture uses both a public cloud architecture and a private cloud architecture or on-premises infrastructure. A multicloud architecture is a combination of clouds (private and / or public) across multiple vendors. Each of these cloud types can be configured to offer a variety of cloud computing services, including Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platforms as a service (PaaS), Software as a service (SaaS), and Integration platform as a service (iPaaS). IaaS provides standard compute, storage, and network resources at a scale based on demand. PaaS provides software development and deployment resources. SaaS provides software distribution to end users. iPaaS is a set of cloud services that allows users to develop, run, and manage integration flows between different applications. Summary of the Invention [Problem to be solved by the invention]

[0004] The growth of cloud computing has enabled organizations to use a wide variety of highly scalable resources and services on demand, rather than building and maintaining them on- 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 different cloud resource and / or on- or off-premises resource (non-cloud resources). For example, IT silos can arise when only one group of people (e.g., one department within an organization) has access to a particular resource. Cloud-based integration (also known as cloud integration) unifies all different cloud resources and / or on- or off-premises resources to avoid such instances of IT silos. Cloud integration is a form of systems integration business delivered as a cloud computing service that addresses the integration of data, processes, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and applications. At the most basic level, cloud integration means connecting a wide range of processes, applications, systems, data repositories, and other IT environments (e.g., public cloud, private cloud, on-premises infrastructure, etc.) in either hybrid or multi-cloud deployments so that they can operate as a single, cohesive IT infrastructure for an organization. Without a cloud integration solution, administrators must perform each integration task separately and manually, a process that is time-consuming and increases the likelihood of error.

[0005] To take advantage of the many benefits offered by cloud services, businesses often need to migrate their on-premises applications and data from local data centers to public cloud infrastructures. This process typically requires businesses to set up site-to-site network connections to establish secure connections between their on-premises data centers and cloud infrastructures. Configuring high-performance, scalable, and highly available site-to-site network connections to handle network traffic between different networks can be a complex and time-consuming task for businesses, especially when their on-premises applications and data are extended across multiple different networks. [Means for solving the problem]

[0006] Quick Overview Provided herein are techniques (e.g., methods, systems, non-transitory computer-readable media having code or instructions executable by one or more processors) for secure bidirectional network connectivity between private networks. One aspect relates to a method, including: a computing system registering an external resource residing in an on-premises network as an external endpoint in a virtual cloud network (VCN); and receiving a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate; the method further including creating an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creation of the external resource representation including creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC); the method further including establishing a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container; and creating a VCN wallet in each of the intermediate containers and in the VCN based at least in part on the user wallet. In some embodiments, access of the external resource through the external resource representation is enabled by information included in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

[0007] In some embodiments, the VCN wallet includes at least a VCN server wallet and a VCN client wallet. In some embodiments, the VCN server wallet is accessible by at least one intermediate container. In some embodiments, the VCN client wallet is accessible by a VNIC. In some embodiments, at least one intermediate container is present in the data plane VCN.

[0008] In some embodiments, the at least one intermediate container includes a first container for communicatively coupling with an on-premises network via a first tunnel shard. In some embodiments, the first container can be communicatively coupled with the on-premises network via the first tunnel shard and a public communication network. In some embodiments, the at least one intermediate container includes a second container that can be communicatively coupled with a VCN. In some embodiments, the second container includes a connection manager ("CMAN") container that can act as a proxy server for redirecting packets received by the CMAN container from the VCN to the on-premises network.

[0009] In some embodiments, the first container is communicatively coupled to the second container. In some embodiments, the method includes creating a private endpoint within the VCN. In some embodiments, the private endpoint is communicatively coupled to the external resource via an external resource representation. In some embodiments, the method includes storing the wallet in an on-premises network. In some embodiments, the method includes discovering the external resource via an agent operating on the external resource. In some embodiments, the method includes sending a request from the external resource representation to the external resource via an intermediate container. In some embodiments, the method includes receiving a result corresponding to the request at at least one intermediate container and sending the result to the external resource representation by the at least one intermediate container.

[0010] One aspect relates to a system including a memory containing processor-executable stored instructions and a processor capable of executing the stored instructions, the stored instructions performing the following: registering an external resource residing in an on-premises network as an external endpoint in a virtual cloud network (VCN); and receiving a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate; creating an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creation of the external resource representation including creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC); establishing a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container; and creating a VCN wallet for each of the intermediate containers and for the VCN based at least in part on the user wallet. In some embodiments, access of the external resource via the external resource representation is enabled by information included in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

[0011] In some embodiments, the VCN wallet includes at least a VCN server wallet and a VCN client wallet. In some embodiments, the VCN server wallet is accessible by at least one intermediate container. In some embodiments, the VCN client wallet is accessible by a VNIC. In some embodiments, the at least one intermediate container resides in a data plane VCN, and the at least one intermediate container includes a first container for communicatively coupling with an on-premises network via a first tunnel shard. In some embodiments, the first container can be communicatively coupled with the on-premises network via the first tunnel shard and a public communication network.

[0012] One aspect relates to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a plurality of instructions executable by one or more processors, the plurality of instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, causing the one or more processors to register an external resource residing in an on-premises network as an external endpoint in a virtual cloud network (VCN) and receive a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate, the plurality of instructions causing the one or more processors to create an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creation of the external resource representation including creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC), the plurality of instructions causing the one or more processors to establish a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container, and to create a VCN wallet for each of the intermediate containers and for the VCN based at least in part on the user wallet. In some embodiments, access of the external resource via the external resource representation is enabled by information included in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

[0013] The techniques described above and below can be implemented in many ways and in many contexts. Several example implementations and contexts are provided with reference to the following figures, as described in further detail below. However, the following implementations and contexts are only some of the many implementations and contexts. [Brief explanation of the drawings]

[0014] [Figure 1] FIG. 1 illustrates a distributed environment 100 including a secure private network connectivity service within a cloud service provider infrastructure (CSPI), according to one embodiment. [Figure 2]FIG. 2 illustrates further details of the operations performed by the systems and subsystems shown in FIG. 1 to provide secure private network connectivity between a customer's external resources residing in the customer's on-premises network and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN, according to an embodiment. [Figure 3] 2 illustrates an example of a process performed by the systems and subsystems shown in FIG. 1 to provide secure private network connectivity, according to an embodiment. [Figure 4] 1 is a flowchart illustrating the flow of network packets between an external resource residing in a customer's on-premises network and a representation of the external resource in the customer's virtual cloud network, according to one embodiment. [Figure 5] 1 is a flowchart illustrating the flow of network packets between an external resource representation in a customer's virtual cloud network and an external resource residing in the customer's on-premises network, according to one embodiment. [Figure 6] 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment illustrating a virtual or overlay cloud network hosted by a cloud service provider infrastructure, according to an embodiment. [Figure 7] FIG. 2 illustrates a simplified architectural diagram of physical components in a physical network within CSPI, according to one embodiment. [Figure 8] FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary arrangement within CSPI in which a host machine is connected to multiple network virtualization devices (NVDs), according to one embodiment. [Figure 9] A diagram illustrating connections between a host machine and an NVD to achieve I / O virtualization to support multi-tenancy functionality, according to one embodiment. [Figure 10] FIG. 2 illustrates a simplified block diagram of a physical network provided by CSPI, according to one embodiment. [Figure 11A] FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment illustrating a cloud bridge architecture for management and configuration of remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to an embodiment. [Figure 11B] FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment illustrating a cloud bridge architecture for management and configuration of remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to an embodiment. [Figure 11C] FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment illustrating a cloud bridge architecture for management and configuration of remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to an embodiment. [Figure 12] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of one embodiment of a transition. [Figure 13] FIG. 1 is a diagram of an example embodiment of an architecture that may be involved in a migration. [Figure 14] 1 is a schematic diagram of one embodiment of a system for secure network connectivity between secure networks. [Figure 15] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a system for secure network connectivity between secure networks. [Figure 16] 1 is a flow chart illustrating one embodiment of a process for connecting first and second environments. [Figure 17] 1 is a schematic diagram of one embodiment of a system for secure network communication between secure networks. [Figure 18] 1 is a flowchart illustrating one embodiment of a process for accessing an asset in a first environment through a second environment. [Figure 19] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating one pattern for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 20] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating another pattern for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 21]FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating another pattern for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 22] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating another pattern for implementing a cloud infrastructure as a service system in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 23] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computer system according to at least one embodiment. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0015] Detailed Description 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 may be practiced without these specific details. The figures and descriptions 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.

[0016] The present disclosure relates generally to cloud-based services. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, the present disclosure describes a secure private network connectivity service within a cloud infrastructure, including an improved ability to establish secure private bidirectional network connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's on-premises environment and the customer's resources residing in the cloud.

[0017] Cloud infrastructure can provide high-performance compute, storage, and network capabilities within a flexible overlay virtual network that runs on a physical underlay network and is securely accessible from a company's on-premises network. Cloud infrastructure enables companies to manage cloud-based workloads in the same way they manage on-premises workloads. Thus, companies can obtain all the benefits of the cloud with the same control, isolation, security, and predictable performance as on-premises networks. Companies can build their own networks using the compute, memory, and network resources provided by the cloud. For example, customers can build one or more customizable private networks called virtual cloud networks (VCNs) using resources provided by the cloud. Customers can deploy one or more customer resources, such as compute instances, into these customer VCNs. Compute instances can take the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, and so on. Thus, clouds provide infrastructure and a set of complementary cloud services that enable companies (customers) to build and run a wide range of applications and services within a highly available hosted environment.

[0018] To take advantage of the numerous benefits offered by cloud infrastructure, many enterprises migrate their on-premises applications and data from their local data centers to public cloud infrastructure. Migrating workloads from an enterprise's local (i.e., on-premises) data center to the cloud can be a complex and challenging process. Common challenges encountered during cloud migration include identifying the type of migration to perform, the types of resources that need to be moved, and the data dependencies between resources. While migrating workloads, some resources (e.g., databases, applications, etc.) may need to reside in the on-premises data center for a certain period of time before they can be successfully migrated to the cloud. Certain resources (e.g., business-critical resources, resources with data portability restrictions, or resources with strict geographical requirements) may be identified as resources that will not be migrated to the cloud and will remain in the on-premises data center for security reasons. A secure private network connection must be established between a customer's (enterprise's) on-premises data center and the customer's VCN to enable the enterprise to securely access on-premises resources from its VCN (in the cloud) and for resources residing in the on-premises data center to securely access resources residing in the cloud. Setting up a secure site-to-site network connection can be a complex and time-consuming task for enterprises. This task typically requires network policy level management by an enterprise user (e.g., administrator) to set up a site-to-site network (e.g., VPN) connection, set multiple configuration parameters, configure VPN components (e.g., customer gateway device, target gateway device) for the site-to-site network connection, etc.

[0019] Furthermore, to use a site-to-site network connection to access remote assets (e.g., on-premises resources such as databases or applications) residing in an on-premises data center from a VCN, or to enable remote assets residing in an on-premises data center to securely access resources and services in a customer's VCN, enterprise users must perform additional tasks, such as manually configuring gateway devices to perform route advertisements and network address translation to enable secure connectivity between the remote assets in the customer's external environment and the resources in the customer's VCN. Users must also manually configure the remote assets for traffic (e.g., network packets) to reach the remote assets from the customer's VCN and vice versa, configure route tables to include routes used by the site-to-site VPN connection, enable route propagation in the route tables to automatically propagate site-to-site VPN routes, update security rules, and so on.

[0020] In one embodiment, a secure private network connectivity service within a cloud service provider infrastructure (CSPI) is described that includes an improved ability to establish secure private bidirectional network connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's on-premises environment and the customer's resources residing in the cloud. The secure private network connectivity service is implemented using a secure network connectivity system (SNCS) within the cloud service provider infrastructure (CSPI). The SNCS described in this disclosure offers several technological advances and / or improvements over traditional cloud-based network connectivity services. Using the disclosed new and improved architecture implemented by the SNCS, secure private bidirectional network connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's external site representation and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN in the cloud can be achieved without requiring enterprise users (e.g., administrators) to explicitly configure the external resources, advertise routes, or set up site-to-site network connections. The SNCS provides high-performance, scalable, and highly available site-to-site network connectivity for handling network traffic between the customer's on-premises environment and the CSPI by implementing a robust infrastructure of network elements and computing nodes used to provide the secure site-to-site network connectivity. By using the robust infrastructure of network elements and computing nodes implemented by the SNCS, enterprise users can securely access external resources from the cloud as if they were connecting to any other native resource within the VCN. Additionally, the SNCS enables one or more external resources residing in the customer's on-premises network to securely reach and access resources and services residing in the customer's VCN (i.e., the cloud).Secure, private, bidirectional network connectivity may be achieved between external resources within a customer's external site representation and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN within the cloud, without requiring enterprise users (e.g., administrators) to explicitly configure the external resources, advertise routes, or set up site-to-site network connections. Related systems and methods are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17 / 515,087, "Transparent Mounting Of External Endpoints Between Private Networks," filed October 29, 2021, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17 / 515,093, "Secure Bi-Directional Network Connectivity System Between Private Networks," filed October 29, 2021, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

[0021] Referring now to the drawings, FIG. 1 illustrates a distributed environment 100 including secure private network connectivity services within a cloud service provider infrastructure (CSPI), according to one embodiment. The distributed environment 100 includes multiple systems communicatively coupled to one another via one or more communication networks. These communication networks may include public and private networks. The distributed environment 100 illustrated in FIG. 1 is merely an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some implementations, the distributed environment illustrated in FIG. 1 may include more or fewer systems or components than those illustrated in FIG. 1, may combine two or more subsystems, or may include a different configuration or arrangement of systems.

[0022] As shown in the example illustrated in FIG. 1 , distributed environment 100 includes CSPI 102, which offers services and resources to which customers can subscribe. In one embodiment, CSPI 102 provides a secure private network connectivity service, including the ability to provide secure bidirectional private network connectivity between a customer's on-premises network and the customer's VCN hosted by CSPI 102. In the example illustrated in FIG. 1 , the secure private network connectivity service may be implemented by a secure network connectivity system (SNCS) 104 within CSPI 102. The secure private network connectivity service provided by SNCS 104 enables one or more resources (also referred to herein as external resources or remote assets) residing in the customer's on-premises network to securely access resources and services residing in the customer's VCN. The secure private network connectivity service provided by SNCS 104 further enables resources and services in the customer's VCN to securely access external resources residing in the customer's on-premises network. A customer can access external resources from within the VCN as if they were connecting to any other native resource residing in the customer's VCN. Secure access between on-premise external resources and resources residing in a customer's VCN (e.g., the cloud) can be enabled without requiring the customer (e.g., an enterprise user) to set up complex site-to-site network connections between the on-premise network and the cloud, without requiring the customer to make changes to the external resources, or without the customer having to configure the routes used by the site-to-site connections. Further details of the processing performed by SNCS 104 to enable secure bidirectional connections between external resources residing in a customer's on-premise network and the customer's resources and services in the cloud are described in detail below.

[0023] In one approach, secure bidirectional connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's on-premises network and the customer's resources and services in the cloud (e.g., customer VCN) is achieved by the SNCS 104 using a multi-step process. In the first step, a user (e.g., an administrator) associated with the customer can create an “external site representation” 106 of the customer's on-premises network. For example, the user can interact with the SNCS 104 through a console user interface (UI) 108 of an application executed by the user device, through an API, or through a command line interface (CLI) executed by the user's device to create the external site representation 106. The external site representation (e.g., 106) can represent a logical or virtual representation of the customer's external site (e.g., on-premises network / on-premises data center) and can be identified by an external site identifier and a tenant (customer) identifier. As an example, the external site representation 106 can represent a high-level container resource that logically represents a portion of the customer's on-premises network and a subset of one or more external resources residing in the on-premises network.

[0024] In the second stage, the user downloads the agent 112 and installs / configures the agent 112 on the external site representation 106. In one embodiment, the agent 112 may be a software application downloaded by the user as part of a download package provided by the SNCS 104 when the user subscribes to the secure private connectivity service provided by the SNCS 104. The agent 112 may be installed and configured on the external site representation 106 by the user via the console UI 108.

[0025] In a third phase, once agent 112 is successfully installed in external site representation 106, SNCS 104 authenticates agent 112 and coordinates the configuration of tenant-specific overlay network 128 for the customer. Tenant-specific overlay network 128 may represent a virtual overlay network built by SNCS 104 on top of a physical network for each tenant (customer) that subscribes to services provided by the SNCS. Tenant-specific overlay network 128 is used to establish secure private network connectivity between the customer's external site representation 106 and the customer's VCN 148 within CSPI. As shown in the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1 , tenant-specific overlay network 128 may include a fleet of distributed, horizontally scalable computing nodes, including a set of one or more tunnel hosts (also referred to herein as tunnel virtual machines), tunnel VM-1 116 and tunnel VM-2 122, and a set of one or more resource hosts (also referred to herein as resource virtual machines), resource VM-1 130 and resource VM-2 132. A host (e.g., a tunnel host or resource host) may be composed of a set of containers (also referred to herein as shards) interconnected with each other within a tenant-specific overlay network 128. Tunnel VMs 116 and 122 are used to run per-tenant tunnel shards. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, for a particular tenant / customer of CSPI, Tunnel VM-1 116 is used to run tunnel shard 120, and Tunnel VM-2 122 is used to run tunnel shard 126. Each tunnel shard 120 or 126 is responsible for providing secure connectivity to the customer's external site representation 106. A set of resource VMs 130 and 132 may be used to run per-tenant resource shards.For example, as shown in FIG. 1, for a tenant / customer, resource VM-1 130 is used to run resource shard 136, and resource VM-2 132 is used to run resource shard 140. The resource shards may be used to receive traffic from the customer's VCN and forward it to the customer's external site representation. Further details of the operations performed by the tunnel shards and resource shards shown in FIG. 1 to provide secure connectivity between the customer's external site representation 106 and the customer's VCN 148 are described in more detail in FIG. 1.

[0026] Each tunnel VM (116, 122) and resource VM (130, 132) is further configured using a host manager (118, 134), respectively. The host managers (118, 134) represent processes running on the tunnel VM and resource VM. The host manager (118 or 134) may implement an API used to create tunnel shards and resource shards. In some implementations, the host managers (118, 134) are stateless and may operate in an instruction mode (i.e., as a sequence of commands for the host manager to execute) by receiving instructions from a user (via the API 108) regarding the type of shard to be created (tunnel shard or resource shard) and the specific configuration of the shard. The host manager may also be responsible for collecting and monitoring the state of the tunnel shards and resource shards.

[0027] After the SNCS 104 configures the tenant-specific overlay network 128 for the customer as described above, in a fourth step, the user registers on-premises assets (e.g., external resources 114A) in the external site representation 106 as external endpoints within the VCN. The external resources 114A may represent on-premises resources or assets, such as databases, computing instances, or applications residing in the customer's on-premises network, with which the customer intends to establish secure bidirectional connectivity with resources and services residing in the customer's VCN. To register the external resources 114A, the user identifies (via the console UI 108) the external resources (e.g., 114A) to which secure private network connectivity from the VCN 148 is enabled and registers the external resources as external endpoints within the VCN using the console UI 108 (or via an API). As part of registering the external resources, the user provides configuration information related to the external resources, such as the on-premises physical IP address associated with the external resource, the port number through which the external resource can be accessed, and the hostname (or fully qualified domain name (FQDN)) of the external resource, via the console UI or API provided by the SNCS. The user also selects the subnet within the customer's VCN where the external endpoint for the external resource will be created. The SNCS receives the configuration information and creates the external endpoint for the external resource in the customer's VCN. The external endpoint is identified by an IP address, port number, and FQDN (hostname) within the customer's VCN.

[0028] In a fifth stage, the SNCS 104 then (via control plane APIs) creates external resource representations of the external endpoints in the customer's VCN. In one implementation, creating the external resource representations includes creating remote mount point VNICs and assigning the IP addresses associated with the external endpoints to the VNICs. The SNCS then (via control plane APIs) creates resource shards on the resource VMs, and these resource VMs can logically connect the VNICs to the resource shards (via worker interfaces).

[0029] In a sixth step, the agent 112 downloads and reads configuration information 156 associated with the VNIC 142 created for the external resource representation 114A in the customer's VCN 148 and copies the configuration information 156 to the registered external resource 114A. The configuration information may include, for example, the virtual IP address of the VNIC, a fully qualified domain name associated with the computing instance associated with the VNIC, and a cloud identifier for the virtual cloud network associated with the customer. The agent 112 uses the configuration information 156 to create / provision a logical interface 158 for the external resource 114A. The logical interface 158 may represent a software entity consisting of an IP address. In one implementation, the creation or provisioning of the logical interface 158 by the agent 112 includes assigning the virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC 142 created for the external resource representation to the logical interface 158 by the agent.

[0030] Because external resource 114A is provisioned with a logical interface 158 assigned a virtual IP address corresponding to VNIC 142 for the external resource representation residing in the customer's VCN, the external resource now becomes part of the customer's VCN and can securely access resources and services in the cloud (e.g., in customer's VCN 148) by using the secure private network connectivity services provided by SNCS 104. For example, external resource 114A can securely reach / access compute instance 150 in customer's VCN 148 or service 152 (e.g., streaming service or object storage service) in the customer's VCN by establishing a connection to a tunnel host in SNCS 104 via its logical interface 158 with agent 112. Similarly, a client application in customer's VCN 148 can use the services provided by SNCS 104 to securely access external resource 114A in the customer's on-premises network using the external resource's VNIC representation 142 as if it were connecting to any other native resource in customer's VCN 148. In this manner, SNCS 104 provides secure bidirectional connectivity between external resources residing in a customer's on-premise network and the customer's resources and services in the cloud (e.g., the customer's VCN).

[0031] FIG. 2 illustrates in greater detail the operations performed by the systems and subsystems illustrated in FIG. 1 to provide secure private network connectivity between a customer's external resources residing in the customer's on-premises network and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN, according to one embodiment. The systems and subsystems illustrated in FIG. 2 may be implemented using software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of a computing system, hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored in a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device). The distributed environment 200 illustrated in FIG. 2 is merely an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some implementations, the distributed environment illustrated in FIG. 2 may include more or fewer systems or components than those illustrated in FIG. 2, may combine two or more subsystems, or may include a different configuration or arrangement of systems. The inventors have described the system of FIG. 2 primarily based on the system architecture (SNCS) described in Invention 1 (IaaS 272.1). For greater clarity, please review the description of Figure 2 below and add / edit as necessary.

[0032] As previously described in FIG. 1 , as part of the connectivity process performed by SNCS 104 to provide a secure private network connection between a customer's on-premises network and the customer's VCN hosted by CSPI 102, a user (e.g., an administrator) associated with the customer creates an “external site representation” (e.g., 106) of the customer's on-premises network, configures an agent (e.g., 112) within the external site representation, registers on-premises assets within the external site representation, and creates remote mount points (also referred to herein as endpoints) for the registered external resources in the customer's VCN. Upon successful installation of the agent (e.g., 112) within the external site representation, the agent 112 establishes a virtual private network (VPN) connection (also referred to herein as a VPN tunnel) to SNCS 104 over a public network (e.g., the Internet 110). The VPN connection is an encrypted connection between the customer's external site representation 106 and the customer's VCN 148. In one implementation, the VPN connection utilizes a secure tunneling protocol (e.g., the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) protocol) to establish a secure private network connection to the SNCS 104 over the Internet 110. When the agent 112 is installed on the external site representation 106, the agent 112 initiates a bootstrap process to activate itself with the SNCS 104 by passing information to the SNCS 104, such as the partition identifier and external site representation identifier associated with the agent 112 in a configuration file. Once the agent 112 has bootstrapped itself, it communicates with the SNCS's control plane, which initiates the registration and activation process. During the activation process, the control plane returns all the required information (e.g., certificate, public IP, etc.) needed by the gateway appliance to establish a secure tunnel connection to the VPN server.Agent 112 then establishes a secure VPN connection to SNCS 104 by executing a VPN client program that opens a secure VPN tunnel connection to a VPN server installed on the SNCS. The secure tunnel terminates at a tunnel shard (e.g., 120) located in a tunnel VM (e.g., 116) within SNCS 104.

[0033] In the particular implementation shown in FIG. 1, agent 112 is configured with two VPN clients, VPN client 1 206 and VPN client 2 208, each configured to establish tunnels terminating at two different VPN servers (VPN server 1 224 and VPN server 2 226, running on tunnel shards named tunnel shard 1 120 and tunnel shard 2 126, respectively). In the implementation shown in FIG. 2, every physical installation of agent 112 causes the establishment of two tunnels, so that if one tunnel goes down, traffic (i.e., network packets) can be automatically routed through the second tunnel. While the particular implementation shown in FIG. 2 shows two tunnels, in other implementations, SNCS 104 may be configured to implement three or more redundant tunnels per physical installation of agent 112, or may simply implement a single tunnel at the time of installation of agent 112.

[0034] In one embodiment, agent 112 establishes BGP peering sessions with tunnel shards 120 and 126 using a standard exterior gateway protocol, such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Agent 112 uses BGP to exchange routing and reachability information with the tunnel shards via a public interface 220 implemented within agent 112. As part of the configuration information required for the BGP peering session, agent 112 injects its on-premises IP addresses into a local route table 212 (also referred to herein as a routing information base (RIB)) that is received by the tunnel shards. The tunnel shards import the routing information into their local route tables (228 and 236) after applying appropriate route filtering policies. Route filtering is required to ensure that a compromised agent 112 does not inject arbitrary routes into the tunnel shards. In one example, agent 112 further comprises a routing manager 214. Routing manager 214 may be implemented using an open source routing manager (e.g., Zebra) that is part of a routing suite (e.g., Quagga). When a BGP peering session learns a route and imports it into its route table 212, the BGP peering session performs a best path calculation and adds the best route to the local kernel using routing manager 214.

[0035] A tunnel shard (e.g., 120, 126) may be composed of a set of one or more containers. In some implementations, a tunnel shard (120 or 126) may include a shell container that can be used to configure various network interfaces that allow the tunnel shard to communicate with both the agent 112 and other shards (e.g., resource shards 136 and 140) that are part of the tenant-specific overlay network 128. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 2, the network interfaces implemented within the shell container in the tunnel shard may include an external site interface (esi), a tunnel interface, and a shard backend interface. For example, the network interfaces implemented in tunnel shard 1 120 include tunnel interface 216, external site interface 222, and shard backend interface 234. Similarly, the network interfaces implemented in tunnel shard 2 126 include tunnel interface 218, external site interface 223, and shard backend interface 235. A tunnel shard (e.g., 120 or 126) further comprises a VPN server (224, 226) that is used to establish a VPN tunnel to a VPN client (206, 208) running on the external gateway appliance 112. An external site interface (222, 223), which may be identified by a public IP known to the agent 112 on which the VPN client runs, is used to establish a tunnel to the tunnel shard. When a VPN client (e.g., 206, 208) connects to a VPN server (224, 226), a tunnel interface (216, 218) is created and placed in the tunnel shard's pre-configured VPN subnet.

[0036] In one implementation, each tunnel shard (e.g., 120, 126) may utilize Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to establish BGP peering sessions between the external gateway appliance and the tunnel shard, and between the tunnel shard and the resource shard. The BGP peering sessions are used to exchange routing and reachability information with the resource shard via the shard backend interfaces (234, 235) and with the external site representation 106 via the external site interfaces (222, 223). As part of the configuration information required for the BGP peering sessions, an IP address identifying the tenant-specific overlay network 128 is added to route tables 228, 236 (i.e., routing information bases (RIBs)) implemented in the tunnel shards 120, 126, respectively. In one implementation, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) technology may be used to assign IP addresses to tenant-specific overlay networks. The route tables (228, 236) list routes to specific network destinations, such as to resource shards (136, 140) and to the external site representation 106. In some cases, the route tables (228, 236) also list metrics (distances) associated with those routes. When a BGP peering session with a resource shard is established, the routes in the route tables are propagated to the resource shard. As shown in FIG. 2, each tunnel shard (120, 126) further includes a routing manager (228, 240). The routing manager (228 or 240) may be implemented in a manner similar to the routing manager (214) implemented in the external gateway appliance 112. Once BGP learns and imports routes into the route tables in the tunnel shards, it performs optimal path calculations and uses the routing manager to push optimal routes to the external site representation 106 and to the resource shards 136, 140.

[0037] A resource shard (136, 140) may be composed of a set of containers. In some implementations, the resource shard (136, 140) may include a shell container that can be used to configure virtual tunnel endpoints (VTEPs) (242, 243) using the tunnel shards (116, 126). Each resource shard (136, 140) may use BGP to establish peering sessions with the tunnel shards and to exchange routing and reachability information with the tunnel shards via the virtual tunnel endpoints (242, 243). The resource shards (136, 140) further include routing managers (250, 260) configured to perform the same functions as the routing manager (232 or 240) implemented in the tunnel shard. Each resource shard (136, 140) further includes a proxy server (244, 254). The proxy server (244 or 254) may be configured to accept connections from client applications 144 within the customer's VCN 148 and to initiate new connections to external resources within the external site representation.

[0038] In one implementation, for each registered external endpoint (i.e., an external endpoint corresponding to an external resource in the external site representation), a unique proxy server container is launched and connected to the resource shard. When a user registers an external resource and creates a remote mount point VNIC for the registered external endpoint in the customer's VCN, the user may provide configuration information to SNCS 104, such as the external resource's IP address, the external resource's port number, and the external resource's name. This configuration information is provisioned in the proxy server and used by client applications in the customer's VCN to connect to the external resource. Once the external resource is successfully registered by SNCS as an external endpoint in the customer's VCN, SNCS 104 (via control plane APIs) creates a VNIC and assigns the IP address associated with the external endpoint to the VNIC.

[0039] In the example shown in FIG. 2, a registered external endpoint (i.e., an external resource within the external site representation) represents a database 202 residing in the external site representation 106. Proxy servers (244, 254) listen on the virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC 206 created for the registered external endpoint 202. This ensures that the same VNIC IP cannot be used to access other registered external resources within the external site representation. When a client application 144 running within a customer's VCN receives a query to retrieve information stored in the external database 202, it sends a network packet to the VNIC IP within the customer's VCN. The network packet is received by a worker VNIC (251, 252) connected to a resource shard (136, 140). The worker VNIC is configured with the VNIC's virtual IP address and then initiates a connection to the registered external resource within the external site representation through the proxy servers (244, 254). The proxy servers (244, 254) perform network address translation (NAT) to translate the virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC 206 into the real / physical IP address of the external resource 114A within the external site representation 106. The resource shards (136, 140) using the proxy servers (244, 254) initiate connections to the agent 112 through the tunnel shards (120, 126). The agent 112 receives network packets from the tunnel shards (120, 126) and then routes the packets to the registered external resource (i.e., the database 202) within the external site representation 106. The proxy servers (244, 254) further include the ability to load balance network traffic to the external resource via the tunnel shards. In one embodiment, the proxy servers (244, 254) can be configured to multiplex connections from multiple client applications into a single connection directed to the external site representation.

[0040] In a similar manner, a registered external resource (i.e., database 202) residing in external site representation 106 can reach and securely access resources (e.g., compute instance 150) or services (e.g., private endpoint VNIC 152) residing in the customer's VCN. As previously described in FIG. 1, agent 112 creates / provisions logical interface 204 for external resource 202. By creating logical interface 158 for external resource 114A and assigning the virtual IP address of database 202's VNIC representation 206 to the logical interface, database 202 (residing in the customer's on-premises network) can securely access compute instance 150 or service 156 (e.g., streaming service or object storage service in CSPI) in customer VCN 148 via private endpoint VNIC 142 in customer VCN 148 using the secure private network connectivity service provided by SNCS 104. For example, in the embodiment shown in FIG. 2, agent 112 can receive a query from database 202 requesting information associated with a resource (e.g., 150) in the customer's VCN. The agent 112 then sends network packets corresponding to the query to the tunnel shard (120, 126). The tunnel shard then initiates a connection to the resource shard (136, 140). The proxy servers (244, 254) in the resource shards (136, 140) perform network address translation (NAT) to translate the real IP address of the external resource in the external site representation 106 to the virtual IP address of the VNIC representation 206 of the external resource (e.g., database 202) in the customer's VCN. The worker VNICs (251, 252) connected to the resource shards (136, 140) then initiate a connection to the VNIC representation 206 of the database 202 in the customer's VCN and send the network packets corresponding to the query to the requesting resource (e.g., 150) in the customer's VCN.In this way, the SNCS 104 ensures that secure, private, two-way network connectivity is established between external resources (e.g., database 202) residing in the customer's on-premises network and resources (e.g., 150) and services (e.g., 152) within the customer's VCN (i.e., cloud).

[0041] In one implementation, registered external endpoints requiring private connectivity from customer VCN 148 may be implemented as service VNICs, also referred to herein as “SVNICs,” within customer VCN 148. SVNICs may be implemented by CSPI 102 using a VNIC as a service (VNICaaS) system (not shown in FIG. 2 ), which can represent horizontally scalable services implemented by CSPI 102 that can host multiple VNICs (e.g., service VNICs 254) to process and transmit traffic between virtual cloud networks. In particular, VNICaaS is a virtual network function that allows VNICs to be represented or used as services (i.e., SVNICs). VNICaaS provides the functionality of VNICs without requiring the hosting of specific smart NICs or compute instances within the virtual network to host the VNICs. The techniques used to represent registered endpoints as SVNICs are described in detail in U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 17 / 175,573, entitled “Techniques for high performant virtual routing capabilities.” The techniques described in U.S. Patent Application No. 17 / 175,573 are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to be limiting. In alternative embodiments, various other techniques may be used to represent registered endpoints and to process and transmit traffic between virtual cloud networks. An SVNIC is created for each registered external endpoint (e.g., database 202), allowing a flexible number of workers to be configured per SVNIC. In a specific implementation, every SVNIC may be associated with two worker VNICs (e.g., 251, 252) connected to different resource shards (e.g., 136, 140). The worker VNICs are passed to the resource shards and configured with the SVNIC IP.

[0042] In the particular implementation shown in FIG. 2, a single agent 112 is installed in the external site representation 106 and configured to establish two tunnels, resulting in a total of two tunnel shards that need to be deployed in the tunnel fleet implemented by the SNCS 104. With a fixed number of tunnel shards as described in this implementation, all resource shards can be pre-configured with a fixed set of BGP peers along with static Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) entries for those peers. In one approach, BGP containers on tunnel shards can be configured with “dynamic BGP peers” that can specify a CIDR block of IP addresses from which BGP can accept incoming connections. This CIDR block can be set to the CIDR of a tenant-specific overlay network, so that as resource shards scale, the BGP peers on the tunnel shards change appropriately. From the perspective of the resource shards, every resource shard now has two BGP peering connections, and each of the BGP peers propagates the same CIDR route it learns from the external site representation to the on-premises network, so every resource shard has two equal-cost routes toward the on-premises network. Similarly, from the perspective of the external gateway, agent 112 establishes two tunnels toward SNCS 104, and the tunnel shards advertise tenant-specific overlay network routes to agent 112, which then installs the appropriate routes into the tenant-specific overlay network.

[0043] Using the disclosed new and improved architecture implemented by the SNCS 104, secure, private, bidirectional network connectivity between external resources within a customer's external site representation and resources and services residing in the customer's VCN in the cloud can be achieved without requiring an enterprise user (e.g., an administrator) to explicitly configure the external resources, advertise routes, or set up inter-site network connectivity. The SNCS 104 provides high-performance, scalable, and highly available inter-site network connectivity for handling network traffic between a customer's on-premises environment and the CSPI by implementing a robust infrastructure of network elements and computing nodes (i.e., tenant-specific overlay network 128) for each tenant / customer using services provided by the SNCS 104. Tunnel hosts within the tenant-specific overlay network 128 are used to provide secure connectivity to the customer's external site representation 106, and resource hosts are used to receive traffic from the customer's VCN and forward it to the customer's external site representation. The resource hosts can further receive traffic from external resources within the external site representation and forward it to resources or services residing in the customer's VCN. By using a robust infrastructure of network elements and computing nodes implemented by a tenant-specific overlay network, enterprises can securely access external resources from the cloud as if they were connected to any other native resource within their VCN. Enterprise users can access external resources without setting up complex site-to-site networks between their on-premises network and the cloud, without making any changes to the external resources, and without configuring the routes used by the site-to-site connections.Similarly, by creating a logical interface for the external resource and associating this logical interface with the virtual IP address of the VNIC representation of the external resource, the external resource (residing in the customer's on-premises network) can securely access resources and services within the cloud (e.g., within the customer's VCN 148) using the secure private network connectivity services provided by SNCS 104.

[0044] FIG. 3 illustrates an example process performed by the systems and subsystems illustrated in FIG. 1 to provide secure private network connectivity, according to an embodiment. The process illustrated in FIG. 3 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored in a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device). The process 300 presented in FIG. 3 and described below is intended to be exemplary and non-limiting. While FIG. 3 illustrates various processing steps occurring in a particular sequence or order, this is not intended to be limiting. In an alternative embodiment, these steps may be performed in some different order, or some steps may be performed in parallel. In an embodiment, such as the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1, the process illustrated in FIG. 3 may be performed by computing nodes (e.g., 116, 122, 130, and 132) that include a tenant-specific overlay network 128.

[0045] The process illustrated in Figure 3 assumes that a user (e.g., an administrator) associated with a customer has created an external site representation (e.g., 106) of the customer's on-premises network and configured an agent (e.g., 112) within the external site representation 106. The process illustrated in Figure 4 further assumes that the SNCS 104 has authenticated the agent 112 and configured / established a tenant-specific overlay network (e.g., 128) containing a fleet of distributed, horizontally scalable computing nodes for the customer. As described in Figure 1, the set of one or more computing nodes includes resource hosts (i.e., resource virtual machines 130, 132) and tunnel hosts (i.e., tunnel virtual machines 116, 122).

[0046] 3 may begin at block 302 when the SNCS 104 executes a tenant-specific overlay network (e.g., 128) containing a fleet of distributed, horizontally scalable computing nodes. The tenant-specific overlay network is used to establish secure private network connectivity between a customer's external site representation and the customer's VCN (e.g., 148) within the CSPI.

[0047] In block 304, the SNCS registers (via a control plane API) an external resource residing in the customer's on-premises network as an external endpoint within the customer's VCN. The external endpoint is identified by an IP address within the customer's VCN. As previously described, the external resource may represent a database, computing instance, or application within the external site representation 106 to which the customer wishes to enable secure, bidirectional private network connectivity from within the VCN. As part of registering the external resource, a user of the SNCS provides configuration information related to the external resource via a console UI or API, such as the on-premises physical IP address associated with the external resource, the port number through which the external resource can be accessed, and the external resource's hostname (or fully qualified domain name (FQDN)). The user also selects a subnet within the customer's VCN in which the external resource's external endpoint will be created. The SNCS creates the external endpoint for the external resource in the customer's VCN based on the configuration information. The external endpoint is identified by an IP address, port number, and FQDN (hostname) within the customer's VCN.

[0048] In block 306, a first computing node in the SNCS (e.g., resource VM 130 or resource VM 132) creates an external resource representation of an external endpoint in the customer's VCN. In one implementation, creating the external resource representation includes creating a VNIC by the first computing node and assigning an IP address of the external endpoint to the VNIC.

[0049] At block 308, the first computing node sends configuration information corresponding to the VNIC created for the external resource representation in the customer's VCN to an agent 112 configured in the on-premises network. As part of the processing performed at block 308, the agent 112 downloads the configuration information and copies it to the registered external resource residing in the on-premises network. As previously described, the configuration information may include, for example, the virtual IP address of the VNIC, a fully qualified domain name associated with the computing instance associated with the VNIC, and a cloud identifier for a virtual cloud network associated with the customer. The agent 112 uses the configuration information to create / provision a logical interface (e.g., 158) for the external resource (e.g., 114A). In one implementation, the creation or provisioning of the logical interface by the agent 112 includes assigning, by the agent, the virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC 142 created for the external resource representation to the logical interface 158 provisioned for the external resource 114A.

[0050] At block 310, a second computing node (e.g., tunnel VM 116 or tunnel VM 122) receives a request to query information associated with a resource (e.g., compute instance 150) residing in a customer's VCN. In one example, this request may be sent by an external resource (e.g., 114A) residing in an on-premises network via its logical interface 158. For example, a user associated with a customer may send (e.g., via UI 108) a request to an external resource residing in the customer's on-premises network to query information associated with compute instance 150 residing in the customer's VCN. The external resource may then send the query to agent 112 residing in the on-premises network. Agent 112 receives the query request and sends a network packet corresponding to the query request to a tunnel shard (120 or 126) running in the tunnel VM.

[0051] At block 312, the second computing node (e.g., Tunnel VM 116 or Tunnel VM 122) establishes a connection between the logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC created for the external resource representation in the customer's VCN via a resource shard (e.g., 136 or 140). In a particular implementation, the tunnel shard (e.g., 120 or 126) may include functionality for translating a real / physical IP address assigned to the external resource to a virtual IP address of VNIC 142 and initiating a connection to VNIC 142 via the resource shard (136 or 140). The resource shard then initiates a connection to a resource (e.g., 150) in the customer's VCN.

[0052] At block 314, the second computing node (e.g., tunnel VM 116 or tunnel VM 122) sends the request to a resource residing in the customer's VCN via the connection established at block 410. At block 412, the second computing node retrieves a result corresponding to the request via the established connection. The result is then sent via agent 112 to the external resource residing in the external site representation. For example, if the resource is a database running in the customer's VCN, the result may include information stored in one or more tables in the database.

[0053] FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating the flow of network packets between external resources residing in a customer's on-premises network and a representation of the external resources in the customer's virtual cloud network, according to one embodiment. The process illustrated in FIG. 4 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored in a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device). The process 400 presented in FIG. 4 and described below is intended to be exemplary and non-limiting. While FIG. 4 depicts various processing steps occurring in a particular sequence or order, this is not intended to be limiting. In an alternative embodiment, these steps may be performed in some different order, or some steps may be performed in parallel. In an embodiment, such as the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2, the process illustrated in FIG. 4 may be performed by computing nodes (e.g., 116, 122, 130, and 132) that include the tenant-specific overlay network 128.

[0054] 4 may begin at block 402 when an external resource (e.g., database 202) residing in a customer's on-premises network (i.e., customer external site representation 106) receives a query for information associated with a resource (e.g., 150) residing in the customer's VCN (e.g., 148). As previously described, a user associated with the customer may send (e.g., via UI 108) a request to the external resource residing in the customer's on-premises network to query information associated with a compute instance 150 residing in the customer's VCN. The external resource may then send the query to an agent 112 residing in the on-premises network.

[0055] At block 404, agent 112 receives the query and sends network packets corresponding to the query to a tunnel shard (120 or 126) running on the tunnel VM. In one example, as part of the processing performed at block 404, agent 112 may encrypt the network packets before sending them to the tunnel shard.

[0056] In block 406, the tunnel shard receives the encrypted network packet and sends the encrypted network packet to the resource shard (136, 140) running on the resource VM. In particular, as shown in FIG. 2, the encrypted network packet may be received by the worker VNIC (251, 252) connected to the resource shard (136, 140).

[0057] In block 408, the resource shard (136, 140) decrypts the network packet and performs network address translation (NAT) to convert the physical IP address assigned to the external resource to the virtual IP address of the VNIC (e.g., 206) associated with the external resource representation within the customer's VCN.

[0058] In block 410, the resource shard (136, 140) sends the network packet to the VNIC created for the external resource representation in the customer's VCN.

[0059] At block 412, the VNIC sends a network packet corresponding to the query to a resource (e.g., 150) residing in the customer's VCN.

[0060] FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating the flow of network packets between an external resource representation in a customer's virtual cloud network and an external resource residing in the customer's on-premises network, according to an embodiment. The process illustrated in FIG. 5 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored in a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device). The process 500 presented in FIG. 5 and described below is intended to be exemplary and non-limiting. While FIG. 5 depicts various processing steps occurring in a particular sequence or order, this is not intended to be limiting. In an alternative embodiment, these steps may be performed in some different order, or some steps may be performed in parallel. In an embodiment, such as the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2, the process illustrated in FIG. 5 may be performed by computing nodes (e.g., 116, 122, 130, and 132) that include the tenant-specific overlay network 128.

[0061] 5 may begin at block 502 when a client application (e.g., 144) in a customer's VCN receives a query for information associated with an external resource (e.g., 202) that resides in the customer's on-premises network (i.e., the customer's external site representation 106). For example, the query may be received from a user associated with the customer via the client application. As part of the processing performed at block 502, the client application 144 initiates a connection to a VNIC (e.g., 206) associated with the external resource representation by sending a network packet corresponding to the query to a virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC in the customer's VCN.

[0062] In block 504, the client application sends a network packet corresponding to the query to a resource shard (136 or 140) running on a resource VM in the SNCS. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 2, the network packet may be received by a worker VNIC (251, 252) connected to the resource shard (136, 140). A proxy server (244, 254) in the resource shard (136, 140) performs network address translation (NAT) to translate the virtual IP address assigned to the VNIC into the physical IP address of the external resource in the external site representation 106 and initiates a connection to the agent 112 via the tunnel shard (120, 126).

[0063] At block 506, the resource shard sends the network packet to the tunnel shard (120, 126). As part of the processing performed at block 506, the tunnel shard may encrypt the network packet received from the resource shard before sending the packet to the agent 112 in the external site representation 106.

[0064] At block 508, the tunnel shard sends the network packet to an agent 112 residing in the customer's external site representation. As part of the processing performed at block 508, the agent 112 decrypts the network packet before sending it to an external resource (e.g., 202) within the external site representation (e.g., 106).

[0065] At block 510, the agent 112 sends the network packet to an external resource (e.g., 202) that resides in the customer's external site representation. The external resource receives the network packet corresponding to the query and generates a response network packet corresponding to the query. The response network packet may then be sent by the external resource back to the client application. For example, as part of a response network packet flow, a network packet corresponding to a response to a query is sent from the external resource to the agent. The agent encrypts the network packet and sends the encrypted network packet to the tunnel shard. The tunnel shard receives the encrypted packet and sends the packet to the resource shard. The resource shard decrypts the network packet and performs reverse network address translation (NAT) to translate the physical / real IP address assigned to the external resource into the virtual IP address of a VNIC associated with the external resource representation in the customer's VCN. The resource shard then sends the response network packet to the VNIC, which then sends the response packet to the requesting client application 144 in the customer's VCN 148.

[0066] Exemplary Virtual Network Architecture The term cloud services is typically used to refer to services made available on-demand (e.g., through a subscription model) by a cloud service provider (CSP) to users or customers using 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 customer's own on-premises servers and systems. Thus, customers can use 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 customers with easy and scalable access to applications and computing resources without requiring the customer to invest in procuring the infrastructure used to deliver the service.

[0067] There are multiple cloud service providers offering different types of cloud services. There are various types or models of cloud services, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), etc.

[0068] A customer can subscribe to one or more cloud services offered by a CSP. A customer can be any entity, such as an individual, an organization, or a business. When a customer subscribes or registers for a service offered by a CSP, a tenancy or account is created for the customer. The account then enables the customer to access one or more subscribed cloud resources associated with the account.

[0069] As mentioned above, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a specific type of cloud computing service. In the IaaS model, a CSP provides infrastructure (called cloud services provider infrastructure or CSPI) that can be used by customers to build their own customizable networks and deploy their resources. Therefore, the customer's resources and network are hosted in a distributed environment by the infrastructure provided by the CSP. This differs from traditional computing, where the customer's resources and network are hosted by the infrastructure provided by the customer.

[0070] CSPI can comprise interconnected, high-performance computing resources, including various host machines, memory resources, and network resources that form a physical network, also known as a substrate network or underlay network. Resources in CSPI can be distributed across one or more data centers, which can be geographically distributed across one or more geographic regions. Virtualization software can be run by these physical resources to provide a virtualized, distributed environment. This virtualization creates an overlay network (also known as a software-based network, software-defined network, or virtual network) on top of the physical network. A CSPI physical network provides the underlying foundation upon which one or more overlay or virtual networks can be created on top of the physical network. The physical network (or substrate 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 that operates on top of the physical substrate network. A particular physical network can support one or more overlay networks. Overlay networks typically use encapsulation techniques to distinguish traffic belonging to different overlay networks. A virtual or overlay network is also known as a virtual cloud network (VCN). Virtual networks are implemented using software virtualization technologies (e.g., hypervisors, network virtualization devices (NVDs) (e.g., smart NICs), top-of-rack (TOR) switches, virtualization functions performed by smart TORs that perform one or more functions performed by NVDs, and other mechanisms) to create a layer of network abstraction that can run on top of a physical network. Virtual networks can take many forms, including peer-to-peer networks, IP networks, etc. Virtual networks are typically either Layer 3 IP networks or Layer 2 VLANs.This method of virtual or overlay networking is often referred to as a virtual Layer 3 network or an 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 (VPN) (e.g., MPLS Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (RFC 4364)), VMware's NSX, and Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE).

[0071] In the case of IaaS, the infrastructure provided by the CSP (CSPI) may be configured to deliver virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the Internet). In the IaaS model, a cloud computing service provider may 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, the IaaS provider may offer various services (e.g., billing, monitoring, logging, security, load balancing, clustering, etc.) incidental to those infrastructure components. Accordingly, these services may be policy-driven, allowing IaaS users to implement policies to drive load balancing and maintain application availability and performance. The CSPI provides infrastructure and a set of complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services within a highly available, hosted, distributed environment. The CSPI provides high-performance computing resources and computing power as well as storage capacity within a flexible virtual network that can be securely accessed from various networked locations, such as from the customer's on-premises network. When a customer subscribes or registers for an IaaS service offered by a CSP, the tenancy created for that customer is a secure, isolated partition within the CSP where the customer can create, organize, and manage their cloud resources.

[0072] Customers can build their own virtual networks using the compute, memory, and network resources provided by CSPI. One or more customer resources or workloads, such as compute instances, can be deployed into these virtual networks. For example, customers can build one or more customizable private virtual networks called virtual cloud networks (VCNs) using resources provided by CSPI. Customers can deploy one or more customer resources, such as compute instances, into their VCNs. Compute instances can take the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, etc. Thus, CSPI provides infrastructure and a set of complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services within a highly available, hosted virtual environment. While customers do not manage or control the underlying physical resources provided by CSPI, they have control over the operating system, storage, deployed applications, and in some cases, limited control over selected network components (e.g., firewalls).

[0073] The CSP may provide a console that allows customers and network administrators to configure, access, and manage resources deployed in the cloud using CSPI resources. In an embodiment, the console provides a web-based user interface that can be used to access and manage the CSPI. In some implementations, the console is a web-based application provided by the CSP.

[0074] CSPI may support single-tenancy or multi-tenancy architectures. In a single-tenancy architecture, a software component (e.g., an application, a database) or a hardware component (e.g., a host machine or server) serves a single customer or tenant. In a multi-tenancy architecture, a software component or hardware component serves multiple customers or tenants. Thus, in a multi-tenancy architecture, CSPI resources are shared among multiple customers or tenants. In a multi-tenancy situation, precautions are taken and safeguards are implemented within CSPI to ensure that each tenant's data remains isolated and invisible to other tenants.

[0075] 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 connected network. Network endpoints in a physical network may 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 network 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 may be a Layer 2 address (e.g., a MAC address), a fixed Layer 3 address (e.g., an IP address), etc. In a virtual environment or network, endpoints may 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 the virtual network are addressed by overlay addresses, such as overlay Layer 2 addresses (e.g., an overlay MAC address) and overlay Layer 3 addresses (e.g., an overlay IP address). Network overlays enable flexibility by allowing network administrators to move between overlay addresses associated with network endpoints using software management (e.g., by software implementing the virtual network's control plane). Thus, 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 communications, CSPI components are configured to learn and store mappings that map overlay addresses in the virtual network to actual physical addresses in the substrate network, and vice versa. These mappings are then used to facilitate communications. Customer traffic is encapsulated to facilitate routing within the virtual network.

[0076] Thus, a physical address (e.g., a physical IP address) is associated with a component in a physical network, and an overlay address (e.g., an overlay IP address) is associated with an entity 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 substrate 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 associated with a compute instance in a customer's virtual cloud network (VCN). Two different customers or tenants, each with their own private VCN, could potentially use the same overlay IP address in their VCN without any knowledge of each other. Both physical IP addresses and overlay IP addresses are types of real IP addresses. These IP addresses exist separately 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 may use a VIP to map to or represent multiple servers, each with its own real IP address.

[0077] Cloud infrastructure or CSPI is physically hosted in one or more data centers in one or more regions around the world. CSPI may include components in the physical or substrate network and virtual components (e.g., virtual networks, compute instances, virtual machines, etc.) in virtual networks built on top of the physical network components. In one embodiment, CSPI is organized and hosted in realms, regions, and availability domains. A region is typically a local geographic area containing one or more data centers. Regions are generally independent of each other and may be separated by vast distances, for example, spanning multiple countries or continents. For example, a first region may be in Australia, another region may be in Japan, yet another region may be in India, etc. CSPI resources are divided among regions so that each region contains its own independent subset of CSPI resources. Each region may provide a set 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), network resources (e.g., virtual cloud networks (VCNs), load balancing resources, connectivity to on-premises networks), database resources, edge network resources (e.g., DNS), and access management and monitoring resources. Each region typically has multiple paths connecting it to other regions within the realm.

[0078] Because using nearby resources is faster than using resources that are farther away, applications are typically deployed in the region where they are most frequently used (i.e., deployed to the infrastructure associated with that region). Applications may also be deployed in different regions for a variety of reasons, such as redundancy to mitigate the risk of region-wide events such as large weather systems or earthquakes, to meet changing requirements for legal jurisdictions, tax areas, and other business or societal criteria.

[0079] Data centers within a region may be further organized and subdivided into availability domains (ADs). An availability domain may correspond to one or more data centers located within a region. A region may be composed of one or more availability domains. In such a distributed environment, CSPI resources are either specific to a region, such as a virtual cloud network (VCN), or specific to an availability domain, such as a compute instance.

[0080] ADs within a region are isolated from each other, fault-tolerant, and configured to be highly unlikely to fail simultaneously. This is achieved by ADs that do not share critical infrastructure resources, such as networks, physical cables, cable routes, or cable entry points, so that a failure in one AD within a region is unlikely to affect the availability of other ADs in the same region. ADs within the same region may be connected to each other by low-latency, high-bandwidth networks that provide high-availability connectivity to other networks (e.g., the Internet, customer on-premises networks, etc.) and enable the creation of replicated systems in multiple ADs for both high availability and disaster recovery. Cloud services use multiple ADs to ensure high availability and protect against resource failures. As the infrastructure provided by an IaaS provider grows, more regions and ADs with additional capacity may be added. Traffic between availability domains is typically encrypted.

[0081] In one embodiment, regions are grouped into realms. A realm is a logical collection of regions. Realms are isolated from each other and do not share any data. Regions within the same realm can communicate with each other, but regions in different realms cannot. A customer's tenancy or account, along with a CSP, exists within a single realm and can be distributed across one or more regions belonging to that realm. Typically, when a customer subscribes to an IaaS service, a tenancy or account is created for the customer in a region designated by the customer within the realm (called the "home" region). The customer can extend their tenancy across one or more other regions within the realm. A customer cannot access regions that are not within the realm in which the customer's tenancy resides.

[0082] An IaaS provider may offer multiple realms, each catering to the needs of a particular set of customers or users. For example, a commercial realm may be offered to commercial customers. As another example, a realm may be offered to a particular country for customers within that country. As yet another example, a government realm may be offered to a government, etc. For example, the government realm may cater to specific government needs and may have higher security than the commercial realm. For example, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) currently offers a realm for its commercial region and two realms for its government cloud region (e.g., FedRAMP-certified and IL5-certified).

[0083] In one embodiment, an AD can be subdivided into one or more failure domains. A failure domain is a group of infrastructure resources within an AD to provide anti-affinity. Fault domains enable the distribution of compute instances so that multiple compute instances do not reside on the same physical hardware within a single AD. This distribution is known as anti-affinity. A failure domain refers to a set of hardware components (computers, switches, etc.) that share a single point of failure. A compute pool is logically divided into failure domains. Therefore, a hardware failure or compute hardware maintenance event that affects one failure domain does not affect instances in other failure domains. Depending on the embodiment, the number of failure domains per AD can vary. For example, in one embodiment, each AD includes three failure domains. Fault domains function as logical data centers within an AD.

[0084] When a customer subscribes to an IaaS service, resources from CSPI are provisioned for the customer and associated with the customer's tenancy. The customer can use these provisioned resources to build private networks and deploy resources into these networks. A customer's network hosted in the cloud by CSPI is called a virtual cloud network (VCN). A customer can configure one or more virtual cloud networks (VCNs) using the CSPI resources allocated to the customer. A VCN is a virtual private network or software-defined private network. The customer's resources deployed within a customer's VCN may include compute instances (e.g., virtual machines, bare metal instances) and other resources. These compute instances may represent various customer workloads, such as applications, load balancers, databases, etc. Compute instances deployed in a VCN can communicate with endpoints publicly accessible over public networks such as the Internet ("public endpoints"), with other instances in the same VCN or other VCNs (e.g., other VCNs of the customer or VCNs not belonging to the customer), with the customer's on-premises data center or network, and with service endpoints and other types of endpoints.

[0085] CSPs may offer various services using CSPI. In some cases, customers of a CSPI may act as service providers themselves and offer services using CSPI resources. Service providers may expose service endpoints characterized by identifying information (e.g., IP addresses, DNS names, and DNS ports). Customer resources (e.g., compute instances) can consume a particular service by accessing the service endpoint exposed by the service for that service. These service endpoints are generally publicly accessible by users over a public communications network, such as the Internet, using the public IP address associated with the endpoint. Publicly accessible network endpoints are sometimes referred to as public endpoints.

[0086] In one embodiment, a service provider may expose a service through an endpoint for the service (sometimes referred to as a service endpoint). Customers of the service can then access the service using this service endpoint. In some implementations, a service endpoint provided for a service may be accessed by multiple customers wishing to consume the service. In other implementations, a dedicated service endpoint may be provided to a customer, allowing only that customer to access the service using that dedicated service endpoint.

[0087] In one embodiment, 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) that is assigned to the VCN. A VCN includes associated subnets, route tables, and gateways. A VCN exists within a single region but can span one, more, or all of the region's availability domains. A gateway is a virtual interface configured for a VCN that 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 with different types of endpoints.

[0088] A VCN can be subdivided into one or more subnetworks, such as one or more subnets. A subnet is thus a unit of configuration or subdivision that can be created within a VCN. A VCN can contain one or more subnets. Each subnet in 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 represents a subset of address space within the VCN's address space and does not overlap with other subnets in that VCN.

[0089] Each compute instance is associated with a virtual network interface card (VNIC) that enables the compute instance to participate in a subnet of a VCN. A VNIC is a logical representation of a physical network interface card (NIC). In general, a VNIC is an interface between an entity (e.g., a compute instance, a service) and a virtual network. A VNIC resides in a subnet and 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 connected to a compute instance and is connected to a subnet within a VCN. A VNIC associated with a compute instance enables the compute instance to become part of a subnet of a VCN and allows the compute instance to communicate (e.g., send and receive packets) with endpoints on the same subnet as the compute instance, endpoints in a different subnet within the VCN, or endpoints outside the VCN. Thus, the VNIC associated with a compute instance determines how the compute instance connects with endpoints inside and outside the VCN. A VNIC for a compute instance is created and associated with the compute instance when the compute instance is created and added to a subnet within the VCN. For a subnet containing a set of compute instances, the subnet contains VNICs corresponding to the set of compute instances, with each VNIC connected to one compute instance in the set of compute instances.

[0090] Each compute instance is assigned a private overlay IP address via the VNIC associated with the compute instance. This private overlay 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 particular subnet use the same route table, security lists, and DHCP options. As previously mentioned, each subnet in 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 represents a subset of address space within the VCN's address space that does not overlap with other subnets in that VCN. For a VNIC on a particular subnet of a VCN, the private overlay IP address assigned to the VNIC is an address from the contiguous range of overlay IP addresses assigned to that subnet.

[0091] In one embodiment, a compute instance may optionally be assigned additional overlay IP addresses in addition to the private overlay IP address, such as one or more public IP addresses if it is in a public subnet. These multiple addresses may be assigned to the same VNIC or across multiple VNICs associated with the compute instance. However, each instance has a primary VNIC that is created during instance launch and associated with the overlay private IP address assigned to the instance; this primary VNIC cannot be removed. Additional VNICs, called secondary VNICs, may 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 may be in a subnet in the same VCN as the primary VNIC or in a different subnet, either in the same VCN or a different VCN.

[0092] If a compute instance is in a public subnet, the compute instance may optionally be assigned a public IP address. When a subnet is created, it can be specified as either a public subnet or a private subnet. A private subnet means that resources (e.g., compute instances) and associated VNICs in the subnet cannot have public overlay IP addresses. A public subnet means that resources and associated VNICs in the subnet can have public IP addresses. Customers can specify a subnet to exist in a single availability domain or across multiple availability domains within a region or realm.

[0093] As mentioned above, a VCN can be subdivided into one or more subnets. In one embodiment, a virtual router (VR) configured for a VCN (referred to as a VCN VR or simply VR) enables communication between subnets of the VCN. For a subnet within a VCN, the VR represents the logical gateway for that subnet, allowing 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 configured to route traffic between VNICs within a VCN and a virtual gateway ("gateway") associated with the VCN. Gateways are further described below with respect to FIG. 6. A VCN VR is a Layer 3 / IP layer concept. In one embodiment, there is one VCN VR per VCN, and the VCN VR has a potentially unlimited number of ports addressed by IP addresses, one port for each subnet of the VCN. In this way, the VCN VR has a different IP address for each subnet within the VCN to which the VCN VR is connected. The VRs are also connected to various gateways configured for the VCN. In one embodiment, a specific overlay IP address from a subnet's overlay IP address range is reserved for ports in that subnet's VCN VR. For example, consider a VCN containing two subnets with associated address ranges 10.0 / 16 and 10.1 / 16, respectively. For the first subnet in the VCN with address range 10.0 / 16, an address from this range is reserved for ports in that subnet's VCN VR. In some cases, the first IP address from this range may be reserved for a VCN VR. For example, for a subnet with overlay IP address range 10.0 / 16, IP address 10.0.0.1 may be reserved for ports in that subnet's VCN VR.For a second subnet in the same VCN with address range 10.1 / 16, the VCN VR may have a port in that second subnet with IP address 10.1.0.1. The VCN VR has a different IP address for each of the subnets in the VCN.

[0094] In some other embodiments, each subnet in a VCN may include a VR associated with it that is addressable by the subnet using a reserved or default IP address associated with the VR. The reserved or default IP address may, for example, be the first IP address from a range of IP addresses associated with the subnet. VNICs in a subnet can use this default or reserved IP address to communicate with (e.g., send and receive packets from) the VR associated with the subnet. In such embodiments, a VR is an ingress / egress point for that subnet. VRs associated with a subnet in a VCN can communicate with other VRs associated with other subnets in the VCN. VRs can also communicate with gateways associated with the VCN. The VR functions for a subnet are running on or performed by one or more NVDs that are performing the VNIC functions for VNICs in the subnet.

[0095] Route tables, security rules, and DHCP options can be configured for a VCN. A route table is a virtual route table for a VCN and contains rules for routing traffic from subnets within the VCN to destinations outside the VCN via gateways or specially configured instances. A VCN's route table can be customized to control how packets are forwarded / routed to and from the VCN. DHCP options refer to configuration information that is automatically provided to instances when they launch.

[0096] Security rules configured for a VCN represent the VCN's overlay firewall rules. Security rules include ingress and egress rules and can specify the type of traffic (e.g., based on protocol and port) allowed in and out of instances within the VCN. Customers can choose whether a particular rule is stateful or stateless. For example, a customer can allow incoming SSH traffic from any location to a set of instances by configuring 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 set of security rules that apply only to resources within that group. Meanwhile, a security list contains rules that apply to all resources in any subnet that uses the security list. A VCN can have a default security list that contains default security rules. DHCP options configured for a VCN provide configuration information that is automatically provided to instances within the VCN when the instances launch.

[0097] In one embodiment, configuration information for a VCN is determined and stored by a VCN control plane. The configuration information for a VCN may include, for example, information about address ranges associated with the VCN, subnets and associated information within the VCN, one or more VRs associated with the VCN, compute instances and associated VNICs within the VCN, NVDs (e.g., VNICs, VRs, gateways) performing various virtualized network functions associated with the VCN, state information for the VCN, and other VCN-related information. In one embodiment, a VCN distribution service publishes the configuration information stored by the VCN control plane or portions thereof to the NVD. The distributed information may be used to update information (e.g., forwarding tables, routing tables, etc.) stored and used by the NVD to forward packets to and from compute instances within the VCN.

[0098] In one embodiment, VCN and subnet creation is handled by a VCN Control Plane (CP), and compute instance launch is handled by the Compute Control Plane. The Compute Control Plane is responsible for allocating physical resources to compute instances and then calls the VCN Control Plane to create and attach VNICs to the compute instances. The VCN CP also sends VCN data mappings to a VCN Data Plane configured to perform packet forwarding and routing functions. In one embodiment, the VCN CP provides a distribution service that is responsible for providing updates to the VCN Data Plane. Examples of VCN Control Planes are also shown in Figures 19, 20, 21, and 22 (see reference numerals 1916, 2016, 2116, and 2216) and are described below.

[0099] A customer may create one or more VCNs using resources hosted by CSPI. Compute instances deployed in a customer's VCN may communicate with various endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSPI and endpoints external to CSPI.

[0100] Various different architectures for implementing cloud-based services using CSPI are shown in Figures 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 19, 20, 21, and 23 and are described below. Figure 6 is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment 600 illustrating a CSPI-hosted overlay VCN or customer VCN according to an embodiment. The distributed environment shown in Figure 6 includes multiple components within an overlay network. The distributed environment 600 shown in Figure 6 is merely an example and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Many variations, alternatives, and modifications are possible. For example, in some implementations, the distributed environment shown in Figure 6 may include more or fewer systems or components than those shown in Figure 1, may combine two or more systems, or may include a different configuration or arrangement of systems.

[0101] As shown in the example depicted in FIG. 6 , distributed environment 600 includes CSPI 601, which provides services and resources that customers can subscribe to and use to build their own virtual cloud networks (VCNs). In one embodiment, CSPI 601 provides IaaS services to subscribing customers. Data centers within CSPI 601 may be organized into one or more regions. One exemplary region, “Region US” 602, is shown in FIG. 6 . A customer configures their VCN 604 with region 602. The customer may deploy various compute instances into VCN 604, which may include virtual machines or bare metal instances. Example instances include applications, databases, load balancers, etc.

[0102] In the embodiment shown in FIG. 6 , customer VCN 604 includes two subnets, “Subnet 1” and “Subnet 2,” each with its own CIDR IP address range. In FIG. 6 , Subnet 1’s overlay IP address range is 10.0 / 16, and Subnet 2’s address range is 10.1 / 16. VCN virtual router 605 represents the VCN’s logical gateway, enabling communication between subnets in VCN 604 and with other endpoints outside the VCN. VCN VR 605 is configured to route traffic between VNICs in VCN 604 and the gateway associated with VCN 604. VCN VR 605 provides a port for each subnet in VCN 604. For example, VR 605 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.

[0103] Multiple compute instances may be deployed in each subnet, and the compute instances may be virtual machine instances and / or bare metal instances. The compute instances in a subnet may be hosted by one or more host machines in CSPI 601. A compute instance joins a subnet through a VNIC associated with the compute instance. For example, as shown in FIG. 6, compute instance C1 becomes part of subnet 1 through a VNIC associated with the compute instance. Similarly, compute instance C2 becomes part of subnet 1 through a VNIC associated with C2. In a similar manner, multiple compute instances, which may be virtual machine instances or bare metal instances, may become part of subnet 1. Each compute instance is assigned a private overlay IP address and MAC address through its associated VNIC. For example, in FIG. 6, 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 VR605 using IP address 10.0.0.1, which is the IP address of a port in VCN VR605 in Subnet 1.

[0104] Subnet 2 may have multiple compute instances deployed, including virtual machine instances and / or bare metal instances. For example, as shown in FIG. 6, compute instances D1 and D2 become part of Subnet 2 through VNICs associated with the respective compute instances. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 6, compute instance D1 has an overlay IP address of 10.1.0.2 and a MAC address of MM1, while compute instance D2 has a private overlay IP address of 10.1.0.3 and a MAC address of MM2. Each compute instance in Subnet 2, including compute instances D1 and D2, has a default route to VCN VR605 using IP address 10.1.0.1, which is the IP address of a port in VCN VR605 in Subnet 2.

[0105] VCN A 604 may 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 be provided to load balance traffic across multiple subnets within a VCN.

[0106] A particular compute instance deployed in VCN 604 can communicate with various endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSPI 700 and endpoints outside of CSPI 700. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 601 may include endpoints on the same subnet as the particular compute instance (e.g., communication between two compute instances in Subnet 1), endpoints on a different subnet but within the same VCN (e.g., communication between a compute instance in Subnet 1 and a compute instance in Subnet 2), endpoints in a different VCN within the same region (e.g., communication between a compute instance in Subnet 1 and an endpoint in a VCN within the same region 606 or 610, communication between a compute instance in Subnet 1 and an endpoint within a service network 610 within the same region), or endpoints in a VCN in a different region (e.g., communication between a compute instance in Subnet 1 and an endpoint in a VCN in a different region 608). Compute instances in a subnet hosted by CSPI 601 may communicate with endpoints not hosted by CSPI 601 (i.e., outside of CSPI 601). These external endpoints include endpoints within the customer's on-premise network 616, endpoints within other remote cloud-hosted networks 618, public endpoints 614 accessible via public networks such as the Internet, and other endpoints.

[0107] Communication between compute instances on the same subnet is facilitated using VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances. 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 packet's destination information from the packet header, identifying any policies (e.g., security lists) configured for the VNIC associated with the source compute instance, determining the packet's next hop, performing any packet encapsulation / decapsulation functions as needed, and then forwarding / routing the packet to the next hop to facilitate communication of the packet with its intended destination. If 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 that VNIC for processing. The VNIC associated with the destination compute instance is then executed to forward the packet to the destination compute instance.

[0108] For packets traveling from a compute instance in a subnet to an endpoint in a different subnet within the same VCN, this communication is facilitated by the VNICs and VCN VRs associated with the source and destination compute instances. For example, if compute instance C1 in Subnet 1 in FIG. 6 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 605 using the VCN VR's default route or port 10.0.0.1. VCN VR 605 is configured to route the packet to Subnet 2 using port 10.1.0.1. The packet is then received and processed by the VNIC associated with D1, which forwards the packet to compute instance D1.

[0109] For packets traveling from a compute instance within VCN 604 to an endpoint outside VCN 604, the communication is facilitated by a VNIC associated with the source compute instance, VCN VR 605, and a gateway associated with VCN 604. One or more types of gateways may be associated with VCN 604. A gateway is an interface between a VCN and another endpoint, where the other endpoint is outside the VCN. A gateway is a Layer 3 / IP layer concept that allows a VCN to communicate with endpoints outside the VCN. Thus, a gateway facilitates traffic flow between a VCN and other VCNs or networks. Different types of gateways may be configured for a VCN to facilitate different types of communication with different types of endpoints. Depending on the gateway, the communication may go over a public network (e.g., the Internet) or a private network. Various communication protocols may be used for these communications.

[0110] For example, compute instance C1 may wish to communicate with an endpoint outside VCN 604. The packet may first be processed by the VNIC associated with the source compute instance C1. This VNIC processing determines that the packet's destination is outside of Subnet 1 of C1. The VNIC associated with C1 may forward the packet to VCN VR 605 of VCN 604. VCN VR 605 then processes the packet and, as part of this processing, determines a particular gateway associated with VCN 604 as the packet's next hop based on the packet's destination. VCN VR 605 may then forward the packet to the particular identified gateway. For example, if the destination is an endpoint within a customer's on-premises network, VCN VR 605 may forward the packet to Dynamic Routing Gateway (DRG) gateway 622 configured for VCN 604. The packet may then be forwarded from the gateway to the next hop to facilitate the packet's propagation to its final intended destination.

[0111] Various types of gateways may be configured for a VCN. Examples of gateways that may be configured for a VCN are shown in FIG. 6 and described below. Examples of gateways associated with a VCN are also shown in FIGS. 19, 20, 21, and 22 (e.g., gateways referenced by reference numbers 1934, 1936, 1938, 2034, 2036, 2038, 2134, 2136, 2138, 2234, 2236, and 2238) and described below. As shown in the embodiment shown in FIG. 6, a dynamic routing gateway (DRG) 622 may be added to or associated with a customer's VCN 604 to provide a path for private network traffic communication between the customer's VCN 604 and another endpoint, which may be the customer's on-premises network 616, a VCN 608 in a different region of CSPI 601, or another remote cloud network 618 not hosted by CSPI 601. The customer on-premises network 616 may be a customer network or a customer data center built using the customer's resources. Access to the customer on-premises network 616 is typically highly restricted. For customers with both the customer on-premises network 616 and one or more VCNs 604 deployed or hosted in the cloud by CSPI 601, the customer may want the customer on-premises network 616 and the customer cloud-based VCN 604 to be able to communicate with each other. This allows the customer to build an extended hybrid environment that encompasses the customer VCNs 604 hosted by CSPI 601 and the customer on-premises network 616. The DRG 622 enables this communication. To enable such communication, a communication channel 624 is set up, with one endpoint of the channel in the customer on-premises network 616 and the other endpoint in CSPI 601 connected to the customer VCN 604. The communication channel 624 can traverse a public or private communication network, such as the Internet.Various communication protocols may be used, such as IPsec VPN technology over a public communication network such as the Internet, or Oracle's FastConnect technology, which uses a private network instead of a public network. A device or equipment in the customer's on-premises network 616 that forms one endpoint of the communication channel 624 is called customer premise equipment (CPE), such as CPE 626 shown in Figure 6. In CSPI 601, the endpoint may be a host machine running DRG 622.

[0112] In one embodiment, a Remote Peering Connection (RPC) can be added to a DRG, allowing a customer to peer one VCN with another VCN in a different region. Using such an RPC, a customer's VCN 604 can connect with a VCN 608 in another region using the DRG 622. The DRG 622 can also be used to communicate with other remote cloud networks 618 not hosted by CSPI 601, such as the Microsoft Azure cloud, the Amazon AWS cloud, etc.

[0113] As shown in Figure 6, an Internet Gateway (IGW) 620 may be configured for a customer's VCN 604 that enables compute instances on VCN 604 to communicate with public endpoints 614 accessible over a public network, such as the Internet. The IGW 620 is a gateway that connects a VCN to a public network, such as the Internet. The IGW 620 enables direct access for public subnets in a VCN, such as VCN 604 (resources in the public subnet have public overlay IP addresses) to public endpoints 612 on the public network 614, such as the Internet. Using the IGW 620, connections may be initiated from subnets in VCN 604 or from the Internet.

[0114] A Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway 628 is configured for customer VCN 604 to enable access to the Internet for cloud resources in the customer VCN that do not have dedicated public overlay IP addresses, without exposing those resources to direct incoming Internet connections (e.g., L4-L7 connections). This allows private subnets in the VCN, such as Private Subnet 1 in VCN 604, to private endpoints on the Internet. The NAT gateway only allows connections to be initiated from the private subnet to the public Internet; connections cannot be initiated from the Internet to the private subnet.

[0115] In one embodiment, a service gateway (SGW) 626 may be configured for a customer's VCN 604 and provides a pathway for private network traffic between VCN 604 and supported service endpoints in service network 610. In one embodiment, service network 610 may be provided by a CSP and may offer a variety of services. An example of such a service network is Oracle's Services Network, which offers a variety of services that may be used by customers. For example, a compute instance (e.g., a database system) in a private subnet of a customer's VCN 604 can back up data to a service endpoint (e.g., object storage) without requiring a public IP address or access to the internet. In one embodiment, a VCN may include only one SGW, and connections can be initiated only from subnets within the VCN, not from service network 610. When a VCN is peered with another VCN, resources in the other VCN typically do not have access to the SGW. Resources in an on-premises network connected to a VCN using a FastConnect or VPN connection can also use a service gateway configured for that VCN.

[0116] In one implementation, the SGW 626 uses the concept of a service classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) label, which is a string that represents the public IP address range of all regions for a given service or group of services. A customer uses the service CIDR label when configuring the SGW and associated route rules to control traffic to the service. A customer can optionally utilize the service CIDR label when configuring security rules, avoiding the need to adjust those security rules if the service's public IP address changes in the future.

[0117] A Local Peering Gateway (LPG) 632 is a gateway that can be added to a customer's VCN 604, allowing the VCN 604 to peer with another VCN in the same region. Peering means that the VCNs communicate using private IP addresses without the traffic traversing a public network such as the Internet or routing the traffic through the customer's on-premises network 616. In a preferred embodiment, a VCN includes a separate LPG for each peering it establishes. Local peering or VCN peering is a common method used to establish network connectivity between different applications or infrastructure management functions.

[0118] A service provider, such as a provider of a service in service network 610, may provide access to the service using various access models. According to a public access model, the service may be exposed as a public endpoint, which may be publicly accessible by compute instances in the customer's VCN over a public network such as the Internet, and / or privately accessible through SGW 626. According to a specific private access model, the service is made accessible as a private IP endpoint in a private subnet in the customer's VCN. This access is called Private Endpoint (PE) access and allows service providers to expose services as instances in the customer's private network. A private endpoint resource represents a service in a customer's VCN. Each PE appears as a VNIC (referred to as a PE-VNIC with one or more private IPs) in a customer-selected subnet in the customer's VCN. Thus, the PE provides a way to present services in a subnet of the private customer's VCN using VNICs. Because the endpoints are exposed as VNICs, all features associated with the VNIC, such as routing rules, security lists, etc., are available to the PE VNIC.

[0119] Service providers can register services to make them accessible through the PE. Providers can associate policies with services that restrict the visibility of the service to the customer's tenancy. 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.

[0120] Compute instances in the private subnet can then access the service using the private IP address of the PE VNIC or the DNS name of the service. Compute instances in a customer's VCN can access the service by sending traffic to the private IP address of the PE in the customer's VCN. A Private Access Gateway (PAGW) 630 is a gateway resource that can be connected to a service provider's VCN (e.g., a VCN in service network 610) and serves as the ingress / egress point for all traffic to and from private endpoints in customer subnets. The PAGW 630 allows providers to scale the number of PE connections without utilizing internal IP address resources. A provider needs to configure only one PAGW for any number of services registered within a single VCN. A provider can represent services as private endpoints in multiple VCNs for one or more customers. From the customer's perspective, the PE VNIC appears to be connected to the service with which the customer wants to interact, instead of to a customer instance. Traffic going to the private endpoint is routed to the service through the PAGW 630. These are called customer-to-service private connections (C2S (customer-to-service) connections).

[0121] The PE concept can also be used to extend private access of services to customer on-premises networks and data centers by allowing traffic to flow through FastConnect / IPsec links and private endpoints in the customer's VCN. Private access of services can also be extended to customer peered VCNs by allowing traffic to flow between LPG 632 and PEs in the customer's VCN.

[0122] Customers can control routing within a VCN at the subnet level, allowing them to specify which subnets within a customer's VCN, such as VCN 604, use each gateway. A VCN's route tables are used to determine whether traffic is allowed to exit a VCN through a particular gateway. For example, in a particular example, the route table for a public subnet in a customer's VCN 604 may send non-local traffic through IGW 620. The route table for a private subnet in the same customer's VCN 604 may send traffic going to a CSP service through SGW 626. All remaining traffic may be sent through NAT gateway 628. Route tables only control traffic that exits a VCN.

[0123] Security lists associated with a VCN are used to control traffic entering the VCN through a gateway via inbound connections. All resources within a subnet use the same route table and security lists. Security lists can be used to control the specific types of traffic allowed into and out of instances within a VCN's subnet. Security list rules can include ingress (inbound) rules and egress (outbound) rules. For example, an ingress rule may specify an allowed source address range, while an egress rule may specify an allowed destination address range. Security rules can specify a specific protocol (e.g., TCP, ICMP), a specific port (e.g., 22 for SSH, 3389 for Windows RDP), etc. In some implementations, the instance's operating system can enforce its own firewall rules that match the security list rules. Rules can be stateful (e.g., connections are tracked and responses are automatically allowed without explicit security list rules for the response traffic) or stateless.

[0124] Access from a customer's VCN (i.e., by resources or compute instances deployed in VCN 604) can be categorized as public access, private access, or dedicated access. Public access refers to an access model in which public IP addresses or NATs are used to access public endpoints. Private access allows customer workloads in VCN 604 with private IP addresses (e.g., resources in a private subnet) to access services without traversing a public network such as the Internet. In one embodiment, CSPI 601 enables workloads in a customer's VCN 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 customer's VCN and the service's public endpoints, which reside outside the customer's private network.

[0125] Additionally, CSPI may provide dedicated public access using technologies such as FastConnect public peering, where a customer's on-premises instances can use a FastConnect connection to access one or more services in the customer's VCN without traversing a public network such as the internet. CSPI may also provide dedicated private access using FastConnect private peering, where a customer's on-premises instances with private IP addresses can use a FastConnect connection to access workloads in the customer's VCN. FastConnect is a network connectivity alternative to using the public internet for connecting a customer's on-premises network to CSPI and its services. FastConnect provides an easy, resilient, and economical way to create dedicated private connections with higher bandwidth options and a more reliable and consistent network experience when compared to internet-based connections.

[0126] FIG. 6 and the accompanying discussion above describe various virtual components within an exemplary virtual network. As previously mentioned, a virtual network is built on top of an underlying physical or substrate network. FIG. 7 illustrates a simplified architectural diagram of physical components in a physical network within CSPI 700 that serves as the foundation for a virtual network, according to one embodiment. As illustrated, CSPI 700 provides a distributed environment that includes components and resources (e.g., compute, memory, and network resources) provided by a cloud service provider (CSP). These components and resources are used to provide cloud services (e.g., IaaS services) to subscribing customers, i.e., customers who subscribe to one or more services offered by the CSP. Based on the services to which the customer subscribes, a subset of CSPI 700's resources (e.g., compute, memory, and network resources) is provisioned for the customer. The customer can then build their own cloud-based (i.e., CSPI-hosted), customizable private virtual network using the physical compute, memory, and network resources provided by CSPI 700. As previously indicated, these customer networks are called virtual cloud networks (VCNs). Customers can deploy one or more customer resources, such as compute instances, into these customer VCNs. The compute instances can be in the form of virtual machines, bare metal instances, etc. CSPI 700 provides infrastructure and a set of complementary cloud services that enable customers to build and run a wide range of applications and services within a highly available hosted environment.

[0127] In the example embodiment shown in FIG. 7, the physical components of CSPI 700 include one or more physical host machines or servers (e.g., 702, 706, 708), network virtualization devices (NVDs) (e.g., 710, 712), top-of-rack (TOR) switches (e.g., 714, 716), and a physical network (e.g., 718), and switches within physical network 718. The physical host machines or servers may host and execute various compute instances that participate in one or more subnets of the VCN. The compute instances may include virtual machine instances and bare metal instances. For example, the various compute instances shown in FIG. 6 may be hosted by the physical host machines shown in FIG. 7. The virtual machine compute instances in the VCN may be executed by one host machine or by multiple different host machines. The physical host machines may host virtual host machines, container-based hosts or functions, etc. The VNICs and VCN VRs shown in FIG. 6 may be executed by the NVDs shown in FIG. 7. The gateway shown in FIG. 6 may be executed by a host machine and / or by the NVD shown in FIG.

[0128] A host machine or server may run a hypervisor (also called a virtual machine monitor or VMM) that creates and enables a virtual environment on the host machine. The virtualized environment facilitates cloud-based computing. One or more compute instances may be created, run, and managed on the host machine by the hypervisor on the host machine. The hypervisor on the host machine enables the host machine's physical computing resources (e.g., compute, memory, and network resources) to be shared among the various compute instances executed by the host machine.

[0129] For example, as shown in FIG. 7, host machines 702 and 708 run hypervisors 760 and 766, 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 resides on a host machine's operating system (OS), which executes on the host machine's hardware processor. A hypervisor provides a virtual environment by allowing the host machine's physical computing resources (e.g., processing resources such as processors / cores, memory resources, and network resources) to be shared among various virtual machine computing instances executed by the host machine. For example, in FIG. 7, hypervisor 760 may reside on top of the OS of host machine 702 and allow the host machine's computing resources (e.g., processing resources, memory resources, and network resources) to be shared among the computing instances (e.g., virtual machines) executed by host machine 702. A virtual machine can have its own operating system (called a guest operating system), which may be the same as or different from the host machine's OS. The operating system of a virtual machine executed by a host machine may be the same as or different from the operating system of another virtual machine executed by the same host machine. Thus, a hypervisor allows multiple operating systems to run side by side while sharing the same computing resources of the host machine. The host machines shown in Figure 7 may have the same or different types of hypervisors.

[0130] A compute instance can be a virtual machine instance or a bare metal instance. In Figure 7, compute instance 768 on host machine 702 and compute instance 774 on host machine 708 are examples of virtual machine instances. Host machine 706 is an example of a bare metal instance being offered to a customer.

[0131] In some examples, an entire host machine may be provisioned to a single customer, and one or more compute instances (either virtual machines or bare metal instances) hosted by that host machine all belong to that same customer. In other examples, a host machine may be shared among multiple customers (i.e., multiple tenants). In such a multi-tenancy situation, a host machine may host virtual machine compute instances belonging to different customers. These compute instances may be members of different VCNs for different customers. In some embodiments, bare metal compute instances are hosted by bare metal servers without a hypervisor. When a bare metal compute instance is provisioned, a single customer or tenant maintains control of the physical CPU, memory, and network interfaces of the host machine hosting the bare metal instance, and the host machine is not shared with other customers or tenants.

[0132] As previously mentioned, 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 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 one embodiment, 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 FIG. 7 , host machine 702 executes virtual machine compute instance 768 that is associated with VNIC 776, which is executed by NVD 710 connected to host machine 702. As another example, bare metal instance 772 hosted by host machine 706 is associated with VNIC 780, which is executed by NVD 712 connected to host machine 706. As yet another example, VNIC 784 is associated with compute instance 774 executed by host machine 708, which is executed by NVD 712 connected to host machine 708.

[0133] For compute instances hosted by a host machine, the NVD connected to that host machine also executes VCN VRs corresponding to the VCNs of which those compute instances are members. For example, in the embodiment shown in Figure 7, NVD 710 executes VCN VR 777 corresponding to the VCN of which compute instance 768 is a member. NVD 712 may execute one or more VCN VRs 783 corresponding to the VCNs corresponding to the compute instances hosted by host machines 706 and 708.

[0134] A host machine may include one or more network interface cards (NICs) that allow the host machine to be connected to other devices. The NICs on the host machine may provide one or more ports (or interfaces) that allow the host machine to be communicatively connected to another device. For example, a host machine may be connected to an NVD using one or more ports (or interfaces) provided on the host machine and the NVD. A host machine may also be connected to other devices, such as another host machine.

[0135] 7, host machine 702 is connected to NVD 710 using link 720 extending between port 734 provided by NIC 732 of host machine 702 and port 736 of NVD 710. Host machine 706 is connected to NVD 712 using link 724 extending between port 746 provided by NIC 744 of host machine 706 and port 748 of NVD 712. Host machine 708 is connected to NVD 712 using link 726 extending between port 752 provided by NIC 750 of host machine 708 and port 754 of NVD 712.

[0136] The NVDs are then connected via communication links to top-of-rack (TOR) switches (also called switch fabrics) that are connected to a physical network 718. In one embodiment, the links between the host machines and the NVDs and between the NVDs and the TOR switches are Ethernet links. For example, in Figure 7, links 728 and 730 are used to connect NVDs 710 and 712 to TOR switches 714 and 716, respectively. In one embodiment, links 720, 724, 726, 728, and 730 are Ethernet links. The collection of host machines and NVDs connected to a TOR may be referred to as a rack.

[0137] The physical network 718 provides a communications fabric that allows the TOR switches to communicate with each other. The physical network 718 can be a multi-tier network. In one implementation, the physical network 718 is a multi-tier Clos network of switches, with the TOR switches 714 and 716 representing leaf-level nodes of the multi-tier, multi-node physical switching network 718. Various Clos network configurations are possible, including, but not limited to, 2-tier networks, 3-tier networks, 4-tier networks, 5-tier networks, and generally, "n"-tier networks. An example Clos network is shown in FIG. 10 and described below.

[0138] Various connection configurations are possible between host machines and NVDs, such as one-to-one, many-to-one, and one-to-many configurations. In a one-to-one implementation, each host machine is connected to its own separate NVD. For example, in FIG. 7, host machine 702 is connected to NVD 710 via NIC 732 on host machine 702. In a many-to-one configuration, multiple host machines are connected to a single NVD. For example, in FIG. 7, host machines 706 and 708 are connected to the same NVD 712 via NICs 744 and 750, respectively.

[0139] In a one-to-many configuration, one host machine is connected to multiple NVDs. FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a CSPI 800 in which a host machine is connected to multiple NVDs. As illustrated in FIG. 8, a host machine 802 includes a network interface card (NIC) 804 including multiple ports 806 and 808. The host machine 800 is connected to a first NVD 810 via port 806 and link 820, and to a second NVD 812 via port 808 and link 822. Ports 806 and 808 may be Ethernet ports, and links 820 and 822 between the host machine 802 and the NVDs 810 and 812 may be Ethernet links. The NVD 810 is then connected to a first TOR switch 814, and the NVD 812 is connected to a second TOR switch 816. The links between the NVDs 810 and 812 and the TOR switches 814 and 816 may be Ethernet links. TOR switches 814 and 816 represent layer 0 switching devices in a multi-tier physical network 818 .

[0140] 8 provides two separate physical network paths between the physical switch network 818 and the host machine 802: a first path traversing the TOR switch 814, through the NVD 810, and to the host machine 802, and a second path traversing the TOR switch 816, through the NVD 812, and to the host machine 802. The separate paths result in improved availability (referred to as high availability) of the host machine 802. If there is a problem with one of the paths (e.g., a link in one of the paths fails) or a device (e.g., a particular NVD is not functioning), the other path can be used for communication to and from the host machine 802.

[0141] In the configuration shown in Figure 8, the host machine is connected 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 allow the host machine to be connected to multiple NVDs.

[0142] Referring again to Figure 7, an NVD is a physical device or component that performs one or more network and / or storage virtualization functions. An NVD can be any device that has one or more processing units (e.g., CPUs, Network Processing Units (NPUs), FPGAs, packet processing pipelines, etc.), memory including cache, and ports. Various virtualization functions can be performed by software / firmware executed by the one or more processing units of the NVD.

[0143] NVDs can be implemented in a variety of forms. For example, in one embodiment, the NVD is implemented as an interface card called a smart NIC or intelligent NIC that contains an embedded processor. A smart NIC is a separate device from the NIC on the host machine. In Figure 7, NVDs 710 and 712 can be implemented as smart NICs connected to host machine 702 and host machines 706 and 708, respectively.

[0144] However, a smart NIC is just one example of an implementation of an NVD. Various other implementations are possible. For example, in some other implementations, the NVD or one or more functions performed by the NVD may be incorporated into or performed by one or more host machines, one or more TOR switches, and other components of CSPI 700. For example, the NVD may be embodied in a host machine, and the functions performed by the NVD may be performed by the host machine. As another example, the NVD may be part of a TOR switch, or a TOR switch may be configured to perform the functions performed by the NVD, allowing the TOR switch to perform various complex packet transformations used in public clouds. A TOR that performs the functions of an NVD may be referred to as a smart TOR. In yet other implementations where customers are provided with virtual machine (VM) instances rather than bare metal (BM) instances, the functions performed by the NVD may be implemented inside the hypervisor of the host machine. In some other implementations, some of the NVD's functions may be offloaded to a centralized service running on a set of host machines.

[0145] In one embodiment, such as when implemented as a smart NIC as shown in FIG. 7, the NVD may comprise multiple physical ports that allow the NVD to be connected to one or more host machines and one or more TOR switches. Ports on the NVD may be classified as host-facing ports (also referred to as "south ports") or network-facing or TOR-facing ports (also referred to as "north ports"). The host-facing ports of the NVD are ports used to connect the NVD to host machines. Examples of host-facing ports in FIG. 7 include port 736 on NVD 710 and ports 748 and 754 on NVD 712. The network-facing ports of the NVD are ports used to connect the NVD to TOR switches. Examples of network-facing ports in FIG. 7 include port 756 on NVD 710 and port 758 on NVD 712. As shown in FIG. 7, the NVD 710 is connected to the TOR switch 714 using link 728 extending from port 756 on the NVD 710 to the TOR switch 714. Similarly, the NVD 712 is connected to the TOR switch 716 using a link 730 that extends from a port 758 of the NVD 712 to the TOR switch 716 .

[0146] The NVD may receive packets and frames from the host machine (e.g., packets and frames generated by compute instances hosted by the host machine) via its host-facing port, and after performing any necessary packet processing, may forward those packets and frames to the TOR switch via the NVD's network-facing port. The NVD may receive packets and frames from the TOR switch via the NVD's network-facing port, and after performing any necessary packet processing, may forward those packets and frames to the host machine via the NVD's host-facing port.

[0147] In some embodiments, there may be multiple ports and associated links between the NVD and the TOR switch. These ports and links may be aggregated to form a link aggregator group (called a LAG) of multiple ports or links. Link aggregation allows multiple physical links between two endpoints (e.g., between the NVD and the TOR switch) to be treated as a single logical link. All physical links within a particular LAG may operate at the same speed and in full-duplex mode. LAGs help increase bandwidth and improve the reliability of the connection between two endpoints. If one of the physical links in a LAG fails, traffic is dynamically and transparently reassigned to one of the other physical links in the LAG. The aggregated physical link provides higher bandwidth than an individual link. Multiple ports associated with a LAG are treated as a single logical port. Traffic may be load-balanced across the multiple physical links in a LAG. One or more LAGs may be configured between two endpoints. Two endpoints may exist, such as between the NVD and the TOR switch, between a host machine and the NVD, etc.

[0148] The NVD implements or performs network virtualization functions. These functions are performed by software / firmware executed by the NVD. Examples of network virtualization functions include, but are not limited to, packet encapsulation and decapsulation functions, functions for creating VCN networks, functions for enforcing network policies such as VCN security list (firewall) functions, functions for facilitating routing and forwarding of packets to and from compute instances in the VCN, etc. In one embodiment, upon receiving a packet, the NVD is configured to execute a packet processing pipeline to process the packet and determine how the packet should be forwarded or routed. As part of this packet processing pipeline, the NVD may perform one or more virtual functions associated with the overlay network, such as running VNICs associated with compute instances in the VCN, running virtual routers (VRs) associated with the VCN, encapsulating and decapsulating packets to facilitate forwarding or routing within the virtual network, running certain gateways (e.g., local peering gateways), enforcing security lists, network security groups, network address translation (NAT) functions (e.g., per-host public IP to private IP translation), bandwidth throttling functions, and other functions.

[0149] In one embodiment, the packet processing data path within the NVD may comprise multiple packet pipelines, each consisting of a series of packet transformation stages. In one implementation, upon receipt of a packet, the packet is parsed and sorted into a single pipeline. The packet is then processed in a linear fashion, one stage at a time, until the packet is either dropped or transmitted through an interface of the NVD. These stages provide basic functional packet processing building blocks (e.g., header validation, performing bandwidth throttling, inserting a new Layer 2 header, performing L4 firewalling, VCN encapsulation / decapsulation, etc.), such that new pipelines can be constructed by assembling existing stages, and new functionality can be added by creating and inserting new stages into existing pipelines.

[0150] The NVD may perform both control plane and data plane functions corresponding to the control and data planes of a VCN. Examples of a VCN control plane are also shown in Figures 19, 20, 21, and 22 (see reference numbers 1916, 2016, 2116, and 2216) and are described below. Examples of a VCN data plane are shown in Figures 19, 20, 21, and 22 (see reference numbers 1918, 2018, 2118, and 2218) and are described below. Control plane functions include functions used to configure the network (e.g., set up routes and route tables, configure VNICs, etc.) that control how data is forwarded. In one embodiment, a VCN control plane is provided that centrally computes mappings between all overlays and substrates and publishes these mappings to the NVD and to virtual network edge devices such as various gateways, such as DRGs, SGWs, and IGWs. Firewall rules may also be published using the same mechanism. In one embodiment, the NVD retrieves only mappings that are relevant to the NVD. The data plane functions include functionality for the actual routing / forwarding of packets based on configuration settings using the control plane. The VCN data plane is implemented by encapsulating customer network packets before they traverse the substrate network. The encapsulation / decapsulation functions are implemented in the NVD. In one embodiment, the NVD is configured to intercept all network packets entering and leaving the host machine and perform network virtualization functions.

[0151] As indicated above, the NVD performs various virtualization functions, including VNICs and VCN VRs. The NVD may execute VNICs associated with compute instances hosted by one or more host machines connected to the VNICs. For example, as shown in FIG. 7, the NVD 710 executes the functions of the VNIC 776 associated with the compute instance 768 hosted by the host machine 702 connected to the NVD 710. As another example, the NVD 712 executes the VNIC 780 associated with the bare metal compute instance 772 hosted by the host machine 706 and the VNIC 784 associated with the compute instance 774 hosted by the host machine 708. The host machines may host compute instances belonging to different VCNs that belong to different customers, and the NVDs connected to the host machines may execute the VNICs (i.e., perform the functions related to the VNICs) corresponding to the compute instances.

[0152] NVDs also execute VCN virtual routers corresponding to the VCNs of the compute instances. For example, in the embodiment shown in FIG. 7, NVD 710 executes VCN VR 777 corresponding to the VCN to which compute instance 768 belongs. NVD 712 executes one or more VCN VRs 783 corresponding to one or more VCNs to which compute instances hosted by host machines 706 and 708 belong. In one embodiment, the VCN VRs corresponding to that VCN are executed by all NVDs connected to a host machine that hosts at least one compute instance belonging to that VCN. If a host machine hosts compute instances that belong to different VCNs, the NVDs connected to that host machine may execute VCN VRs corresponding to those different VCNs.

[0153] In addition to VNICs and VCN VRs, the NVD may run various software (e.g., daemons) and may include one or more hardware components that facilitate the various network virtualization functions performed by the NVD. For simplicity, these various components are grouped together as a “packet processing component” shown in FIG. 7 . For example, NVD 710 includes packet processing component 786, and NVD 712 includes packet processing component 788. For example, the packet processing component of the NVD may include a packet processor configured to interact with the NVD's ports and hardware interfaces, monitor all packets received by and transmitted using the NVD, and store network information. The network information may include, for example, network flow information and per-flow information (e.g., per-flow statistics) that identify the various network flows processed by the NVD. In one embodiment, the network flow information may be stored per VNIC. In addition to performing per-packet operations, the packet processor may implement stateful NAT and an L4 firewall (FW). As another example, the packet processing component may include a replication agent configured to replicate information stored by the NVD to one or more different replication target stores. As yet another example, the packet processing component may include a logging agent configured to perform the logging functions of the NVD. The packet processing component may also include software for monitoring the performance and health of the NVD, and possibly software for monitoring the status and health of other components connected to the NVD.

[0154] FIG. 6 illustrates components of an exemplary virtual network or overlay network, including a VCN, subnets within the VCN, compute instances deployed to the subnets, VNICs associated with the compute instances, VRs for the VCN, and a set of gateways configured for the VCN. The overlay components illustrated in FIG. 6 may be executed or hosted by one or more of the physical components illustrated in FIG. 7. For example, compute instances within a VCN may be executed or hosted by one or more host machines illustrated in FIG. 7. For compute instances hosted by a host machine, the VNICs associated with the compute instances are typically executed by the NVDs connected to the host machine (i.e., the VNIC functionality is provided by the NVDs connected to the host machine). The VCN VR functionality for the VCN is performed by all NVDs connected to the host machines hosting or running compute instances that are part of the VCN. The gateways associated with a VCN may be executed by one or more different types of NVDs. For example, some gateways may be executed by smart NICs, while other gateways may be executed by one or more host machines or other implementations of NVDs.

[0155] As previously mentioned, compute instances within a customer's VCN may communicate with various endpoints, which can be in the same subnet as the source compute instance, or in a different subnet within the same VCN as the source compute instance, or the endpoints are outside the VCN of the source compute instance. These communications are facilitated using VNICs associated with the compute instances, VCN VRs, and gateways associated with the VCN.

[0156] For communication between two compute instances on the same subnet within a VCN, the communication is facilitated using VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances. The source and destination compute instances may be hosted by the same host machine or by different host machines. A packet originating from the source compute instance may be forwarded from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to an NVD connected to that host machine. In the NVD, the packet is processed using a packet processing pipeline, which may include execution of the VNIC associated with the source compute instance. Because the packet's destination endpoint is within the same subnet, execution of the VNIC associated with the source compute instance causes the packet to be forwarded to an NVD running the VNIC associated with the destination compute instance, which then processes and forwards the packet to the destination compute instance. The VNICs associated with the source and destination compute instances may run on the same NVD (e.g., when the source and destination compute instances are both 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 VNICs may use routing / forwarding tables stored by the NVDs to determine the next hop of a packet.

[0157] For packets traveling 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 travels from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to the NVD connected to that host machine. In the NVD, the packet is processed using a packet processing pipeline, which may include running one or more VNICs and VRs associated with the VCN. For example, as part of the packet processing pipeline, the NVD executes or invokes a function corresponding to the VNIC associated with the source compute instance (also referred to as executing the VNIC). The function executed by the VNIC may include examining the VLAN tag on the packet. Because the packet's destination is outside the subnet, a VCN VR function is then invoked and executed by the NVD. 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 the packet to the destination compute instance. The VNICs associated with the source compute instance and the destination compute instance may run on the same NVD (e.g., when the source compute instance and the destination compute instance are both hosted by the same host machine) or on different NVDs (e.g., when the source compute instance and the destination compute instance are hosted by different host machines connected to different NVDs).

[0158] If the packet's destination is outside the VCN of the source compute instance, the packet originating from the source compute instance is propagated from the host machine hosting the source compute instance to the NVD connected to that host machine. The NVD runs the VNIC associated with the source compute instance. Because the packet's destination endpoint is outside the VCN, the packet is then processed by the VCN VR for that VCN. The NVD can invoke a VCN VR function, causing the packet to be forwarded to an NVD running the appropriate gateway associated with the VCN. For example, if the destination is an endpoint in a customer's on-premises network, the packet can be forwarded by the VCN VR to an NVD running a DRG gateway configured for the VCN. The VCN VR can be run on the same NVD as the NVD running the VNIC associated with the source compute instance or by a different NVD. The gateway can be run by the NVD, which can be a smart NIC, a host machine, or another NVD implementation. The packet is then processed by the gateway and forwarded to the next hop, which facilitates the packet's propagation to the intended destination endpoint. 7, a packet originating from compute instance 768 may be communicated from host machine 702 (using NIC 732) to NVD 710 via link 720. At NVD 710, VNIC 776 is invoked because it is the VNIC associated with source compute instance 768. VNIC 776 is configured to examine information encapsulated within the packet, determine a next hop for forwarding the packet in order to facilitate communication of the packet to its intended destination endpoint, and then forward the packet to the determined next hop.

[0159] Compute instances deployed in a VCN can communicate with various endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSPI700 and endpoints external to CSPI700. Endpoints hosted by CSPI700 may include instances within the same VCN or other VCNs, which may be the customer's VCN or VCNs not belonging to the customer. Communication between endpoints hosted by CSPI700 may be performed via physical network 718. Compute instances may communicate with endpoints not hosted by CSPI700 or external to CSPI700. Examples of these endpoints include endpoints within a customer's on-premises network or data center, or public endpoints accessible via a public network such as the Internet. Communication with endpoints external to CSPI700 may be performed via a public network (e.g., the Internet) (not shown in FIG. 7) or a private network (not shown in FIG. 7) using various communication protocols.

[0160] The architecture of CSPI 700 shown in FIG. 7 is merely an example and is not intended to be limiting. Variations, substitutions, and modifications are possible in alternative embodiments. For example, in some implementations, CSPI 700 may include more or fewer systems or components than those shown in FIG. 7, may combine two or more systems, or may include a different configuration or arrangement of systems. The systems, subsystems, and other components shown in FIG. 7 may be implemented in software (e.g., code, instructions, programs) executed by one or more processing units (e.g., processors, cores) of the respective systems, using hardware, or a combination thereof. The software may be stored in a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device).

[0161] FIG. 9 illustrates connections between a host machine and an NVD to achieve I / O virtualization to support multitenancy functionality, according to one embodiment. As shown in FIG. 9, a host machine 902 runs a hypervisor 904 that provides a virtual environment. The host machine 902 runs two virtual machine instances: VM1 906 belonging to customer / tenant #1 and VM2 908 belonging to customer / tenant #2. The host machine 902 includes a physical NIC 910 connected to an NVD 912 via link 914. Each of the compute instances is connected to a VNIC run by the NVD 912. In the embodiment of FIG. 9, VM1 906 is connected to VNIC-VM1 920, and VM2 908 is connected to VNIC-VM2 922.

[0162] As shown in Figure 9, NIC 910 has two logical NICs: logical NIC A 916 and logical NIC B 918. Each virtual machine is connected to and configured to function with its own logical NIC. For example, VM1 906 is connected to logical NIC A 916, and VM2 908 is connected to logical NIC B 918. Even though host machine 902 has only one physical NIC 910 shared by multiple tenants, because of the logical NICs, each tenant's virtual machine believes it has its own host machine and NIC.

[0163] In one embodiment, each logical NIC is assigned its own VLAN ID. Thus, a particular VLAN ID is assigned to logical NIC A 916 for tenant 1, and another VLAN ID is assigned to logical NIC B 918 for tenant 2. When a packet is communicated from VM1 906, a tag assigned to tenant 1 is attached to the packet by the hypervisor, and the packet is then communicated from host machine 902 to NVD 912 via link 914. In a similar manner, when a packet is communicated from VM2 908, a tag assigned to tenant 2 is attached to the packet by the hypervisor, and the packet is then communicated from host machine 902 to NVD 912 via link 914. Thus, a packet 924 communicated from host machine 902 to NVD 912 has an associated tag 926 that identifies the particular tenant and associated VM. At the NVD, for a packet 924 received from host machine 902, a tag 926 associated with the packet is used to determine whether the packet should be processed by VNIC-VM1 920 or VNIC-VM2 922. The packet is then processed by the corresponding VNIC. The configuration shown in FIG. 9 allows each tenant's compute instance to be confident that it owns its own host machine and NIC. The setup shown in FIG. 9 enables I / O virtualization to support multi-tenancy capabilities.

[0164] FIG. 10 shows a simplified block diagram of a physical network 1000 according to an embodiment. The embodiment shown in FIG. 10 is structured as a Clos network. A Clos network is a specific type of network topology designed to provide connection redundancy while maintaining high bisection bandwidth and maximum resource utilization. A Clos network is a type of non-blocking multi-stage or multi-layer switching network, and the number of stages or layers can be two, three, four, five, etc. The embodiment shown in FIG. 10 is a three-layer network, including layers 1, 2, and 3. TOR switch 1004 represents a layer 0 switch in the Clos network. One or more NVDs are connected to the TOR switch. The layer 0 switch is also referred to as an edge device of the physical network. The layer 0 switch is connected to a layer 1 switch, also referred to as a leaf switch. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 10, a set of “n” layer 0 TOR switches is connected to a set of “n” layer 1 switches, together forming a pod. Each layer 0 switch within a pod is interconnected to all layer 1 switches within the pod, but there are no switch connections between pods. In one implementation, two pods are called blocks. Each block is served by or connected to a set of "n" layer 2 switches (sometimes called spine switches). There can be multiple blocks in a physical network topology. The layer 2 switches are then connected to "n" layer 3 switches (sometimes called super spine switches). Communication of packets through the physical network 1000 is typically performed using one or more layer 3 communication protocols. Typically, all layers of the physical network except the TOR layer have n-way redundancy, thus enabling high availability. Policies can be specified for pods and blocks to control the visibility of switches to each other within the physical network to enable scaling of the physical network.

[0165] A characteristic of Clos networks is that the maximum number of hops required to reach from one tier-0 switch to another tier-0 switch (or from an NVD connected to a tier-0 switch to another NVD connected to a tier-0 switch) is fixed. For example, in a three-tier Clos network, a maximum of seven hops are required for a packet to reach from one NVD to another, with the source and target NVDs connected to the leaf layers of the Clos network. Similarly, in a four-tier Clos network, a maximum of nine hops are required for a packet to reach from one NVD to another, with the source and target NVDs connected to the leaf layers of the Clos network. Therefore, the Clos network architecture maintains consistent latency throughout the network, which is important for intra- and inter-datacenter communications. Clos topologies scale horizontally and are cost-effective. The network's bandwidth / throughput capacity can be easily increased by adding more switches (e.g., more leaf switches and spine switches) to various tiers and by increasing the number of links between switches at adjacent tiers.

[0166] In one embodiment, each resource in CSPI is assigned a unique identifier called a Cloud Identifier (CID). This identifier is included as part of the resource's information and can be used to manage the resource, for example, via a console or via an API. An exemplary syntax for a CID is as follows: ocid1.<resource type>.<realm>.[region][.future use].<unique ID> where: ocid1: A literal column that indicates the version of the CID. Resource Type: The type of resource (for example, instance, volume, VCN, subnet, user, group, etc.). Realm: The realm the resource resides in. Example values ​​are "c1" for the commercial realm, "c2" for the government cloud realm, or "c3" for the federal cloud realm. Each realm may have its own domain name. Region: The region the resource is in. This part can be blank if a region is not applicable to the resource. Future Use: Reserved for future use. Unique ID: The unique part of the ID. This format can vary depending on the type of resource or service.

[0167] Cloud Bridge and Cloud Migration Services Architecture CSPI (e.g., CSPI 601 and 700 described with respect to FIGS. 6 and 7) can be configured to provide cloud integration services. At least a portion of the cloud integration services is provided using a cloud bridge service (e.g., Oracle Cloud Bridge (OCB)) for management and configuration of remote resources that interact with other cloud services provided by CSPI. Cloud Bridge addresses key aspects of this integration, including automatic discovery and identity of remote resources, representation of remote resources as assets within the user's tenancy, secure network connectivity between remote resources and CSPI, lifecycle management of agent technology running in the remote environment, and assistance with migration of 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 the virtual presence, Cloud Bridge provides remote resources with unique cloud identifiers (e.g., CloudID, resource principal, etc.) and remote network connectivity for interaction with the service. This allows Cloud Bridge to reside in a single location, enabling users to coordinate and manage CSPI agent functionality on remote resources. For users, Cloud Bridge provides a unified, cloud-centric experience across both cloud-native and remote resources while minimizing configuration within the remote environment. For CSPI service teams, Cloud Bridge simplifies environment integration by enabling services to interact with remote resources as if they were cloud resources, and by providing a standardized framework for deploying and managing remote agent capabilities. This allows CSPI service teams to focus on their core cloud experience without worrying about remote connectivity or software lifecycle management.

[0168] Cloud Bridge is managed and configured through a console (e.g., the CSPI console described with respect to Figures 6 and 7), application programming interfaces (APIs), and a software development kit (SDK). Cloud Bridge management and configuration focuses on three fundamental resource types: environments, agents, and assets. Users create an environment for each location where they want access to other cloud services provided by CSPI. The environment acts as a container for assets and defines the scope for managing default policies at that location.

[0169] Agents are part of virtual machines that users create from images provided by Cloud Bridge. Agents act as extensions of the Cloud Bridge service in remote environments and are monitored, updated, and operated by CSPI based on the associated environment's configuration. Agents provide basic Cloud Bridge services, such as remote asset discovery and inventory integration, and include a framework for running service-specific plugins within the environment. For example, the Oracle Cloud Migration service deploys a replication plugin 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 the associated functionality to their environments. Cloud Bridge monitors deployed agents and software versions and provides manually triggered or automated lifecycle management. For redundancy and performance reasons, multiple agents can exist in the same environment.

[0170] Assets are CSPI resources that represent remote resources discovered by agents, capture their properties in the remote environment, and provide CSPI properties (e.g., CloudID, resource principal, etc.) for use across other cloud services provided by CSPI. Users can manually add assets in an environment or trigger automatic discovery based on integration with infrastructure / systems 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 allowing only SQLNet connections encrypted by SSL. Environments and discovered assets may be managed by an asset inventory exposed to users through a console. Users may choose to perform any action on an asset depending on the asset type and the service plugins available for the asset type. For example, a virtual machine asset type may support multiple actions, such as cloud migration using Oracle Cloud Migrations, exposure as a VNIC using a virtual network, or dispatching metrics to CSPI using observability, as described in detail herein. A database asset type may similarly support integration with various database services, such as the Data Safe service and the Database Migration service. Cloud Bridge can also integrate with various data management services, such as the Management Agent Cloud Service (MACS) agent, which provides an on-guest agent, and agent plug-in capabilities to collect additional metadata about assets. MAC agents can use the Cloud Bridge agent framework, making the integration and functionality seamless for users.

[0171] FIG. 11A is a high-level diagram of a distributed environment 1100 illustrating a cloud bridge architecture for managing and configuring remote resources that interact with cloud services, according to one embodiment. As shown in the example depicted in FIG. 11A , the distributed environment 1100 includes a cloud infrastructure 1102 (CSPI) physically hosted within one or more global regions 1103 (i.e., data centers managed by a cloud service provider, such as Oracle) that provides high-performance computing and storage capacity (as physical or virtual hardware instances) within a flexible overlay virtual network securely accessible from users' on-premises networks (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106). CSPI 1102 includes a console 1108 that enables users and network administrators to configure, access, and manage remote resources and resources deployed within the cloud using the CSPI resources. In one embodiment, console 1108 provides a web-based user interface that can be used to access and manage CSPI 1102 and various service functions, including cloud bridge and migration services. In some implementations, the console 1108 is a web-based application provided by the CSP.

[0172] CSPs may use CSPI 1102 to provide various services. In some cases, users of CSPI 1102 may act as service providers themselves and provide services using resources of CSPI 1102. Service providers may expose service endpoints characterized by identifying information (e.g., IP addresses, DNS names, and DNS ports). User resources (e.g., compute instances, on-premises resources, off-premises resources, etc.) can consume a particular service by accessing a service endpoint exposed by the service for that service. These service endpoints are generally endpoints that are publicly accessible by users via a public communication network such as the Internet using a public IP address associated with the endpoint. In one embodiment, a service provider may expose a service (e.g., Cloud Service A, Cloud Service B, Cloud Service C, Cloud Service D, Cloud Service E) through an endpoint for the service (sometimes referred to as a service endpoint) (e.g., CSA, CSB, CSC, CSD, CSE). Users of the service can then access the service using this service endpoint. In one implementation, a service endpoint provided for a service may be accessed by multiple users seeking to consume the service. In other implementations, a dedicated service endpoint may be provided to a user, allowing only that user to access the service using that dedicated service endpoint.

[0173] CSPI 1102 provides services and resources that users can subscribe to and use to build VCNs. In one embodiment, CSPI 1102 provides IaaS and iPaaS services to subscribing users. In this example, the user configures VCN 1110 for global region 1103. The user may deploy various compute instances to VCN 1110, which may include virtual machines or bare metal instances. Example instances include applications, databases, load balancers, and the like. Multiple compute instances may be deployed in each subnet. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 11A , VCN 1110 includes a single subnet 1112, but it should be understood that VCN 1110 may be configured with any number of subnets. The compute instances in a subnet may be hosted by one or more host machines in CSPI 1102. The compute instances join the subnet through VNICs associated with the compute instances, as described in detail with respect to FIG. 1.

[0174] Compute instances deployed in a subnet, such as subnet 1112 of VCN 1110, can communicate with a variety of endpoints. These endpoints may include endpoints hosted by CSP 1102 and endpoints outside CSPI 1102. Endpoints hosted by CSPI 1102 may include endpoints on the same subnet as the particular compute instance, endpoints on a different subnet but in the same VCN, endpoints in a different VCN in the same region, or endpoints in a VCN in a different region. Compute instances in a subnet hosted by CSPI 1102 may communicate with endpoints not hosted by CSPI 1102 (i.e., outside CSPI 1102). These outside endpoints include endpoints in the user's on-premises network (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106), endpoints in networks hosted by other remote clouds, public endpoints accessible over a public network such as the Internet, and other endpoints.

[0175] User's on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106 may be a user's network or a user's data center built using the user's resources. While the user's external resources are shown all on-premises in FIG. 11A , it should be understood that the resources may also be off-premises, such as part of a VCN within a CSPI of a different CSP. Access to on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106 is typically highly restricted. For a user with both user's on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106 and one or more VCNs 1110 deployed or hosted in the cloud by CSPI 1102, the user may want to allow cloud services (e.g., cloud services A-E) to interact with the user's external resources (e.g., on-premises database 1116, on-premises virtual machine 1118, on-premises database 1120, etc.). This allows the user to build an extended hybrid or multi-cloud environment encompassing user's VCN 104 and the user's external resources hosted by CSPI 101. The cloud bridge service enables this interaction. To enable such interaction, a communication channel 1122 is set up, with one endpoint of the channel in on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106 and the other endpoint in CSPI 1102, connected to the user's VCN 1110. The communication channel 1122 can traverse 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, or Oracle's FastConnect technology, which uses a private network instead of a public network.The software or virtual machine in the user's on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106 that forms one endpoint of the communication channel 1122 is called an agent 1124. On the CSPI 1102 side, the endpoint (e.g., DB1, DB2, VM1) may be a host machine running a gateway such as a DRG.

[0176] The Cloud Bridge service consists of three main functions: agents, asset discovery, and asset inventory.

[0177] The agent functionality enables the cloud services provided by CSPI 1102 to interact with a user's external resources (e.g., on-premises database 1116, on-premises virtual machine 1118, and on-premises database 1120). The agent functionality is implemented using agents 1124 and a corresponding cloud bridge control plane 1125 (also known as the agent control plane). The agents 1124 are specialized software components used as a platform for deploying cloud service functions that interact with external resources. Each agent 1124 has a corresponding agent identifier (e.g., a CSPI identifier used to identify an asset as a resource in CSPI 1102), which is associated with an external site identifier (e.g., externalSiteId) of the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106) in which the agent 1124 is deployed. The external site identifier is used to identify the external resources and the external environment in which the agent is deployed. The agent control plane 1125 provides management and coordination of the entire cloud bridge architecture, such as agent registration and agent lifecycle management.

[0178] The asset discovery function enables learning about a user's resources in the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106) and creating / updating assets representing the resources in cloud bridge inventory 1126. Assets are resources in CSPI 1102 that represent metadata of resources residing in the external environment, such as vSphere VMs, EC2 instances, databases, etc. Each asset has an asset type that defines different kinds of assets, an asset identifier (e.g., a CSPI identifier used to identify the asset as a resource in CSPI 1102), an associated external site identifier, and a source identifier used to identify the discovery plugin that discovered the resource associated with the asset. The asset discovery function is implemented using discovery plugins 1127 and corresponding discovery control plane 1128 integrated with agent 1125. Discovery plugins 1127 are software components deployed in the external environment that provide functionality such as asset discovery, metadata and metrics collection, and reporting of resources and metadata to inventory 1126. The discovery control plane 1128 is deployed in the overlay and includes one or more applications backed by a data store (e.g., an autonomous transaction processing (ATP) data store), and is responsible for handling requests related to asset discovery received from customer-facing APIs, as well as communication and coordination of discovery plugin 1127 tasks.

[0179] The asset inventory function allows for storing metadata about assets and relationships discovered through asset discovery or imported by a user. The asset inventory also exposes user-facing APIs for creating, retrieving, searching, and analyzing various assets. The asset inventory is implemented using inventory 1126 and a corresponding inventory control plane 1130. Inventory 1126 is a region-specific CSPI 1102 resource (e.g., data table or database) that supports standard CRUDL operations. Inventory control plane 1130 is an application deployed in the overlay and backed by a data store (e.g., an ATP data store) that is responsible for handling asset inventory-related requests received from customer-facing APIs, as well as communication and coordination of inventory 1126 and asset-related tasks. In one embodiment, the asset inventory function is limited to a single inventory per region. Advantageously, this helps eliminate duplication of assets within a tenancy. Preventing asset duplication helps prevent downstream services, such as migration and replication services, from copying the same VM data multiple times and creating multiple CSPI 1102 resources for the same asset. This also provides a single global view of a user's assets across different external environments (e.g., multi-cloud services).

[0180] As shown in FIGS. 11B and 11C , agent 1124 is deployed within a user's external environment (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106) as part of virtual appliance 1132. Virtual appliance 1132 is a virtual machine pre-configured with agent software, plug-ins, and management components. The key components of virtual appliance 1132 are agent services subsystem 1134, update services subsystem 1136, and security services subsystem 1138. Agent services subsystem 1134 provides the core functionality of the agent and lifecycle management of plug-ins, such as discovery plug-in 1127 and replication plug-in 1140. This includes collecting and reporting plug-in status to agent control plane 1125, generating and communicating agent metrics (e.g., CPU, memory, etc.) to CSPI monitoring, publishing local logs (e.g., of the appliance, agent, and its plug-ins) to CSPI logging, and running local console application functions (e.g., local console 1145 used for agent registration).

[0181] The plug-in is a self-contained / standalone application that integrates with the agent 1124 as part of a virtual appliance 1132 that a user creates in an external environment from an OVA template. The OVA template is a virtual appliance in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) used by virtualization applications such as VMware Workstation and Oracle VM Virtualbox. The OVA template can be used by a user to create multiple virtual machines (e.g., multiple VMs for agent functions in multiple external environments). In some embodiments, the OVA template is sealed (preventing user remote access) and does not allow the user to execute arbitrary code using the virtual appliance 1132. The user may only interact with the OVA template via the local console 1145 for registration; all other management operations are coordinated with the virtual appliance 1132 from CSPI 1102. The agent 1124 provides the plug-in with environment / configuration information (e.g., CSPI 1102 region, external site identifier, agent identifier, agent type, etc.) and the information the plug-in needs to obtain a resource principal session token for communication with CSPI 1102. The agent 1124 also provides monitoring capabilities (metrics and logging) and reports the status of plugins to the agent control plane 1125. The agent 1124 itself is not publicly accessible from the internet; the agent 1124 and associated plugins initiate connections to CSPI 1102's API endpoints (either direct or through a corporate proxy).

[0182] As described with respect to FIG. 11A , discovery plug-in 1127 learns about a user's resources in the external environment (e.g., on-premises network 1104 and / or on-premises network 1106) and facilitates creating / updating assets representing the resources in cloud bridge inventory 1126. Replication plug-in 1140 is deployed in external environment 1104 and is responsible for replicating data (i.e., migration) from on-premises VMs to the user's CSPI 1102 tenancy using an asset replication task. The asset replication task is the atomic unit of work by which replication plug-in 1140 imports a user's assets into CSPI 1102's object storage. This approach lowers the barrier to entry for migration by not requiring users to establish an on-premises connection to CSPI 1102 or to open ports for communication to CSPI 1102 for each asset source (e.g., vCenter). Replication plug-in 1140 is published as a binary and then deployed to the corresponding appliance by the CSPI 1102 service. Although only the detection plug-in 1127 and the replication plug-in 1140 are shown and described in this specification with respect to the virtual appliance 1132, it should be understood that other types of plug-ins may be integrated with the agent 1124 as part of the virtual appliance 1132 to facilitate the provision of one or more functions (e.g., cloud services).

[0183] For some features, the agent 1124 requires third-party libraries / packages that may not be distributed as part of the agent package and require consent and special actions by the user. For example, in the case of cloud migration scope, the Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) is required to generate snapshots of VMware VM disks by the replication plugin 1140. The user-initiated agent dependency process involves the user downloading the third-party library / package from the relevant third-party site, accepting the terms of service, and uploading the library / package to a pre-configured CSPI 1102 object storage bucket. In some cases, public documentation provided by the CSP provides the user with links and specific instructions on how the download / upload is performed, which may be performed once per version of the dependency. The user then logs into the console 1108, navigates to the agent dependency settings, and creates a new agent dependency for the library / package, including providing the object location in object storage (e.g., namespace, bucket, object name), and selects the library / package type. This causes the agent control plane 1125 to initiate a dependency signature verification workflow, which downloads and calculates the library / package's signature (checksum) and compares the library / package's signature with the whitelist signature in the database to identify the library / package and verify its validity. Once the library / package is identified and verified, the user goes to the console 1108, navigates to the external site settings, and adds the agent dependency identifier to the external site identifier. The agent 1124 then retrieves this information from the agent control plane 1125 and installs the dependency locally, making it available for plugin consumption.

[0184] The update service subsystem 1136 updates the software and parameters of the agent service subsystem 1134 and the virtual appliance 1132. The update service subsystem 1136 includes the updater 1140, a software component that runs on the virtual appliance 1132 and is responsible for keeping the virtual appliance 1132 up to date. The components of the agent 1124 are managed by Cloud Bridge engineers. The release of new code (e.g., a new agent security update) triggers the creation of a new bundle for a specific component of the agent 1124 (e.g., the security service subsystem 1138). The updater 1140 maintains a list of currently used components and the version of the bundle each component uses. A bundle is a specific realization or instance of a component. A bundle description is stored in the agent control plane 1125's database or embeddable key / value store, while the data portion is a blob stored in the agent control plane's 1125's object storage. The blob is a binary file containing executables, configurations, and other data required to update a component. The updater 1140 periodically polls the agent control plane 1125. If a new bundle is available, the agent control plane 1125 responds to the poll with an "update" command that contains information about the new bundle to install. When the updater 1140 receives the "update" command, it downloads the blob, creates a rollback snapshot, prepares a new file system (e.g., a subvolume) using the updates based on the blob, stops the agent 1124's processing, and restarts the agent 1124 into the new file system.

[0185] The Security Services Subsystem 1138 implements security and compliance controls for the Agent Services Subsystem 1134 and the Virtual Appliance 1132 using firewalls, antivirus scanning tools, auditing tools, and system configurations.

[0186] To facilitate understanding of the Cloud Bridge architecture, the following use cases are provided, however, it should be understood that these use cases are non-limiting and that other use cases are contemplated and may be implemented by the Cloud Bridge within CSPI.

[0187] Use Case 1: Private access to remote databases for database security cloud services. 1. A user uses the console 1108 to create an external environment, i.e., an on-premise network 1104. 2. The user downloads the OVA template for the virtual appliance 1132 and deploys the agent 1124 to the on-premises network 1104. 3. The user accesses the local console 1145 of the agent 1124 and registers the agent 1124 with the cloud bridge. 4. The user initiates discovery from the console 1108 to discover resources in the on-premise network 1104, including the on-premise database 1116. 5. Agent 1124 collects host, database, and database object metadata and creates or updates database assets in inventory 1126 using discovery plugins 1127, discovery control plane 1128, and inventory control plane 1130. 6. The user views the discovered database assets in inventory 1126 via console 1108, identifies the asset associated with on-premises database 1116, and creates a database private endpoint (DB1) in VCN 1110 to enable private network access to the asset associated with on-premises database 1116 that the user wants to use with a database security cloud service (cloud service A) (e.g., Data Safe). 7. The user creates a private endpoint (CSA) for the database security cloud service (Cloud Service A) in VCN 1110 and configures the private endpoint to protect assets associated with on-premises database 1116 based on CloudID or IP address, just as the user protects the cloud-native database in VCN 1110. 8. Optionally, the user configures the compute instance in VCN 1110 to connect to on-premise database 1116 via a private endpoint (DB1) and communication channel 1122.

[0188] Use case 2: Private access to a remote virtual machine hosting a data repository. 1. A user uses the console 1108 to create an external environment, i.e., an on-premise network 1104. 2. The user downloads the OVA template for the virtual appliance 1132 and deploys the agent 1124 to the on-premises network 1104. 3. The user accesses the local console 1145 of the agent 1124 and registers the agent 1124 with the cloud bridge. 4. The user initiates discovery from the console 1108 to discover resources in the on-premise network 1104, including the on-premise virtual machine 1118 running the self-hosted Bitbucket Server. 5. Agent 1124 collects host, database, and database object metadata and creates or updates database assets in inventory 1126 using discovery plugins 1127, discovery control plane 1128, and inventory control plane 1130. 6. The user views the discovered VM assets in inventory 1126 via console 1108, identifies the asset associated with the on-premises virtual machine 1118, and creates a VM private endpoint (VM1) in VCN 1110 to enable private network access to the asset associated with the on-premises virtual machine 1118 that the user wants to use with a VM cloud service (cloud service B) (e.g., CSPI DevOps services). 7. User creates a private endpoint (CSB) for CSPI DevOps service (e.g. self-hosted Bitbucket Server) in VCN1110, selects the newly created VM private endpoint (VM1) to configure the connection URL, and adds authentication information. 8. User configures CSPI DevOps "Managed Build Stage" to use the Private Endpoint (CSB) and VM Private Endpoint (VM1) as part of the DevOps CI / CD pipeline. 9. A user runs a pipeline that can access the data repository from a remote self-hosted Bitbucket Server via a private endpoint (CSB), a VM private endpoint (VM1), and communication channel 1122.

[0189] In some embodiments, cloud integration services facilitate the migration of workloads from external environments to CSPIs (e.g., CSPIs 101 and 200 described with respect to FIGS. 1 and 2). The workload migration services assist users with all aspects of cloud migration, whether migrating a multi-tier application, a specific data center, or a specific class of infrastructure. The cloud migration service (e.g., Oracle Cloud Migration (OCB)) interfaces with a cloud bridge service (e.g., Oracle Cloud Bridge (OCB)) for management and configuration of remote resources that interact with other cloud services provided by CSPIs. Cloud Bridge handles key aspects of this integration, including automatic discovery and cloud identity of remote resources, representation of remote resources as assets within the user's tenancy, secure network connectivity between remote resources and CSPIs, and lifecycle management of agent technology running within the remote environment.

[0190] Discovery and inventory control for remote resource integration with cloud services Use of cloud services within CSPI may be facilitated by facilitating the movement of assets into CSPI, and in particular, by facilitating users to move assets into CSPI, which may include, for example, migrating on-premises assets such as one or more VMs, databases, etc., into CSPI.

[0191] A successful migration may include using a framework to discover and survey existing assets, such as on-premises assets, and then plan the migration, replicate data, and initiate the target environment. The steps of an exemplary migration are shown in Figure 12. As shown in the figure, an exemplary migration may include managing the migration assets, analyzing and migrating the assets, and verifying the success of the migration.

[0192] Managing the migration assets may include connecting to the source environment, deploying a virtual agent 1132, and discovering assets in the source environment. This discovery of the migration assets may include deploying a virtual appliance to the on-premises environment, launching one or more plug-ins, including, for example, a discovery plug-in and a replication plug-in, within the on-premises environment, and using the replication plug-in to manage replication of source asset snapshots from the source environment.

[0193] Analyzing and migrating assets may include creating a migration forecast, creating a migration plan, and / or replicating the migrating assets. Creating a migration plan may include assessing and planning the migration. This may include ongoing inventory analysis, including statistics, summaries, and histograms about virtual machines in the inventory. In some embodiments, for example, virtual machines may include metadata and metrics, along with their history and how they were discovered or imported. The history of the metadata may be tracked to enable monitoring of the evolution of virtual machines over the course of the migration over time. This may enable identification and / or highlighting of any changes to the assets being migrated, which may, in some embodiments, lead to one or more changes in the migration plan. In some embodiments, assessing and planning may include creating a migration project that includes a migration plan for replicating the virtual machines. In some embodiments, the migration plan may group interrelated and / or dependent virtual machines that may be migrated together. In some embodiments, the migration plan may be and / or include a mapping of one or more virtual machines to target resource types in the CPSI. In some embodiments, the migration plan provides a context for launching a virtual machine, including partitions, subnets, and launch dependencies.

[0194] Replication of an asset may include creation of an asset in the CPSI that replicates an asset in an external customer environment, such as in an on-premises environment. In some embodiments, this replication may be performed in part by a replication plug-in that can manage replication of external asset snapshots. In some embodiments, this replication may include management of one or more full image and / or incremental virtual machine snapshots.

[0195] Migration can be a long-term process and may include one or more iterations of test launches using various configurations. In some embodiments, these iterations may include successive updates of source data from the source environment before the final migration and activation of the migrated system within CSPI. For example, in embodiments in which a customer migrates information from a source environment to CSPI, and specifically to the customer's tenancy within CSPI, the customer may repeatedly discover and / or capture on-premises assets, and a migration plan may be generated for some or all of the times the on-premises assets are discovered. For example, in embodiments in which a customer modifies one or more on-premises assets, these changes may be captured and / or detected by repeated iterations of discovery of those assets. In such embodiments, a migration may be planned that can capture each of these versions of the customer's assets. In some embodiments, only the final versions of the assets are migrated, and in some embodiments, the customer can control which versions of the assets are replicated to CSPI.

[0196] In some embodiments, planning for the migration may include an evaluation of the capabilities of the CSPI compared to the capabilities of the on-premises environment and / or on-premises assets. In some embodiments, this evaluation may include a determination of whether and to what extent the on-premises capabilities differ from and / or exceed the capabilities of the CSPI. Based on this determination, the plan for the migration of the assets may be modified.

[0197] In particular, for example, during the planning step, the capabilities of a customer's on-premises VMs are identified and one or more VM configurations (recommended) within OCI are presented. This identification includes identifying attributes of each on-premises VM, including hardware, capabilities, and actual usage metrics. The attributes may include the number of CPUs, average CPU utilization, maximum CPU utilization, memory, average memory usage, maximum memory usage, number of VNICs, number of GPUs, and / or network bandwidth.

[0198] Based on this information, several suggested OCI VM shapes are presented, which may be generated and presented based in part on information relevant to the customer, such as customer preferences for optimal pricing or optimal performance.

[0199] The attributes of the on-premises VM are compared with the identified attributes of the OCI VM shape, and a difference score is generated that characterizes the differences between the attributes of the OCI VM shape and the attributes of the on-premises VM. If the difference score indicates that the differences between the attributes of the OCI VM shape and the on-premises VM are too large, an incompatibility error is generated.

[0200] The VM shapes selected by the user are combined to form a migration plan, which may be a terraform representation of the migration plan.

[0201] After the migration planning is complete, a migration replication step may be performed. In some embodiments, the replication step is performed once, while in other embodiments, the replication step may be performed repeatedly as on-premises assets change and / or are modified. In some embodiments, the replication step may include creating a snapshot of one or more assets to be replicated and storing the snapshot. In some embodiments, the snapshot may be stored in a golden volume group (GVG). A copy of the snapshot stored in the GVG may be created, modified, and then used in creating an executable stack, such as a terraform stack. In some embodiments, a customer may be provided with an executable stack and modify the executable stack before running it, thereby replicating assets to the CSPI, and specifically to the customer's tenancy within the CSPI.

[0202] An example embodiment of an architecture 1300 that may be involved in a migration is shown in Figure 13. As shown, architecture 1300 includes an external customer environment 1302 and a CPSI 1304. External customer environment 1302 may include any environment different from CPSI 1304 to which assets are being migrated. In some embodiments, external customer environment 1302 may include an on-premises environment and / or may include a CPSI separate from CPSI 1302.

[0203] The CPSI 1304 and the external customer environment 1302 may be communicatively coupled via a public network 1306. The public network 1306 may be a wired and / or wireless communications network and may include, for example, the public Internet.

[0204] The customer environment 1302 may include a virtual appliance 1132 that may include a replication plug-in 1308. The replication plug-in 1308, in some embodiments, may be a plug-in that can perform replication of assets.

[0205] The external customer environment 1302 may include a centralized management utility 1310 for one or more assets being replicated. This centralized management utility 1310 may be for one or more VMs. In some embodiments, the centralized management utility 1310 may be used to manage the asset being replicated and / or some or all of the components dependent on the asset from a single, centralized location.

[0206] CPSI 1304 may include a customer tenancy 1312 and a service tenancy 1314. Customer tenancy 1312 may include object storage 1314, replication server 1316, and block storage 1318. Object storage 1314 may be an internet-scale, high-performance storage platform that provides reliable, cost-effective data durability. In some embodiments, object storage 1314 may store, for example, large amounts of unstructured data. In some embodiments, this unstructured data may be any type of content, including analytical data and rich content such as images and videos.

[0207] Replication server 1316, in some embodiments, may be a virtual machine that can read one or more asset snapshots and write those one or more asset snapshots to one or more volumes. In some embodiments, replication server 1316 may effectively store one or more snapshots in one or more desired locations. In some embodiments, the one or more locations to which the one or more assets are written may be volumes that correspond to one or more attributes or all or part of each of the assets. In some embodiments, after any modifications, these volumes may be used to launch one or more assets in the same CPSI as the source asset.

[0208] Block storage 1318 may be structured storage and / or storage for structured data. In some embodiments, block storage may, for example, store data in one or more equal-sized blocks. These blocks may be stored in the underlying physical storage in a manner optimized for fast access and retrieval.

[0209] 13, a service tenancy may include an appliance control plane 1320, a migration and replication control plane 1322, a replication control plane 1324, an inventory control plane 1326, and a discovery control plane 1328. In some embodiments, control planes 1320, 1322, 1326, and 1328 are collectively a control plane, which may include replication control plane 1324. Replication control plane 1324, in some embodiments, may manage the replication of one or more source assets. In some embodiments, replication control plane 1324 may be and / or include customer-facing APIs that may be deployed in an overlay.

[0210] Secure network connections between secure networks While cloud computing offers many advantages, it can also be disadvantageous for users who have assets in different secure networks. For example, a single user may have some assets located in one VCN, or more specifically, in a tenancy within one VCN, and other assets located in another VCN and / or in an on-premises network. In some embodiments, it may be extremely difficult for that user to access assets across two or more secure networks.

[0211] Present relates to enabling a user to access assets in one secure network from another secure network. This specifically includes accessing assets in an on-premises network from a VCN. In some embodiments, this may include creating an appliance and / or creating a user wallet in the on-premises network, which may contain assets. The assets, referred to herein as external resources, may include, for example, databases and / or virtual machines (VMs). The user wallet may be a user server wallet and may contain one or more credentials that may be used to authenticate a user, device, and / or session. These one or more credentials may include, for example, one or more certificates, passwords, usernames, etc. In some embodiments, the user wallet may be a user server wallet.

[0212] As used herein, a "wallet" refers to a container that stores information such as one or more certificates that can be used in establishing a secure connection. This information may include, for example, one or more certification authority ("CA") certificates (a truststore), one or more user certificates (a keystore), etc.

[0213] The present further includes creating an endpoint in the VCN, referred to herein as an external resource representation. A VCN wallet can be created based on the information contained in the user wallet. This VCN wallet can include a VCN client wallet that can be located in and / or made accessible by the VCN.

[0214] The present further includes creating one or more intermediate containers. The intermediate container may be provided with a VCN wallet and / or a user wallet and / or provided with access to the VCN wallet and / or the user wallet. In particular, the intermediate container may be provided with one or both of a VCN server wallet and a user client wallet and / or provided with access to one or both of the VCN server wallet and the user client wallet. The intermediate container may be configured to create a session with an on-premises network, and in particular, a session with an external resource via an appliance in the on-premises network. The session may be authenticated by a combination of a user server wallet on the on-premises network and a user client wallet on or accessible by the intermediate container. The session established between the intermediate container and the on-premises network may include creating a secure tunnel through a public communication network, such as the Internet.

[0215] The intermediate container can further establish secure communication with the VCN. This secure communication can be established by a VCN server wallet and a VCN client wallet. In some embodiments, the intermediate container can act as a proxy server to route communication between the on-premises network and the VCN.

[0216] In some embodiments, the creation of one or more intermediate containers may include the creation of a network bridge. A network bridge may be a higher-level container resource that represents the environment being accessed. In some embodiments, the environment being accessed may be a customer's on-premises environment / network. In some embodiments, a network bridge may be created for each environment being accessed. In some embodiments, each network bridge may be associated with an environment upon creation, and this association may not change after the network bridge is created. In some embodiments, a network bridge may receive a list of IPv4 CIDRs corresponding to the on-premises environments. These CIDRs may be consumed by a network service to provide private connectivity from the VCN to external resources within the customer's on-premises environment within that CIDR range. Points of private connectivity are referred to herein as network bridge endpoints or private endpoints. In some embodiments, network bridge endpoints may be connected to their associated network bridges upon creation.

[0217] To establish a TLS tunnel to a remote site, the network service can deploy the appropriate certificate and key material that can be used during the TLS phase of the tunnel. In some embodiments, each network bridge can be considered a security perimeter. As such, in some embodiments, a private certificate authority ("CA") can be created for each network bridge. In some embodiments, this private CA can be created in the network service tenancy and used to generate leaf certificates for signing certificates only for entities spun up for that remote site.

[0218] In some embodiments, a network plugin-enabled virtual appliance may be configured in an on-premises environment to enable connectivity to a network bridge to a VCN. In some embodiments, this virtual appliance may be installed by a customer in a section of the on-premises network that has Internet connectivity. Upon installation, the network plugin running on an agent may register with the network control plane, resulting in the creation of a NetworkBridgeConnection. The NetworkBridgeConnection may be attached to a network bridge upon creation and, in some embodiments, may be a read-only resource.

[0219] In some embodiments, a customer may install one or more appliances in their on-premises environment, and each of those appliances can create a separate NetworkBridgeConnection. In some embodiments, the network control plane defaults to bringing up a secure tunnel with only one of the appliances; in other words, only one NetworkBridgeConnection transitions to a connected state. Alternatively, if high availability is enabled, a secure tunnel may instead be brought up with two or more appliances. In other words, two or more NetworkBridgeConnections can be in a connected state at any particular time.

[0220] 14, a schematic diagram of one embodiment of a system 1400 for secure network connectivity between secure networks is shown. The system 1400 may include a virtual appliance 1132, also referred to herein as a virtual agent 1132. The virtual appliance 1132 may be a network plugin that may be a sealed VM that does not provide remote access. The virtual appliance 1132 may be manually created by a customer in an external environment and / or within an on-premises environment. In some embodiments, creating the virtual appliance may include downloading the virtual appliance 1132 to the external environment and / or executing a file that installs the virtual appliance 1132 in the external environment.

[0221] The system includes an agent 1124, which may be part of a virtual appliance 1132. The agent 1124 may communicate directly with an agent control plane 1125 over the public internet, for example, over a public internet endpoint. The agent 1124 may manage the lifecycle of plug-ins and may assign identifiers to plug-ins. The agent control plane 1125, in some embodiments, may manage the lifecycle of one or more agents 1124.

[0222] The agent 1124 may include a discovery plug-in 1126 and a network plug-in 1402. The discovery plug-in 1126 may be an application that is part of a software package that includes the agent. In some embodiments, this software package, and in particular the discovery plug-in 1126, may communicate directly with the discovery control plane 1128 over a public internet endpoint to coordinate the discovery of remote resources. In some embodiments, the discovery plug-in 1126 is also responsible for creating assets in an inventory, which includes metadata information for the created assets. The discovery control plane 1128 may coordinate discovery operations through the discovery plug-in 1126. Thus, in some embodiments, the discovery plug-in 1126 may discover resources in an environment, such as the on-premises network 1104, and create assets in an inventory, which may include metadata information associated with each discovered asset.

[0223] The system may include an inventory control plane 1130. The inventory control plane 1130 may provide a common repository of assets. The inventory control plane 1130 may provide a single panel and / or interface for searching and / or organizing assets.

[0224] The system 1400, and in particular the agent 1124, may include a network plug-in 1402. The network plug-in 1402 is an application portion of a software package that includes the agent 1124. The network plug-in 1402 communicates with the network services 1404, and in particular with the network services control plane 1406, to coordinate the creation and / or establishment of secure connections to VCNs over public internet endpoints. The network plug-in 1402, in some embodiments, may communicate with the network data plane 1410. In some embodiments, communication with the network data plane 1410 may be over one or more public internet endpoints. In some embodiments, communication with the network data plane 1410 may be over a secure connection, and in particular, over one or more tunnels, such as one or more VPN tunnels. In some embodiments, these tunnels may be OpenVPN tunnels. In some embodiments, a single agent may be connected to the network data plane 1410 over redundant tunnels, which may be TLS secure tunnels. In some embodiments, the network plug-in 1402 can coordinate the creation and establishment of a secure connection to the VCN 1110 over a public internet endpoint.

[0225] In some embodiments, network plugin 1302 can act as a bridge between a customer's remote environment and data plane 1410. In some embodiments, network plugin 1402 may be pre-packaged with agent 11247. In some embodiments, network plugin 1402 is also responsible for initiating the creation of OpenVPN tunnels to data plane 1410 and forwarding packets within the customer's remote environment. Customers may choose to selectively disable plugin 1402 on their appliances.

[0226] The system may include a network data plane 1410, which in some embodiments may be a set of network service VMs that can provide fault-tolerant and redundant packet flow paths from a customer's VCN to remote resources. In some embodiments, the data plane 1410 may handle packet forwarding. In some embodiments, the network data plane 1410 provides secure connections to databases in remote sites by using a combination of OpenVPN and CMAN containers.

[0227] The system 1400 may include a network management plane 1408. The network management plane 1408 may manage a data plane 1410, and in particular, may manage data plane infrastructure resources. In some embodiments, the network management plane 1408 may manage data plane infrastructure resources for secure connections with instances of network plug-ins 1402. Thus, in some embodiments, the network management plane 1408 may allocate data plane resources based on customer configurations. In some embodiments, the network management plane 1408 may migrate data plane resources from failed hosts.

[0228] The system may further include an endpoint, also referred to herein as a private endpoint (PE) 1412. The PE 1412 may enable other services and / or assets within the VCN, and particularly within the customer's tenancy, to access the asset and / or data contained therein.

[0229] The system may include a DBendpoint 1413, also referred to herein as a database endpoint or remote resource representation, that provides a logical representation of a single asset within a customer's VCN 1110, and specifically, within the customer's tenancy 1312 within VCN 1110.

[0230] Referring to FIG. 15 , a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a system 1500 for secure network connectivity between secure networks is shown. As shown, a customer has at least one asset 1502, such as a database 1504, in a first environment 1506, which is a separate environment, specifically an on-premises environment. The customer also has a second environment 1508 separate from the first environment 1506. In the particular embodiment of FIG. 15 , this second environment 1508 is the customer's VCN 1110. This environment may include the customer's tenancy and / or subnets. In some embodiments, the second environment 1508 may be an on-premises environment separate from the on-premises environment of the first environment 1506. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 15 , the first environment 1506 and the second environment 1508 are communicatively connected via a service tenancy 1510 that includes a control / management plane VCN 1512 and a data plane VCN 1410.

[0231] Control / management plane VCN 1512 may include control plane 1406 and management plane 1408. Control plane 1406, in some embodiments, may manage the configuration of customer-facing resources and interact with the management plane to program resources needed on the data plane. In some embodiments, management plane 1408 may allocate data plane resources based on customer configuration and / or migrate data plane resources from failed hosts. In some embodiments, control plane 1406 and / or management plane 1408 may create structure and / or features to enable a customer to access assets in a first environment from a second environment.

[0232] The data plane VCN 1410 may include a resource subnet 1520 and a tunnel subnet 1522, each of which may include a data plane node 1524. In some embodiments, the data plane may provide a secure connection between an asset 1502 in a first environment 1506 and a second environment 1508. In some embodiments, providing a secure connection between at least one asset 1502 in the first environment 1506 and the second environment may include forwarding packets between these environments 1506, 1508. In some embodiments, the secure connection may be achieved through the use of a combination of an OpenVPN container and a Connection Manager (“CMAN”) container. In some embodiments, the CMAN container may be a proxy server that forwards connection requests to a database or other proxy server.

[0233] In some embodiments, the wallet may be accessible from each of second environment 1508 and service tenancy 1510. In some embodiments, the wallet may be located on and / or accessible by data plane 1410. In some embodiments, this may include providing access to one or more containers in data plane 1410 and / or by resource subnet 1520 and / or tunnel subnet 1522. In some embodiments, as described below, this wallet may include one or more VCN wallets, including, for example, a VCN server wallet accessible by data plane 1410 and / or a VCN client wallet accessible by second environment 1508.

[0234] As shown in FIG. 15 , data plane node 1524 in resource subnet 1520 may include resource shard 1526, which may include CMAN container 1528. In some embodiments, a CMAN container 1528 may be launched in the data plane for each database asset endpoint 1413 created. Thus, in some embodiments, CMAN container 1528 may have a one-to-one relationship with asset endpoint 1413. In some embodiments, CMAN container 1528 may function as a proxy server to redirect packets received by CMAN container 1528 from first environment 1506 to second environment 1508, and to redirect packets received by CMAN container 1528 from second environment 1508 to first environment 1506. In some embodiments, CMAN container 1528 may be configured to handle IP-based redirection in the case of SCAN / RAC deployments. In some embodiments, CMAN container 1528 may be further configured to allow application of ACLs specific to database services, thereby restricting connections from specific clients.

[0235] Tunnel subnet 1522 may include a container 1532, and in particular, a tunnel shard 1530, which may include an OpenVPN container, using which a secure connection to the first environment may be established. In some embodiments, this secure connection may include the creation of one or more tunnels connecting tunnel shard 1530 with first environment 1506. These one or more tunnels may be one or more secure tunnels, such as, for example, a secure TLS tunnel spanning over the public internet. In some embodiments, container 1532 on tunnel shard 1530 may be an OpenVPN container.

[0236] As used herein, a shard can be a single tenanted environment responsible for providing a specific function; in other words, a shard can be a container specific to a single tenanted application. Each data plane node on each fleet can run multiple shards that belong to different network bridges. In some embodiments, there can be three types of shards in the network data plane 1410: tunnel shards, resource shards, and database shards.

[0237] In some embodiments, a tunnel shard may be configured to initiate a communication connection with another resource, container, and / or environment. In some embodiments, a tunnel shard may be a Docker container that runs tunneling-specific software to provide connectivity to a remote customer site. The management plane may be responsible for determining the placement of these shards.

[0238] In some embodiments, a VPN container on tunnel shard 1530 may be communicatively coupled to a CMAN container 1528. As shown in Figure 15, this connection may be a communication connection via Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

[0239] In some embodiments, for example, a customer and / or customer service may request access to an asset in the first environment 1506 from an endpoint 1413 in the second environment 1508. This packet may be sent from an SVNIC 1534 in the second environment 1508 to a worker VNIC 1536 in the data plane node 1524 and directed to a CMAN container 1528 associated with the second environment 1506. As previously mentioned, in some embodiments, an SVNIC 1534 may be created for each registered external endpoint, in other words, for each external asset, and may be associated with an endpoint 1413 in the VCN created for that asset.

[0240] The CMAN container 1528 can forward the packet to an OpenVPN 1532 container in a tunnel shard 1530, which can direct the packet to an asset 1502 in the first environment 1506 via a tunnel established between the tunnel shard and a virtual appliance (agent) 1538 in the first environment. The response packet can similarly traverse from the first environment 1506 to the second environment 1508.

[0241] 16, a flowchart illustrating one embodiment of a process 1600 for connecting a first environment 1506 and a second environment 1508 is shown. Process 1600 may be performed by all or some of the systems described above. Process 1600 begins at block 1602, where an external resource is registered as an external endpoint. In some embodiments, this external resource may be an asset within a secure network, such as the network of the first environment. In some embodiments, the external resource may be registered as an external endpoint within the second environment, or in other words, within the customer's VCN.

[0242] At block 1604, a user wallet is received within the on-premises network. In some embodiments, the user wallet may be received from a user and may include security credentials. These security credentials may include, for example, one or more certificates, such as trusted certificates, one or more tokens, keys, passwords, usernames, etc. In some embodiments, the security credentials may be sufficient to authenticate a user, a tunnel, a session, a communication, etc. In some embodiments, the user wallet may be stored in the on-premises network and made available to assets in the on-premises environment, to a VNIC in the on-premises environment, and / or to another component or module of the on-premises environment.

[0243] In some embodiments, a database wallet may be created for a user. The database wallet may be created based on security credentials and / or security information received from the user. This security information may be information contained in the user wallet and / or may be information separately provided by the user.

[0244] At block 1606, an external resource representation 1413 is created. The external resource representation 1413 may be created to represent external resources within the second environment 1508, and in particular, within the VCN. The external representation 1413 may be created in the second environment 1508 by the control plane 1406. In some embodiments, the creation of the external resource representation 1413 may include the creation of an associated VNIC. In some embodiments, the associated VNIC may be an SVNIC 1534. In some embodiments, as previously described, an SVNIC 1534 may be created per asset, and thus in some embodiments, each endpoint 1413 may be associated with a unique SVNIC 1534.

[0245] At block 1608, a connection is established between the logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC associated with the external resource representation. In some embodiments, this connection may be established through at least one intermediate container. In some embodiments, the at least one intermediate container resides in the data plane. In some embodiments, the at least one intermediate container includes a first container and a second container. The first container may be configured for communicative coupling with a first environment, for example, via a first tunnel via a first communications network. The second container may be configured for communicative coupling with a second environment, and in some embodiments, with a customer VCN. Additionally, the first and second containers may be communicatively coupled to each other.

[0246] At block 1610, additional wallets are created. In some embodiments, these additional wallets may be created based at least in part on the user wallet and / or based at least in part on the database wallet. These wallets, in some embodiments, may be created in at least one intermediate container and in a second environment that includes the customer's VCN. These wallets may include one or more VCN wallets, including, for example, a VCN server wallet and / or a VCN client wallet. In some embodiments, the VCN server wallet is accessible by at least one intermediate container, and the VCN client wallet is accessible by a VNIC in the second environment.

[0247] 17, a schematic diagram of one embodiment of a system 1700 for secure network communication between secure networks is shown. As shown, the system includes a first environment 1506 that includes an external resource 1502 (sales DB) and a user wallet, and in particular, a user server wallet 1702. The system further includes a second environment 1508 that includes an endpoint 1413 (Datasafe PE) and a VCN client wallet 1704. The first environment 1506 and the second environment 1508 are linked via at least one intermediate container 1706 that includes a CMAN container 1528 and both a user client wallet 1708 and a VCN server wallet 1710. In some embodiments, the user server wallet 1702 and the user client wallet 1708 can be provided by the customer, and in some embodiments, the VCN client wallet 1704 and the VCN server wallet 1710 can be created by the control plane. The VCN client wallet 1704 and the VCN server wallet 1710 can be used to authenticate communications between at least one intermediate container 1706 and the second environment 1508 and / or to create a secure session, and the user server wallet 1702 and the user client wallet 1708 can be used to authenticate communications between at least one intermediate container 1706 and the first environment 1506 and / or to create a secure session and / or a secure tunnel.

[0248] Referring now to FIG. 18 , a flowchart illustrating one embodiment of a process 1800 for accessing assets in a first environment 1506 through a second environment 1508 is shown. The process begins at block 1802, where VCN wallets 1704, 1710 are created. In some embodiments, these VCN wallets 1704, 1710 can be wallets within a VCN, and communications with another environment can be established using these VCN wallets. In the context of FIG. 17 , these wallets 1704, 1710 include a VCN client wallet 1704 located in the second environment 1508 and a VCN server wallet 1710 located in and / or accessible from an intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, communications with the first environment 1506 from the second environment 1508 can be established via these wallets 1704, 1710.

[0249] In some embodiments, the VCN wallets 1704, 1710 may be created by the control plane. In some embodiments, the VCN wallets 1704, 1710 may be created by the control plane based on information received from a user. In some embodiments, this information may be received from a user in the first environment 1506 and / or the second environment 1508. The VCN wallets 1704, 1710 may be located in and / or accessible from the second environment 1508 and / or from the at least one intermediate container 1706.

[0250] In some embodiments, each network bridge may have a separate CA. In some embodiments, such separate CAs may enable a single network service 1404 and / or network data plane 1410 to run multiple containers, and in particular, multiple CMAN containers 1528 running for different customers. Thus, in some embodiments, a private CA is launched for each network bridge to generate certificates for OpenVPN tunnels. In some embodiments, the same private CA may be used, and client / server certificates signed by this root CA may be generated for each network bridge endpoint. In some embodiments, these client / server certificates may be maintained in the network service tenancy 1404. In some embodiments, one or more client wallets and auto-login server wallets may be generated for the CMAN container 1528. The client wallets are made available to local SQL clients via APIs or to partner services for connecting to remote database endpoints via PEs in the user VCN.

[0251] At block 1804, a session is created between the external resource 1502 and the at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, this creation may include creating a session between the at least one intermediate container 1706 and an external appliance, such as an agent 1124, located in the first environment 1506 and associated with the external resource 1502. In some embodiments, the session creation may include establishing a tunnel from the first environment 1506 to the at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, this tunnel may be created through use of a user client wallet 1708 accessible by the at least one intermediate container 1706 and a user server wallet 1702 accessible within the first environment 1506.

[0252] At block 1806, a second session is created between the at least one intermediate container 1706 and an external resource representation, which may be endpoint 1413. The external resource representation, in some embodiments, may be located in the second environment 1508. In some embodiments, creating the second session may include creating a communication coupling between the at least one intermediate container 1706 and the second environment 1508. In some embodiments, this second session is created through use of VCN wallets 1704, 1710, and in particular, through a VCN client wallet 1704 accessible from the second environment 1508 and a VCN server wallet 1710 accessible from the at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, the second session is created through authentication using the VCN client wallet 1704 and the VCN server wallet 1710.

[0253] At block 1808, a request is sent from an external resource representation residing in the VCN to the external resource via a virtual network interface card (VNIC). The request may be to access data contained in the external resource and / or to access the external resource. In some embodiments, the request may include a query for data contained in the external resource 1502. The request may traverse from the second environment 1508 to the first environment 1506 via at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, the request is sent from the external resource 1502 to the external resource representation 1413 via the intermediate container 1706, which in some embodiments may include a proxy server.

[0254] At block 1810, results are received in at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, the results may correspond to the request. In some embodiments, the results may be received over an established connection.

[0255] At block 1812, the results are sent to the external resource representation 1413. In some embodiments, the results are sent via at least one intermediate container 1706. In some embodiments, the results are sent via the VNIC using the established connection.

[0256] Exemplary Implementation As mentioned 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, an IaaS provider may also offer various services incidental to those infrastructure components (example services include billing software, monitoring software, logging software, load balancing software, clustering software, etc.). Accordingly, these services can be policy-driven, allowing IaaS users to implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance.

[0257] In some cases, IaaS customers may 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 their application stack. For example, a user may log into an IaaS platform to create virtual machines (VMs), install an operating system (OS) on each VM, deploy middleware such as databases, create storage buckets for workloads and backups, and even install enterprise software on the VMs. The customer can then use the provider's services to perform a variety of functions, including balancing network traffic, troubleshooting application issues, monitoring performance, managing disaster recovery, etc.

[0258] In most cases, the cloud computing model requires the participation of a cloud provider. A cloud provider can be, but need not be, a third-party service that specializes in providing (e.g., offering, renting, selling) IaaS. An entity may choose to deploy a private cloud and become its own provider of infrastructure services.

[0259] In some examples, IaaS deployment is the process of connecting a new application or a new version of an application to a prepared application server or the like. This process may include preparing the server (e.g., installing libraries, daemons, etc.). This process is often managed by the cloud provider below the hypervisor layer (e.g., server, storage, network hardware, and virtualization). Thus, the customer may be responsible for handling the deployment of the OS, middleware, and / or application (e.g., on self-service virtual machines (e.g., that may be spun up on demand)).

[0260] In some instances, IaaS provisioning may also refer to obtaining computers or virtual hosts for use and installing needed libraries or services on those computers or virtual hosts. In most cases, deployment does not include provisioning, which may need to be performed first.

[0261] In some cases, IaaS provisioning presents two distinct challenges. First, there is the initial challenge of provisioning an initial set of infrastructure before anything can be run. Second, there is the challenge of evolving the existing infrastructure (e.g., adding new services, modifying services, removing services, etc.) after everything has been provisioned. In some cases, these two challenges can be addressed by allowing the configuration of the infrastructure to be defined declaratively. In other words, the infrastructure (e.g., which components are needed and how those components interact) can be defined by one or more configuration files. In this way, the entire topology of the infrastructure (e.g., which resources depend on which other resources and how each of those resources works together) can be described declaratively. In some cases, after the topology is defined, workflows can be generated to create and / or manage the various components described in the configuration files.

[0262] In some examples, the infrastructure may include many interconnected elements. For example, there may be one or more virtual private clouds (VPCs) (e.g., configurable and / or shared, possibly on-demand pools of computing resources), also known as a core network. In some examples, there may also be one or more inbound / outbound traffic group rules, as well as one or more virtual machines (VMs), provisioned to define how the network's inbound and / or outbound traffic is configured. Other infrastructure elements, such as load balancers, databases, etc., may also be provisioned. The infrastructure may evolve over time as more infrastructure elements are desired and / or added.

[0263] In some cases, continuous deployment techniques may be employed to enable deployment of infrastructure code across various virtual computing environments. Additionally, the described techniques may enable infrastructure management within these environments. In some examples, a service team may write code that is desired to be deployed to one or more, but often many, different production environments (e.g., across various geographic locations, sometimes across the world). However, in some examples, the infrastructure onto which the code will be deployed must first be set up. In some cases, provisioning can be done manually, and provisioning tools may be utilized to provision the resources and / or deployment tools may be utilized to deploy the code after the infrastructure has been provisioned.

[0264] 19 is a block diagram 1900 illustrating an example pattern of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1902 may be communicatively coupled to a secure host tenancy 1904, which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1906 and a secure host subnet 1908. In some examples, the service operator 1902 may employ one or more client computing devices, which may be portable handheld devices (e.g., iPhone®, mobile phone, iPad®, computing tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA)) or wearable devices (e.g., Google® Glass head-mounted display) that are Internet, email, short message service (SMS), Blackberry®, or other communication protocol enabled, running software such as Microsoft Windows Mobile® and / or various mobile operating systems such as iOS, Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry 8, Palm OS, etc. Alternatively, the client computing device may be a general-purpose personal computer, including, by way of example, personal and / or laptop computers running various versions of the Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, and / or Linux operating systems. The client computing device may also be a workstation computer running any of a variety of commercially available UNIX or UNIX-like operating systems, including, but not limited to, various GNU / Linux operating systems, such as 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., a Microsoft Xbox gaming console with or without a Kinect® gesture input device), and / or a personal messaging device, that can communicate over a network accessible to VCN 1906 and / or the Internet.

[0265] VCN 1906 may include a local peering gateway (LPG) 1910, which may be communicatively coupled to a secure shell (SSH) VCN 1912 via an LPG 1910 included in SSH VCN 1912. SSH VCN 1912 may include an SSH subnet 1914, which may be communicatively coupled to a control plane VCN 1916 via an LPG 1910 included in control plane VCN 1916. SSH VCN 1912 may also be communicatively coupled to a data plane VCN 1918 via LPG 1910. The control plane VCN 1916 and the data plane VCN 1918 may be included in a service tenancy 1919, which may be owned and / or operated by an IaaS provider.

[0266] The control plane VCN 1916 may include a control plane demilitarized zone (DMZ) tier 1920 that serves as a perimeter network (e.g., a portion of an enterprise network between the enterprise intranet and an external network). Servers based in the DMZ may have limited responsibility and help keep breaches contained. Additionally, the DMZ tier 1920 may include one or more load balancer (LB) subnets 1922, a control plane app tier 1924 that may include an app subnet 1926, and a control plane data tier 1928 that may include a database (DB) subnet 1930 (e.g., a front-end DB subnet and / or a back-end DB subnet). LB subnet 1922 included in control plane DMZ layer 1920 can be communicatively coupled to app subnet 1926 and Internet gateway 1934 included in control plane app layer 1924, which may be included in control plane VCN 1916, and app subnet 1926 can be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 1930, as well as service gateway 1936 and network address translation (NAT) gateway 1938 included in control plane data layer 1928. Control plane VCN 1916 can include service gateway 1936 and NAT gateway 1938.

[0267] Control plane VCN 1916 may include a data plane mirror app layer 1940 that may include an app subnet 1926. The app subnet 1926 included in data plane mirror app layer 1940 may include a virtual network interface controller (VNIC) 1942 that may run a compute instance 1944. The compute instance 1944 may communicatively couple the app subnet 1926 of data plane mirror app layer 1940 to the app subnet 1926 that may be included in the data plane app layer 1946.

[0268] Data plane VCN 1918 may include a data plane app layer 1946, a data plane DMZ layer 1948, and a data plane data layer 1950. Data plane DMZ layer 1948 may include a LB subnet 1922 that may be communicatively coupled to an app subnet 1926 of data plane app layer 1946 and an internet gateway 1934 of data plane VCN 1918. App subnet 1926 may be communicatively coupled to a service gateway 1936 of data plane VCN 1918 and a NAT gateway 1938 of data plane VCN 1918. Data plane data layer 1950 may also include a DB subnet 1930 that may be communicatively coupled to app subnet 1926 of data plane app layer 1946.

[0269] The internet gateways 1934 of the control plane VCNs 1916 and of the data plane VCNs 1918 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 1952, which may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 1954. The public internet 1954 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateways 1938 of the control plane VCNs 1916 and of the data plane VCNs 1918. The service gateways 1936 of the control plane VCNs 1916 and of the data plane VCNs 1918 may be communicatively coupled to cloud services 1956.

[0270] In some examples, a service gateway 1936 in the control plane VCN 1916 or in the data plane VCN 1918 can make application programming interface (API) calls to cloud services 1956 without traversing the public internet 1954. The API calls from the service gateway 1936 to the cloud services 1956 can be one-way: the service gateway 1936 can make the API call to the cloud services 1956, and the cloud services 1956 can send the requested data to the service gateway 1936. However, the cloud services 1956 may not initiate the API calls to the service gateway 1936.

[0271] In some examples, secure host tenancy 1904 can be directly connected to service tenancy 1919 or may be otherwise separate. Secure host subnet 1908 can communicate with SSH subnet 1914 through LPG 1910, which may enable bidirectional communication on otherwise separate systems. Connecting secure host subnet 1908 to SSH subnet 1914 may give secure host subnet 1908 access to other entities within service tenancy 1919.

[0272] The control plane VCN 1916 may enable users of the service tenancy 1919 to configure or otherwise provision desired resources. The desired resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1916 may be deployed or otherwise used in the data plane VCN 1918. In some examples, the control plane VCN 1916 may be separate from the data plane VCN 1918, and the data plane mirror app layer 1940 of the control plane VCN 1916 may communicate with the data plane app layer 1946 of the data plane VCN 1918 via a VNIC 1942, which may be included in the data plane mirror app layer 1940 and the data plane app layer 1946.

[0273] In some examples, a user or customer of the system may make a request, for example, a create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) operation, via the public internet 1954, which may communicate the request to a metadata management service 1952. The metadata management service 1952 may communicate the request to the control plane VCN 1916 via an internet gateway 1934. The request may be received by a LB subnet 1922 included in the control plane DMZ tier 1920. The LB subnet 1922 may determine that the request is valid, and in response to this determination, the LB subnet 1922 may send the request to an app subnet 1926 included in the control plane app tier 1924. If the validity of the request is confirmed and the request requires a call to the public internet 1954, the call to the public internet 1954 may be sent to a NAT gateway 1938, which may make the call to the public internet 1954. Metadata that may be desirable to store with the request may be stored within the DB subnet 1930.

[0274] In some examples, data plane mirror app layer 1940 can facilitate direct communication between control plane VCN 1916 and data plane VCN 1918. For example, it may be desirable for changes, updates, or other appropriate modifications to the configuration to be applied to resources included in data plane VCN 1918. Via VNIC 1942, control plane VCN 1916 can communicate directly with resources included in data plane VCN 1918, thereby performing changes, updates, or other appropriate modifications to the configuration of the resources.

[0275] In some embodiments, the control plane VCN 1916 and the data plane VCN 1918 may be included in the service tenancy 1919. In this case, a user or customer of the system may not own or operate either the control plane VCN 1916 or the data plane VCN 1918. Instead, an IaaS provider may own or operate the control plane VCN 1916 and the data plane VCN 1918, which may both be included in the service tenancy 1919. This embodiment may enable network isolation that can prevent users or customers from interacting with other users' or other customers' resources. This embodiment may also enable users or customers of the system to store databases privately without having to rely on the public internet 1954 for storage, which may not have a desirable level of threat protection.

[0276] In another embodiment, LB subnet 1922 included in control plane VCN 1916 may be configured to receive signals from service gateway 1936. In this embodiment, control plane VCN 1916 and data plane VCN 1918 may be configured to be called by customers of the IaaS provider without calling the public internet 1954. Customers of the IaaS provider may desire this embodiment because databases used by the customers may be stored in service tenancy 1919, which may be controlled by the IaaS provider and isolated from the public internet 1954.

[0277] 20 is a block diagram 2000 illustrating another example pattern of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 2002 (e.g., service operator 1902 of FIG. 19 ) may be communicatively coupled to a virtual cloud network (VCN) 2006 (e.g., VCN 1906 of FIG. 19 ) and a secure host tenancy 2004 (e.g., secure host tenancy 1904 of FIG. 19 ), which may include a secure shell (SSH) VCN 2012 (e.g., SSH VCN 1912 of FIG. 19 ) via a local peering gateway (LPG) 1910 included in the SSH VCN 2012. SSH VCN 2012 can include SSH subnet 2014 (e.g., SSH subnet 1914 in FIG. 19 ), and SSH VCN 2012 can be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 2016 (e.g., control plane VCN 1916 in FIG. 19 ) via LPG 2010 included in control plane VCN 2016. Control plane VCN 2016 can be included in service tenancy 2019 (e.g., service tenancy 1919 in FIG. 19 ), and data plane VCN 2018 (e.g., data plane VCN 1918 in FIG. 19 ) can be included in customer tenancy 2021, which can be owned or operated by a user or customer of the system.

[0278] The control plane VCN 2016 may include a control plane DMZ layer 2020 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1920 of FIG. 19 ) that may include a LB subnet 2022 (e.g., LB subnet 1922 of FIG. 19 ), a control plane app layer 2024 (e.g., control plane app layer 1924 of FIG. 19 ) that may include an app subnet 2026 (e.g., app subnet 1926 of FIG. 19 ), and a control plane data layer 2028 (e.g., control plane data layer 1928 of FIG. 19 ) that may include a database (DB) subnet 2030 (e.g., similar to database (DB) subnet 1930 of FIG. 19 ). LB subnet 2022 included in control plane DMZ tier 2020 can be communicatively coupled to app subnet 2026 included in control plane app tier 2024, which may be included in control plane VCN 2016, and to Internet gateway 2034 (e.g., Internet gateway 1934 in FIG. 19 ), and app subnet 2026 can be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2030 included in control plane data tier 2028, as well as to service gateway 2036 (e.g., service gateway 1936 in FIG. 19 ) and network address translation (NAT) gateway 2038 (e.g., NAT gateway 1938 in FIG. 19 ). Control plane VCN 2016 may include service gateway 2036 and NAT gateway 2038.

[0279] The control plane VCN 2016 may include a data plane mirror app layer 2040 (e.g., data plane mirror app layer 1940 of FIG. 19 ), which may include an app subnet 2026. The app subnet 2026 included in the data plane mirror app layer 2040 may include a virtual network interface controller (VNIC) 2042 (e.g., VNIC 1942) that may run a compute instance 2044 (e.g., similar to compute instance 1944 of FIG. 19 ). The compute instance 2044 can facilitate communication between the app subnet 2026 of the data plane mirror app layer 2040 and the app subnet 2026 that may be included in the data plane app layer 2046 (e.g., data plane app layer 1946 of FIG. 19 ) via the VNIC 2042 included in the data plane mirror app layer 2040 and the VNIC 2042 included in the data plane app layer 2046.

[0280] The internet gateway 2034 included in the control plane VCN 2016 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 2052 (e.g., metadata management service 1952 of FIG. 19 ), which may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 2054 (e.g., public internet 1954 of FIG. 19 ). The public internet 2054 may be communicatively coupled to a NAT gateway 2038 included in the control plane VCN 2016. The service gateway 2036 included in the control plane VCN 2016 may be communicatively coupled to cloud services 2056 (e.g., cloud services 1956 of FIG. 19 ).

[0281] In some examples, the data plane VCN 2018 may be included in the customer's tenancy 2021. In this case, the IaaS provider may provide a control plane VCN 2016 for each customer, and the IaaS provider may configure a unique compute instance 2044 for each customer that is included in the service tenancy 2019. Each compute instance 2044 may enable communication between the control plane VCN 2016 included in the service tenancy 2019 and the data plane VCN 2018 included in the customer's tenancy 2021. The compute instance 2044 may enable resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 2016 included in the service tenancy 2019 to be deployed or otherwise used in the data plane VCN 2018 included in the customer's tenancy 2021.

[0282] In another example, an IaaS provider customer may have a database that resides in the customer's tenancy 2021. In this example, control plane VCN 2016 may include a data plane mirror app tier 2040, which may include app subnet 2026. The data plane mirror app tier 2040 may reside in data plane VCN 2018, but the data plane mirror app tier 2040 may not reside in the data plane VCN 2018. That is, while the data plane mirror app tier 2040 may have access to the customer's tenancy 2021, the data plane mirror app tier 2040 may not reside in the data plane VCN 2018 and may not be owned or operated by the IaaS provider customer. The data plane mirror app tier 2040 may be configured to make calls to the data plane VCN 2018, but may not be configured to make calls to any entities included in the control plane VCN 2016. A customer may desire to deploy or otherwise use resources in data plane VCN 2018 that have been provisioned in control plane VCN 2016, and data plane mirror app layer 2040 can facilitate the desired deployment or other use of the customer's resources.

[0283] In some embodiments, the IaaS provider's customer can apply filters to the data plane VCN 2018. In this embodiment, the customer can determine which data plane VCNs 2018 are accessible, and the customer may restrict access from the data plane VCN 2018 to the public internet 2054. The IaaS provider may not be able to apply filters or otherwise control the data plane VCN 2018's access to any external networks or databases. Applying filters and controls by the customer to the data plane VCN 2018 contained in the customer's tenancy 2021 can help isolate the data plane VCN 2018 from other customers and from the public internet 2054.

[0284] In some embodiments, cloud services 2056 may be called by service gateway 2036 to access services that may not reside on the public internet 2054, the control plane VCN 2016, or the data plane VCN 2018. The connection between cloud services 2056 and the control plane VCN 2016 or the data plane VCN 2018 may not be up and running or continuous. Cloud services 2056 may reside on different networks owned or operated by the IaaS provider. Cloud services 2056 may be configured to receive calls from service gateway 2036 and may not be configured to receive calls from the public internet 2054. Some cloud services 2056 may be isolated from other cloud services 2056, and control plane VCN 2016 may be isolated from cloud services 2056 that may not be in the same region as control plane VCN 2016. For example, control plane VCN 2016 may be located in “Region 1,” and cloud service “deployment 19” may be located in Region 1 and “Region 2.” If a call is made to deployment 19 by service gateway 2036 included in control plane VCN 2016 located in region 1, the call may be sent to deployment 19 in region 1. In this example, control plane VCN 2016, or deployment 19 in region 1, may not be communicatively coupled to or otherwise in communication with deployment 19 in region 2.

[0285] Figure 21 is a block diagram 2100 illustrating another example pattern of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 2102 (e.g., service operator 1902 of Figure 19) may be communicatively coupled to a secure host tenancy 2104 (e.g., secure host tenancy 1904 of Figure 19), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 2106 (e.g., VCN 1906 of Figure 19) and a secure host subnet 2108 (e.g., secure host subnet 1908 of Figure 19). VCN 2106 may include an LPG 2110 (e.g., LPG 1910 of Figure 19), which may be communicatively coupled to an SSH VCN 2112 (e.g., SSH VCN 1912 of Figure 19) via an LPG 2110 included in SSH VCN 2112. SSH VCN 2112 can include SSH subnet 2114 (e.g., SSH subnet 1914 in FIG. 19 ), and SSH VCN 2112 can be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 2116 (e.g., control plane VCN 1916 in FIG. 19 ) via LPG 2110 included in control plane VCN 2116, and to data plane VCN 2118 (e.g., data plane 1918 in FIG. 19 ) via LPG 2110 included in data plane VCN 2118. Control plane VCN 2116 and data plane VCN 2118 can be included in service tenancy 2119 (e.g., service tenancy 1919 in FIG. 19 ).

[0286] The control plane VCN 2116 may include a control plane DMZ layer 2120 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1920 of FIG. 19 ) that may include a load balancer (LB) subnet 2122 (e.g., LB subnet 1922 of FIG. 19 ), a control plane app layer 2124 (e.g., control plane app layer 1924 of FIG. 19 ) that may include an app subnet 2126 (e.g., similar to app subnet 1926 of FIG. 19 ), and a control plane data layer 2128 (e.g., control plane data layer 1928 of FIG. 19 ) that may include a DB subnet 2130. LB subnet 2122 included in control plane DMZ layer 2120 can be communicatively coupled to app subnet 2126 included in control plane app layer 2124, which may be included in control plane VCN 2116, and to an Internet gateway 2134 (e.g., Internet gateway 1934 in FIG. 19 ), and app subnet 2126 can be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2130 included in control plane data layer 2128, as well as to service gateway 2136 (e.g., service gateway in FIG. 19 ) and network address translation (NAT) gateway 2138 (e.g., NAT gateway 1938 in FIG. 19 ). Control plane VCN 2116 may include service gateway 2136 and NAT gateway 2138.

[0287] The data plane VCN 2118 may include a data plane app layer 2146 (e.g., data plane app layer 1946 in FIG. 19 ), a data plane DMZ layer 2148 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 1948 in FIG. 19 ), and a data plane data layer 2150 (e.g., data plane data layer 1950 in FIG. 19 ). The data plane DMZ layer 2148 may include a trusted app subnet 2160 and an untrusted app subnet 2162 of the data plane app layer 2146 and an LB subnet 2122 that may be communicatively coupled to an Internet gateway 2134 included in the data plane VCN 2118. The trusted app subnet 2160 may be communicatively coupled to a service gateway 2136 included in the data plane VCN 2118, a NAT gateway 2138 included in the data plane VCN 2118, and a DB subnet 2130 included in the data plane data layer 2150. The untrusted app subnet 2162 may be communicatively coupled to a service gateway 2136 included in the data plane VCN 2118 and to a DB subnet 2130 included in the data plane data layer 2150. The data plane data layer 2150 may include a DB subnet 2130 that may be communicatively coupled to a service gateway 2136 included in the data plane VCN 2118.

[0288] The untrusted app subnet 2162 may include one or more primary VNICs 2164(1)-(N), which may be communicatively coupled to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 2166(1)-(N). Each tenant VM 2166(1)-(N) may be communicatively coupled to a respective app subnet 2167(1)-(N), which may be included in a respective container egress VCN 2168(1)-(N), which may be included in a respective customer's tenancy 2170(1)-(N). Each secondary VNIC 2172(1)-(N) may facilitate communication between the untrusted app subnet 2162 included in the data plane VCN 2118 and the app subnet included in the container egress VCN 2168(1)-(N). Each container egress VCN 2168(1)-(N) may include a NAT gateway 2138, which may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 2154 (e.g., public internet 1954 in FIG. 19 ).

[0289] The internet gateway 2134 included in the control plane VCN 2116 and included in the data plane VCN 2118 may be communicatively coupled to a metadata management service 2152 (e.g., metadata management system 1952 of FIG. 19 ), which may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 2154. The public internet 2154 may be communicatively coupled to a NAT gateway 2138 included in the control plane VCN 2116 and included in the data plane VCN 2118. The service gateway 2136 included in the control plane VCN 2116 and included in the data plane VCN 2118 may be communicatively coupled to cloud services 2156.

[0290] In some embodiments, data plane VCN 2118 may be integrated with customer tenancy 2170. This integration may be useful or desirable for an IaaS provider's customer in some cases, such as when they may want support when executing code. A customer may provide code for execution that may be destructive, may communicate with other customers' resources, or may otherwise cause undesirable effects. In response, the IaaS provider may determine whether to execute the code provided to the IaaS provider by the customer.

[0291] In some examples, a customer of an IaaS provider may grant temporary network access to the IaaS provider and request functionality connected to the data plane app layer 2146. The code to perform this functionality may run in VMs 2166(1)-(N), and this code may not be configured to run elsewhere on the data plane VCN 2118. Each VM 2166(1)-(N) may be connected to one customer's tenancy 2170. Each container 2171(1)-(N) contained in a VM 2166(1)-(N) may be configured to run code. In this case, double isolation may exist (e.g., the container 2171(1)-(N) running the code may be contained in at least one VM 2166(1)-(N) that is included in the untrusted app subnet 2162), which may help prevent incorrect or otherwise unwanted code from damaging the IaaS provider's network or from damaging a different customer's network. Containers 2171(1)-(N) may be communicatively coupled to customer tenancy 2170 and may be configured to send or receive data from customer tenancy 2170. Containers 2171(1)-(N) may not be configured to send or receive data from any other entity in data plane VCN 2118. Upon completion of code execution, the IaaS provider may kill or otherwise destroy containers 2171(1)-(N).

[0292] In some embodiments, trusted app subnet 2160 may execute code that may be owned or operated by the IaaS provider. In this embodiment, trusted app subnet 2160 may be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2130 and may be configured to perform CRUD operations within DB subnet 2130. Untrusted app subnet 2162 may be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2130, although in this embodiment, the untrusted app subnet may be configured to perform read operations within DB subnet 2130. Containers 2171(1)-(N) capable of executing code from the customer, which may be included in each customer's VMs 2166(1)-(N), may not be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2130.

[0293] In other embodiments, the control plane VCN 2116 and the data plane VCN 2118 may not be directly communicatively coupled. In this embodiment, there may not be direct communication between the control plane VCN 2116 and the data plane VCN 2118. However, communication can occur indirectly through at least one method. The LPG 2110 may be established by an IaaS provider and can facilitate communication between the control plane VCN 2116 and the data plane VCN 2118. In another example, the control plane VCN 2116 or the data plane VCN 2118 can make a call to a cloud service 2156 via the service gateway 2136. For example, a call from the control plane VCN 2116 to the cloud service 2156 may include a request for a service that can communicate with the data plane VCN 2118.

[0294] 22 is a block diagram 2200 illustrating another example pattern of an IaaS architecture according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 2202 (e.g., service operator 1902 in FIG. 19 ) may be communicatively coupled to a secure host tenancy 2204 (e.g., secure host tenancy 1904 in FIG. 19 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 2206 (e.g., VCN 1906 in FIG. 19 ) and a secure host subnet 2208 (e.g., secure host subnet 1908 in FIG. 19 ). VCN 2206 may include an LPG 2210 (e.g., LPG 1910 in FIG. 19 ), which may be communicatively coupled to an SSH VCN 2212 (e.g., SSH VCN 1912 in FIG. 19 ) via an LPG 2210 included in SSH VCN 2212. SSH VCN 2212 can include SSH subnet 2214 (e.g., SSH subnet 1914 in FIG. 19 ), and SSH VCN 2212 can be communicatively coupled to control plane VCN 2216 (e.g., control plane VCN 1916 in FIG. 19 ) via LPG 2210 included in control plane VCN 2216, and to data plane VCN 2218 (e.g., data plane 1918 in FIG. 19 ) via LPG 2210 included in data plane VCN 2218. Control plane VCN 2216 and data plane VCN 2218 can be included in service tenancy 2219 (e.g., service tenancy 1919 in FIG. 19 ).

[0295] The control plane VCN 2216 may include a control plane DMZ layer 2220 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 1920 of FIG. 19) that may include a LB subnet 2222 (e.g., LB subnet 1922 of FIG. 19), a control plane app layer 2224 (e.g., control plane app layer 1924 of FIG. 19) that may include an app subnet 2226 (e.g., app subnet 1926 of FIG. 19), and a control plane data layer 2228 (e.g., control plane data layer 1928 of FIG. 19) that may include a DB subnet 2230 (e.g., DB subnet 2130 of FIG. 21). LB subnet 2222, included in control plane DMZ layer 2220, can be communicatively coupled to app subnet 2226, included in control plane app layer 2224, which may be included in control plane VCN 2216, and to Internet gateway 2234 (e.g., Internet gateway 1934 in FIG. 19 ); app subnet 2226 can be communicatively coupled to DB subnet 2230, included in control plane data layer 2228, and to service gateway 2236 (e.g., service gateway in FIG. 19 ) and network address translation (NAT) gateway 2238 (e.g., NAT gateway 1938 in FIG. 19 ). Control plane VCN 2216 can include service gateway 2236 and NAT gateway 2238.

[0296] Data plane VCN 2218 may include data plane app layer 2246 (e.g., data plane app layer 1946 in FIG. 19 ), data plane DMZ layer 2248 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 1948 in FIG. 19 ), and data plane data layer 2250 (e.g., data plane data layer 1950 in FIG. 19 ). Data plane DMZ layer 2248 may include trusted app subnet 2260 (e.g., trusted app subnet 2160 in FIG. 21 ) and untrusted app subnet 2262 (e.g., untrusted app subnet 2162 in FIG. 21 ) of data plane app layer 2246, as well as LB subnet 2222, which may be communicatively coupled to Internet gateway 2234 included in data plane VCN 2218. Trusted app subnet 2260 may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 2236 included in data plane VCN 2218, NAT gateway 2238 included in data plane VCN 2218, and DB subnet 2230 included in data plane data layer 2250. Untrusted app subnet 2262 may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 2236 included in data plane VCN 2218 and DB subnet 2230 included in data plane data layer 2250. Data plane data layer 2250 may include DB subnet 2230, which may be communicatively coupled to service gateway 2236 included in data plane VCN 2218.

[0297] The untrusted app subnet 2262 may include primary VNICs 2264(1)-(N) that may be communicatively coupled to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 2266(1)-(N) that reside within the untrusted app subnet 2262. Each tenant VM 2266(1)-(N) may execute code within a respective container 2267(1)-(N) and may be communicatively coupled to an app subnet 2226 that may be included in a data plane app layer 2246 that may be included in a container egress VCN 2268. Each secondary VNIC 2272(1)-(N) may facilitate communication between the untrusted app subnet 2262 included in the data plane VCN 2218 and the app subnet included in the container egress VCN 2268. The container egress VCN may include a NAT gateway 2238 that may be communicatively coupled to the public internet 2254 (e.g., public internet 1954 in FIG. 19 ).

[0298] Internet gateway 2234 included in control plane VCN 2216 and included in data plane VCN 2218 may be communicatively coupled to metadata management service 2252 (e.g., metadata management system 1952 of FIG. 19 ), which may be communicatively coupled to public internet 2254. Public internet 2254 may be communicatively coupled to NAT gateway 2238 included in control plane VCN 2216 and included in data plane VCN 2218. Service gateway 2236 included in control plane VCN 2216 and included in data plane VCN 2218 may be communicatively coupled to cloud services 2256.

[0299] In some examples, the pattern illustrated by the architecture of block diagram 2200 in FIG. 22 may be considered an exception to the pattern illustrated by the architecture of block diagram 2100 in FIG. 21 and may be desirable for an IaaS provider's customers when the IaaS provider cannot communicate directly with the customer (e.g., in a disconnected region). Each container 2267(1)-(N) contained in a VM 2266(1)-(N) for each customer may be accessed by the customer in real time. The containers 2267(1)-(N) may be configured to make calls to each secondary VNIC 2272(1)-(N) contained in the app subnet 2226 of the data plane app tier 2246, which may be included in the container egress VCN 2268. The secondary VNICs 2272(1)-(N) may send the calls to the NAT gateway 2238, which may send the calls to the public Internet 2254. In this example, containers 2267(1)-(N) that may be accessed in real time by a customer may be isolated from control plane VCN 2216 and may be isolated from other entities included in data plane VCN 2218. Containers 2267(1)-(N) may be isolated from other customer resources.

[0300] In another example, a customer can invoke cloud service 2256 using container 2267(1)-(N). In this example, the customer can execute code in container 2267(1)-(N) that requests a service from cloud service 2256. Container 2267(1)-(N) can send the request to secondary VNICs 2272(1)-(N), which can send the request to a NAT gateway, which can send the request to public Internet 2254. Public Internet 2254 can send the request via Internet gateway 2234 to LB subnet 2222, which is included in control plane VCN 2216. In response to determining that the request is valid, LB subnet 2226 can send the request to app subnet 2226, which can send the request via service gateway 2236 to cloud service 2256.

[0301] It should be understood that the IaaS architectures 1900, 2000, 2100, 2200 shown in the figures may include components other than those shown. Furthermore, the embodiments shown in the figures are merely some examples of cloud infrastructure systems that may incorporate embodiments of the present disclosure. In some other embodiments, the IaaS system may include more or fewer components than those shown in the figures, may combine two or more components, or may have a different configuration or arrangement of components.

[0302] In one embodiment, the IaaS system described herein may include the offering of a suite of application, middleware, and database services that are delivered to customers 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), offered by the present assignee.

[0303] 23 illustrates an exemplary computer system 2300 on which various embodiments may be implemented. System 2300 may be used to implement any of the computer systems described above. As shown, computer system 2300 includes a processing unit 2304 that communicates with multiple peripheral subsystems via a bus subsystem 2302. These peripheral subsystems may include a processing acceleration unit 2306, an I / O subsystem 2308, a storage subsystem 2318, and a communication subsystem 2324. Storage subsystem 2318 includes a tangible computer-readable storage medium 2322 and a system memory 2310.

[0304] The bus subsystem 2302 provides a mechanism for allowing the various components and subsystems of the computer system 2300 to communicate with each other as intended. While the bus subsystem 2302 is shown schematically as a single bus, alternative embodiments of the bus subsystem may utilize multiple buses. The bus subsystem 2302 may 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 a variety of bus architectures. For example, such architectures may include an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, a Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, an Enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, a Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) local bus, and a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, which may be implemented as a mezzanine bus manufactured to the IEEE P1386.1 standard.

[0305] Processing unit 2304, which may be implemented as one or more integrated circuits (e.g., conventional microprocessors or microcontrollers), controls the operation of computer system 2300. One or more processors may be included in processing unit 2304. These processors may include single-core or multi-core processors. In an embodiment, processing unit 2304 may be implemented as one or more independent processing units 2332 and / or 2334, with a single-core or multi-core processor included in each processing unit. In other embodiments, processing unit 2304 may also be implemented as a quad-core processing unit formed by integrating two dual-core processors into a single chip.

[0306] In various embodiments, the processing unit 2304 may execute various programs according to program code and may maintain multiple simultaneously executing programs or processes. At any particular time, some or all of the program code being executed may reside in the processor 2304 and / or in the storage subsystem 2318. With appropriate programming, the processor 2304 may provide the various functions described above. The computer system 2300 may further include a processing acceleration unit 2306, which may include a digital signal processor (DSP), a special purpose processor, and / or the like.

[0307] The I / O subsystem 2308 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 touchscreen integrated into a display, a scroll wheel, a click wheel, a dial, buttons, switches, a keypad, a voice input device with a voice command recognition system, a microphone, and other types of input devices. User interface input devices may include, for example, a motion detection device and / or gesture recognition device, such as a Microsoft Kinect® motion sensor, which allows a user to control and interact with an input device, such as a Microsoft Xbox® 360 game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands. User interface input devices may include an eye gesture recognition device, such as a Google® Glass blink detector, which detects a user's eye activity (e.g., "blinking" when taking a photo and / or selecting a menu) and translates the eye gesture as input to an input device (e.g., Google® Glass). Additionally, the user interface input devices may include a voice recognition detection device that allows a user to interact with a voice recognition system (e.g., the Siri® navigator) via voice commands.

[0308] User interface input devices may include, but are not limited to, three-dimensional (3D) mice, joysticks or pointing sticks, gamepads, and graphic tablets, as well as audio / visual devices such as speakers, digital cameras, digital video cameras, portable media players, webcams, image scanners, fingerprint scanners, barcode reader 3D scanners, 3D printers, laser range finders, and eye-tracking devices. Additionally, user interface input devices may include medical imaging input devices such as, for example, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, position emission tomography, and medical ultrasound devices. User interface input devices may include audio input devices such as, for example, MIDI keyboards, digital musical instruments, and the like.

[0309] User interface output devices may include non-visual displays such as a display subsystem, indicator lights, or audio output devices. The display subsystem may be a flat-panel device, such as a flat-panel device using a cathode ray tube (CRT), a liquid crystal display (LCD), or a plasma display, a projection device, a touch screen, or the like. In general, use of the term "output device" is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for outputting information from computer system 2300 to a user or to another computer. For example, user interface output devices may include, but are not limited to, various display devices that visually convey textual, graphical, and audio / video information, such as monitors, printers, speakers, headphones, navigation systems, plotters, audio output devices, and modems.

[0310] Computer system 2300 may comprise a storage subsystem 2318 that provides a tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium for storing software and data structures that provide the functionality of embodiments described in this disclosure. The software may include programs, code modules, instructions, scripts, etc. that, when executed by one or more cores or processors of processing unit 2304, provide the aforementioned functionality. Storage subsystem 2318 may also provide a repository for storing data used in accordance with the present disclosure.

[0311] 23 , storage subsystem 2318 may include various components including system memory 2310, computer-readable storage medium 2322, and computer-readable storage medium reader 2320. System memory 2310 may store program instructions readable and executable by processing unit 2304. System memory 2310 may also store data used during execution of the instructions and / or data generated during execution of the program instructions. Various types of programs may be loaded into system memory 2310, including, but not limited to, client applications, web browsers, middle-tier applications, relational database management systems (RDBMS), virtual machines, containers, etc.

[0312] The system memory 2310 may also store an operating system 2316. Examples of operating systems 2316 may include various versions of the Microsoft Windows®, Apple Macintosh®, and / or Linux® operating systems, various commercially available UNIX® or UNIX-like operating systems (including, but not limited to, various GNU / Linux® operating systems, Google Chrome® OS, etc.), and / or mobile operating systems such as iOS, Windows® Phone, Android® OS, BlackBerry® OS, and Palm® OS operating systems. In particular implementations in which the computer system 2300 runs one or more virtual machines, the virtual machines along with their guest operating systems (GOS) may be loaded into the system memory 2310 and executed by one or more processors or cores of the processing unit 2304.

[0313] The system memory 2310 may be provided in different configurations depending on the type of computer system 2300. For example, the system memory 2310 may be volatile memory (such as random access memory (RAM)) and / or non-volatile memory (such as read-only memory (ROM) or flash memory). Various types of RAM configurations may be provided, including static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), etc. In some implementations, the system memory 2310 may include a basic input / output system (BIOS), which contains the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the computer system 2300, such as during start-up.

[0314] Computer-readable storage medium 2322 may represent storage media in addition to remote, local, fixed, and / or removable storage devices for temporarily and / or more permanently containing and storing computer-readable information for use by computer system 2300, including instructions executable by processing unit 2304 of computer system 2300.

[0315] Computer-readable storage medium 2322 may include any suitable medium known or used in the art, including storage media and communication media, such as, but not limited to, volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media, implemented in any method or technology for storing and / or transmitting information. Computer-readable storage medium 2322 may include tangible computer-readable storage media, such as RAM, ROM, electronically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disk (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassette, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage device, or other tangible computer-readable medium.

[0316] By way of example, computer-readable storage medium 2322 may include a hard disk 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 an optical disk drive that reads from or writes to removable, nonvolatile optical disks such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, and Blu-ray disks or other optical media. Computer-readable storage medium 2322 may include, but is not limited to, Zip drives, flash memory cards, universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, secure digital (SD) cards, DVD disks, digital video tapes, etc. The computer-readable storage media 2322 may include solid-state drives (SSDs) based on non-volatile memory such as flash memory-based SSDs, enterprise flash drives, semiconductor ROM, volatile memory-based SSDs such as semiconductor RAM, dynamic RAM, static RAM, DRAM-based SSDs, magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM) SSDs, and hybrid SSDs that use a combination of DRAM and flash memory-based SSDs. Disk drives and associated computer-readable media may provide non-volatile storage of computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, and other data for the computer system 2300.

[0317] Machine-readable instructions executable by one or more processors or cores of processing unit 2304 may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. Non-transitory computer-readable storage media may include physically tangible memory or storage devices, including volatile and / or non-volatile memory storage devices. 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, hard drives, floppy drives, removable memory drives (e.g., USB drives), or other types of storage devices.

[0318] The communications subsystem 2324 provides an interface to other computer systems and networks. The communications subsystem 2324 serves as an interface for receiving data from and transmitting data to other systems in the computer system 2300. For example, the communications subsystem 2324 may enable the computer system 2300 to connect to one or more devices via the Internet. In some embodiments, the communications subsystem 2324 may include radio frequency (RF) transceiver components for accessing wireless voice and / or data networks (e.g., using cellular technology, advanced data network technologies such as 3G, 4G, or EDGE (enhanced data rates for global evolution), WiFi (IEEE 802.11 family of standards), or other mobile communications technologies, or any combination thereof), global positioning system (GPS) receiver components, and / or other components. In some embodiments, the communications subsystem 2324 may provide a wired network connection (e.g., Ethernet) in addition to or instead of a wireless interface.

[0319] In some embodiments, the communications subsystem 2324 may also receive incoming communications in the form of structured and / or unstructured data feeds 2326, event streams 2328, event updates 2330, etc., on behalf of one or more users who may use the computer system 2300.

[0320] By way of example, the communications subsystem 2324 may be configured to receive data feeds 2326 in real time from users of social networks and / or other communications services such as Twitter® feeds, Facebook® updates, web feeds such as Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, and / or real-time updates from one or more third-party sources.

[0321] Additionally, the communications subsystem 2324 may be configured to receive data in the form of a continuous data stream, which may include an event stream 2328 of real-time events and / or event updates 2330 that may have no explicit end, be continuous in nature, or be boundless. Examples of applications that generate continuous data may include, for example, sensor data applications, financial tickers, network performance measurement tools (e.g., network monitoring and traffic management applications), clickstream analysis tools, automobile traffic monitoring, etc.

[0322] The communications subsystem 2324 may also be configured to output structured and / or unstructured data feeds 2326, event streams 2328, event updates 2330, etc. to one or more databases that can communicate with one or more streaming data source computers coupled to the computer system 2300.

[0323] The computer system 2300 may be one of a variety of types, including a handheld portable device (e.g., an iPhone® mobile phone, an iPad® computing tablet, a PDA), a wearable device (e.g., a Google® Glass head-mounted display), a PC, a workstation, a mainframe, a ticket machine, a server rack, or any other data processing system.

[0324] Due to the ever-changing nature of computers and networks, the description of computer system 2300 shown in the figure is intended to be a specific example only. Many other configurations are possible, including more or fewer components than the system shown in the figure. For example, customized hardware may be used, and / or particular elements may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software (including applets), or a combination thereof. Furthermore, connection to other computing devices, such as network input / output devices, may be employed. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided herein, those skilled in the art will appreciate other ways and / or manners for implementing the various embodiments.

[0325] While specific embodiments have been described, various modifications, variations, alternative constructions, and equivalents are encompassed within the scope of the present disclosure. The embodiments are not limited to operation in one particular data processing environment, but can freely operate in multiple data processing environments. Furthermore, while the embodiments have been described using a particular sequence of transactions and steps, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the scope of the present disclosure is not limited to the sequence of transactions and steps described. Various features and aspects of the foregoing embodiments may be used individually or together.

[0326] Furthermore, while embodiments have been described using particular combinations of hardware and software, it should be recognized that other combinations of hardware and software are within the scope of the present disclosure. Embodiments may be implemented exclusively in hardware, exclusively in software, or using a combination thereof. Various processes described herein may be performed on the same processor or on different processors in any combination. Thus, when a component or service is described as being configured to perform an operation, such configuration may be realized, for example, by designing electronic circuitry to perform the operation, by programming a programmable electronic circuit (such as a microprocessor) to perform the operation, or by any combination thereof. Processes may communicate using various techniques, including, but not limited to, conventional techniques for inter-process communication; different pairs of processes may use different techniques, or the same pair of processes may use different techniques at different times.

[0327] Accordingly, the specification and drawings should be regarded as illustrative rather than in a limiting sense. However, it will be apparent that additions, subtractions, deletions, and other modifications and changes may be made to the specification and drawings without departing from the broader spirit and scope as set forth in the claims. Accordingly, while particular disclosed embodiments have been described, they are not intended to be limiting. Various modifications and equivalents are within the scope of the appended claims.

[0328] The use of the terms "a," "an," and "the" and similar referents in the context of describing the disclosed embodiments (particularly in the context of the appended claims) should 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" should be construed as open-ended (i.e., meaning "including, but not limited to"), unless otherwise noted. The term "connected" should be construed as partially or fully contained within, connected to, or joined together, even if there is something intervening. The recitation of ranges of values ​​herein is merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of individually referring to each separate value included in the range, unless otherwise indicated herein, and each separate value is incorporated herein as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. Any and all examples provided herein, or the use of exemplary language (e.g., "etc.") are intended merely to better clarify the embodiments and do not impose limitations on the scope of the disclosure unless specifically claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the disclosure.

[0329] Disjunctive language, such as the phrase "at least one of X, Y, or Z," is generally intended to be understood within the context as being used to state that an item, condition, etc. can be either 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 an embodiment requires that at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z, respectively, be present.

[0330] Preferred embodiments of the present disclosure are described herein, including the best mode known for carrying out the disclosure. Variations of such preferred embodiments may become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the foregoing description. Those skilled in the art will be able to adopt such variations as appropriate, and the present disclosure may be practiced other than as specifically described herein. Accordingly, this disclosure includes all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Moreover, any combination of the above-described elements in all possible variations of the embodiments is encompassed by the present disclosure, unless otherwise indicated herein.

[0331] All references cited in this specification, including publications, patent applications, and patents, are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference was individually indicated to be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein.

[0332] While the foregoing specification has described aspects of the present disclosure with reference to specific embodiments thereof, those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosure is not limited thereto. Various features and aspects of the foregoing disclosure may be used individually or together. Moreover, the embodiments may be utilized in any number of environments and applications beyond those described herein without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the specification. Accordingly, the specification and drawings should be considered illustrative rather than restrictive.

Claims

1. 1. A method comprising: A computing system registers an external resource residing in an on-premise network as an external endpoint within a virtual cloud network (VCN); receiving a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate, the method further comprising: creating an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creating the external resource representation comprising creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC), the method further comprising: establishing a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container; and creating a VCN wallet for each of the intermediate containers and for the VCN based at least in part on the user wallet, wherein access of the external resource via the external resource representation is enabled by information contained in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the VCN wallets include at least a VCN server wallet and a VCN client wallet.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the VCN server wallet is accessible by the at least one intermediate container and the VCN client wallet is accessible by the VNIC.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the at least one intermediate container resides in a data plane VCN.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the at least one intermediate container comprises a first container configured for communicative coupling with the on-premises network via a first tunnel shard.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the first container is configured for communicative coupling with the on-premises network via the first tunnel shard and a public communication network.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the at least one intermediate container includes a second container configured for communicative coupling with the VCN.

8. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the second container comprises a connection manager ("CMAN") container configured to act as a proxy server for redirecting packets received by the CMAN container from the VCN to the on-premises network.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the first container is communicatively coupled to the second container.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising creating a private endpoint in the VCN.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the private endpoint is communicatively coupled to the external resource via the external resource representation.

12. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the wallet in the on-premises network.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising discovering the external resource via an agent running on the external resource.

14. The method of claim 1 , further comprising sending a request from the external resource representation to the external resource through the intermediate container.

15. receiving a result corresponding to the request in the at least one intermediate container; The method of claim 14 , further comprising the at least one intermediate container sending the results to the external resource representation.

16. 1. A system comprising: a memory containing stored instructions executable by a processor; a processor configured to execute the stored instructions, the stored instructions comprising: Registering an external resource residing in an on-premises network as an external endpoint within a virtual cloud network (VCN); receiving a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate; further performing creating an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creating the external resource representation including creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC), the stored instructions further comprising: establishing a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container; and creating a VCN wallet for each of the intermediate containers and for the VCN based at least in part on the user wallet, wherein access of the external resource via the external resource representation is enabled by information contained in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

17. 17. The system of claim 16, wherein the VCN wallet includes at least a VCN server wallet and a VCN client wallet, the VCN server wallet being accessible by the at least one intermediate container, and the VCN client wallet being accessible by the VNIC.

18. 20. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one intermediate container resides in a data plane VCN, the at least one intermediate container including a first container configured for communicative coupling with the on-premises network via a first tunnel shard.

19. 20. The system of claim 18, wherein the first container is configured for communicative coupling with the on-premises network via the first tunnel shard and a public communication network.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a plurality of instructions executable by one or more processors, the plurality of instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, causing the one or more processors to: Registering an external resource residing in an on-premises network as an external endpoint within a virtual cloud network (VCN); receiving a user wallet in the on-premises network, the user wallet including at least one trusted certificate; and creating an external resource representation of the external endpoint in the VCN, the creating of the external resource representation including creating a virtual network interface card (VNIC), the instructions further causing the one or more processors to: establishing a connection between a logical interface provisioned for the external resource and the VNIC via at least one intermediate container; A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that causes each of the intermediate containers and the VCN to create a VCN wallet based at least in part on the user wallet, and access of the external resource via the external resource representation is enabled by information contained in each of the user wallet and the VCN wallet.

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