Techniques for validating network policies in container frameworks

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for a network policy validation system that can obtain a set of connection paths of a containerized environment, each of which indicates a connection between a pair of containers. A first container and a second container of the pair of containers are identified based at least in part on the connection paths. A network policy corresponding to the connection paths and indicating an expected outcome of the particular connection is determined. A connection between the two containers can be initiated. A result can be presented to a user device based at least in part on a determination that the outcome differs from the expected outcome indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection paths.

Description

[Technical Field]

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This PCT application claims priority to U.S. Patent Application No. 17 / 187,631, filed February 26, 2021, and entitled "Techniques for Validating Network Policies in a Container Framework," the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference into this disclosure for all purposes. [Background technology]

[0002] background Container orchestration tools provide a robust framework for managing and deploying containerized applications across clusters of computing nodes within a computing environment. Examples of these tools include Kubemetes, Open Shift, and Docker Swarm. The use of these tools has increased dramatically in recent years as cloud-based services have become more prevalent and service / application designs have shifted from large monolithic systems to highly distributed microservices-based systems. In a microservices-based model, applications are built using many small components that communicate over a network. Each component can be independently deployed, upgraded, and scaled to a production environment. Software-defined networks are an essential element of the microservices-based model, allowing seamless changes to individual components without disruption. The underlying network is automatically reconfigured whenever the placement of components within the system changes. Components in such networks typically have Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are dynamically assigned and are not stable for a particular type of component. Summary of the Invention [Problem to be solved by the invention]

[0003] Managing network policies (e.g., network security policies) for these systems is challenging because they often use a lot of declarative configuration of network policies that define allowed traffic flows between components. Because these policies can be defined in various ways by many different entities, users often unknowingly specify policies that conflict with or obscure each other. This is particularly problematic in large systems that include multiple groups responsible for parts of the workload. Furthermore, component label assignments may change independently of network policies, further complicating analysis. Given the configuration complexity of such systems, it is unlikely that a single entity will manage these policies. Existing techniques for manually verifying and / or analyzing such policies are cumbersome, require specialized personnel, and cannot scale to the scale and complexity of these systems. Therefore, manual processing of these network policies is largely unfeasible.

[0004] overview

[0003] Techniques (e.g., methods, systems, and non-transitory computer-readable media storing code or instructions executable by one or more processors) for verifying network security rules / policies in a container framework are provided. This specification describes various embodiments, including methods, systems, and non-transitory computer-readable media storing programs, code, or instructions executable by one or more processors. [Means for solving the problem]

[0005] An embodiment relates to a method for validating one or more network security rules in accordance with at least one embodiment. The method may include a computing device obtaining a set of connection paths for a containerized environment. In some embodiments, the set of connection paths each indicate a connection between a pair of containers in the containerized environment. The method may further include the computing device identifying a first container and a second container of the pair of containers based at least in part on one of the connection paths. The method may further include the computing device determining a network security policy corresponding to the connection path. In some embodiments, the network security policy indicates an expected result of a particular connection between the first container and the second container. The method may further include the computing device initiating a connection from the first container to the second container. The method may further include the computing device determining a result of the connection. The method may further include presenting the result to a user device based at least in part on a determination that the result differs from the expected result indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path.

[0006] In some embodiments, the result indicates that the connection was established or that the connection establishment failed. The method may further include identifying a first subset of connection paths from the set of connection paths as positive paths based at least in part on one or more network policies corresponding to each connection path in the first subset of connection paths. In some embodiments, identifying a particular connection path as a positive path includes determining, based at least in part on the corresponding network policy, that a connection between two containers in the connection path is permitted. The method may further include generating a second subset of connection paths from the set of connection paths. The second subset of connection paths correspond to negative paths. The second subset of connection paths may be generated at least in part based on the identification of the first subset of connection paths.

[0007] In some embodiments, obtaining the set of connection paths further includes, for at least one connection path of the set of connection paths, monitoring, at runtime, network traffic between two containers in the containerized environment, and generating a corresponding connection path based at least in part on the monitoring.

[0008] In some embodiments, obtaining the set of connection paths further includes obtaining a predetermined connection path that indicates, for at least one connection path in the set of connection paths, whether a particular connection between a particular pair of containers is allowed or not allowed.

[0009] The method may further include identifying the first container and the second container based at least in part on a determination that the first container is associated with the first label and the second container is associated with the second label.

[0010] In some embodiments, the first container is one of a plurality of containers associated with the first label, and the method further includes: i) initiating an additional connection between at least one other container of the plurality of containers and a second container; ii) the computing device determining an additional result of the additional connection; and iii) presenting the additional result based at least in part on a determination that the additional result differs from an expected result indicated by a network policy corresponding to the connection path.

[0011] Another embodiment relates to a computing device comprising one or more processors and one or more memories storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing device to perform and / or configure the methods described above.

[0012] Another embodiment relates to a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the computing device to perform the above-described method.

[0013] This specification describes various embodiments, including methods, systems, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media that store programs, code, or instructions executable by one or more processors. These exemplary embodiments are described not to limit or define the disclosure, but to provide examples to aid in its understanding. The detailed description discusses further embodiments and provides further explanations.

[0014] Various embodiments of the present disclosure are described with reference to the drawings. [Brief explanation of the drawings]

[0015] [Figure 1] FIG. 1 illustrates an example computing environment 100 for utilizing network security policies for components of applications deployed in the computing environment, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 2] FIG. 2 illustrates an example of an application deployed in a containerized environment of the computing environment shown in FIG. 1, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 3] 3 illustrates an exemplary configuration of components of the application shown in FIG. 2 on a group of nodes within a container-based framework, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 4] FIG. 1 illustrates various examples of network policies defined by a container-based framework for a containerized application deployed on a collection of nodes within the container-based framework, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 5]FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary lifecycle of a network traffic policy, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 6] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating example operations performed by a validation system to statically validate one or more network security rules, in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 7] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating example operations performed by a validation system to dynamically validate one or more network security rules in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 8] FIG. 1 illustrates an example method for validating one or more network security rules in accordance with at least one embodiment. [Figure 9] 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 10] 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 11] 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 12] 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 13] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computer system in accordance with at least one embodiment. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0016] Detailed Description In the following description, for purposes of explanation, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of some embodiments. It will be apparent, however, that various embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. The drawings and description are not intended to be limiting. The term "exemplary" is used in this disclosure to mean "serving as an example, instance, or illustration." Any embodiment or design described in this disclosure as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments or designs.

[0017] In some approaches, software-defined networks, often used by default in container orchestration tools, enable communication between all components in a system. For example, in Kubernetes, common network interface plugins are required to assign Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to all components (or pods) in an application, and these plugins allow traffic between all pods, regardless of the underlying network used. One approach involves using software-based tunneling protocols such as virtual extensible local area networks (VXLANs) to provide flat networks that seamlessly transport traffic within and between hosts (physical or virtual machines) that provide computing instances to a cluster. The primary purpose of such networks is to provide connectivity for continuously changing workloads, but they do not provide security or isolation of network traffic between components.

[0018] To address the challenges faced by container orchestration tools that use traditional network controls to specify network security policies (referred to as "policies" for brevity) for communication between components of a containerized application, container orchestration frameworks can provide mechanisms for restricting traffic within a cluster by specifying application-wide network policy configurations and providing them to the cluster's control plane. The policies indirectly specify components through metadata associated with those components. For example, in Kubernetes, policy specification may not use pod identifiers but may use pod labels and namespaces, which allow multiple pods to share labels and namespaces. As used herein, a "pod" may refer to a set of one or more components of an application that can be processed by an orchestration tool at one time. In some embodiments, a pod may be the smallest unit to which a container orchestrator system applies policies.

[0019] In some approaches, in container-based frameworks such as Kubernetes and OpenShift, network security policies are distributed as a collection of independent objects. These objects have their own lifecycles and can be changed independently, but they affect each other and the entire system (i.e., containerized application). For example, a policy for one object can inadvertently overshadow another policy defined for another object. Furthermore, elements used to specify policies, such as component labels, can change independently of the policies themselves. Routine reconfiguration of components can inadvertently affect network security policies. Furthermore, the process for container-based frameworks to define network policies (e.g., network traffic policies) for each component becomes more difficult when management of components and network security policies is divided among different teams within an organization.

[0020] Managing network policy is particularly challenging in a true continuous delivery model. In this case, individual components are delivered independently, typically introducing one change to the system at a time. New components may be delivered very frequently, for example, multiple times per day, each time potentially requiring a different network policy configuration. Furthermore, old and new versions of the same component often run in parallel to allow for nondisruptive migration during upgrades or to provide a gradual change delivery model. In this model, system processing (defined by subset of processes, user groups, or other means) is gradually shifted to the new component. By gradually introducing changes, it is possible to monitor the actual environment changes and operation under increased load without risking a complete system interruption. Furthermore, component deployments may vary for different environments, different feature sets, regulatory compliance requirements, or customer needs.

[0021] Some approaches to validating network policies involve validating workflows with policies defined as intended and activated in a test environment. However, users may not always be able to perform full integration testing before applying rules, may not have the environment available, and / or may find it too expensive. Sometimes, changes must be deployed urgently, for example, to eliminate vulnerabilities. Furthermore, integration testing is suitable for testing that required connections are allowed (because a lack of connectivity manifests as a regression), but is not particularly suitable for negative testing. Users may have a specific set of connection cases that they want to ensure are blocked. This can potentially be verified by developing synthetic traffic that is expected to be denied. However, this approach unnecessarily utilizes resources and is time-consuming to implement.

[0022] Yet other practical problems arise from the complexity of managing network policies. As a system grows, it may be beneficial to reorganize policies, change their structure, and aggregate or split up some rules. Due to the issues mentioned above, this is a difficult task that is prone to errors. Furthermore, when a particular connection in a cluster is blocked (expected to be allowed) or allowed (expected to be blocked), it may not be trivial to identify which rule or set of rules leads to that problem.

[0023] In such an environment, managing / validating network policies is a challenging task. Policy and connection path requirements can change daily, making manual validation of such network policies impractical due to their speed, velocity, and degree of automation. This disclosure describes improved techniques for validating network policies for containerized applications.

[0024] The described techniques allow users to comprehensively validate network security policies against a predefined baseline at multiple points in the policy deployment cycle. The disclosed system provides both early feedback on policy effectiveness and end-to-end validation of intended behavior. This system enables the creation of an efficient continuous delivery system that can validate policies early in their development, rather than testing or observing regressions in production or test environments. These techniques also allow users to ensure the effectiveness of policies manually configured by operators by validating policies at cluster entry points. They also enable users to validate policy effectiveness at deployment and runtime by testing cluster controls against the baseline.

[0025] Referring now to the drawings, FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a computing environment 100 (e.g., a containerized environment) for utilizing network policies for components of an application (e.g., a containerized application) deployed in the computing environment, according to at least one embodiment. The computing environment 100 may include a test environment 112 and a production environment 122. The test environment 112 and the production environment 122 may comprise one or more computing systems that execute computer-readable instructions (e.g., code, programs) to implement the test environment 112 and the production environment 122. As shown in FIG. 1, the test environment 112 includes a test system 108, and the production environment 122 includes a deployment orchestrator system 116. Some of the data or information used or generated by the test environment 112 and the production environment 100 as part of the processing may be stored in persistent memory, such as a network security policy data store 120. 1 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 on a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., a memory device).

[0026] The computing environment 100 illustrated in Figure 1 is merely exemplary and is not intended to unduly limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Those skilled in the art will recognize many possible variations, alternatives, and modifications. For example, in some implementations, computing environment 100 may be implemented with more or fewer systems than those illustrated in Figure 1, may combine two or more systems, or may have a different configuration or arrangement of systems and subsystems.

[0027] Computing environment 100 may be implemented in a variety of different configurations. In some embodiments, computing environment 100, including test system 108 and deployment orchestrator system 116, may be implemented in an enterprise that provides services to enterprise users. In other embodiments, the systems in computing environment 100 may be implemented on one or more servers of a cloud provider, and the system's network security policy creation services may be provided to subscribers of cloud services upon subscription.

[0028] In some embodiments, a user may interact with the test system 108 using a user device 102, possibly communicatively connected to the test system 108 via one or more communication networks. The user device 102 may be of various types, including, but not limited to, a mobile phone, a tablet, a desktop computer, etc. The user may represent a corporate user subscribing to a service provided by a system of the computing environment 100 to automatically generate and / or validate network policies for components of applications deployed in the computing environment. The user may interact with the test system 108 using a browser executed by the user device 102. For example, the user may interact with the test system 108 using a user interface (UI) (e.g., a graphical user interface (GUI)) of the browser executed by the user device 102.

[0029] Test system 108 may be configured to obtain a baseline set of network security policies (e.g., from network security policy data store 120, a memory location configured to store such information) at any appropriate time. In some embodiments, the baseline may include any suitable combination of positive paths and / or negative paths. "Positive paths" include paths that are expected to have connections in a cluster. These paths may be used to establish that expected connections are in place and avoid performance degradation due to policy misconfiguration. "Negative paths" are paths that are expected to result in dropped connections. Testing negative paths allows the system to test that policy or cluster misconfiguration does not inadvertently open connections that were intended to be denied.

[0030] In some embodiments, a baseline set of network security policies for identifying allowed and / or restricted connections and / or traffic flows can be defined by a user or by the system. As a non-limiting example, test system 108 can be configured to receive one or more network security policies as user input. A user may know or want to ensure that some paths are allowed and some other paths are not. For example, a direct connection from a front-end source to a back-end database is a path that a developer typically does not want to allow. This type of path is an example of a negative path that the system can verify as blocked. Conversely, a back-end source connection to a database should be allowed, and the system can verify this as well.

[0031] In some embodiments, the test system 108 may be configured to automatically generate network security policies. An example of such a technique is described in U.S. Patent Application No. 17 / 124,162, entitled "Technique for Generating Network Security Policies for Application Components Deployed in a Computing Environment," the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference into this disclosure for all purposes.

[0032] As yet another example, the test system 108 may be configured to generate a baseline set of network security policies based at least in part on monitoring traffic in the system. The system may generate a list of routes by recording traffic routes within a cluster and continue to monitor the list as the system observes new traffic. The system may identify routes from observed network traffic and identify these observed routes as positive routes. Once a set of positive routes is established, the system may also generate negative routes by identifying routes not included in the set of positive routes.

[0033] At 104, a user may provide an application to be deployed to a computing environment. This application may represent a microservices-based containerized application that may be deployed to a production environment 122. In some examples, application 104 may include multiple components. Multiple instances of each component may run as containers on each node of a collection of nodes within a containerized environment of production environment 122. In some examples, the containerized environment may be provided by a container orchestration platform such as Kubernetes, OpenShift, or Docker Swarm. An example of an application deployed to production environment 122 is shown in FIG. 2.

[0034] In some examples, an application (including one or more components) may be provided to test system 108 before being deployed to a containerized environment. At 105, a user, via a UI, may provide one or more network policies that specify one or more rules for allowing and / or denying traffic between components of the application and / or other components of production environment 122. In some embodiments, the application's network policies may be provided with the application at 104. In at least one embodiment, at least one of the network policies may be generated by test system 108.

[0035] In some embodiments, the test system 108 may be configured to perform operations related to performing static verification of network security rules. Static verification may be performed by testing the connectivity of network paths associated with configured policies and verifying that the actual results of actions match the baseline expected results. The baseline network security rules may be modeled as network inbound and outbound rules and connection paths. As an example, a connection path may be stored in a path data structure that indicates a label corresponding to one end of the connection, a label corresponding to the other end of the connection, and (optionally) a port. A connection path may be defined as path = (label)set1 × (label)set2 × P, where (label)set1 is a label set that identifies one set of components (e.g., components through which traffic traverses), (label)set2 is a label set that identifies another set of components (e.g., components through which traffic traverses), P indicates a port number, and × indicates a Cartesian product operation. Inbound rules may be stored in a different data structure (e.g., a communication policy data structure) with a label that selects one or more components, another label that specifies the direction of the traffic (e.g., "from" indicating incoming traffic), and (optionally) the port where the traffic is expected. Similarly, outbound rules may be stored in a communication policy data structure with a label that selects one or more components, another label that specifies the direction of the traffic (e.g., "to" indicating outgoing traffic), and (optionally) the port where the traffic is expected. In some embodiments, the system may group inbound rules (also referred to as inbound policies, which are a type of network security rule) and outbound rules (also referred to as outbound policies, which are a type of network security rule) to generate a network security policy.

[0036] In some embodiments, the test system 108 can utilize many predefined actions (e.g., configuration actions, relationships). As an example, some actions can be performed based at least in part on associating various objects through their labels (also referred to as determining label coverage). A user can submit a query for a given connection path. The test system 108 can be configured to utilize the connection path data structure and the communication policy data structure to identify the “coverage” of a rule, i.e., generate results by mapping the connection path (specified in the path data structure) to an inbound or outbound rule. The “result” can specify the relationship between the rule and the path. As an example, in some embodiments, the result can be one of three values: “none,” “allow,” and “deny” (more values ​​may be utilized if desired). Note that these values ​​may be represented in any suitable manner (e.g., the integer 0 can be used to represent “none,” the integer 1 can be used to represent “allow,” and the integer 2 can be used to represent “deny”). The “none” result indicates that the rule does not select the component specified by the path. A "permit" result indicates that the rule selects the component specified by the path and permits traffic to / from the other end of the path. A "deny" result indicates that the rule selects the component specified by the path but does not permit traffic to / from the other end of the path. Thus, a user can submit a query to statically test whether the results of a network security policy yield results that match expected behavior. If the results do not match expected behavior, the user can be notified. Note that the techniques for statically validating network policies described above can be performed at any appropriate time (e.g., before or after deployment).

[0037] In some embodiments, the test system 108 generates a deployment package 114 that includes the components of the application 104 to be deployed and their associated network policies. A deployment orchestrator system 116 in the production environment 122 receives the deployment package 114 and uses the deployment package to deploy the components of the application and their associated network policies to different nodes in the collection of nodes in the containerized environment. In some examples, the deployment orchestrator system 116 stores information identifying the network policies associated with the different components in a network security policy data store 120.

[0038] In some situations, to facilitate non-disruptive migration during upgrades or to provide an incremental change delivery model during the application development process, both previous and updated (or new) versions of components need to coexist and operate side-by-side in a containerized environment for some time. In some embodiments, test system 108 and deployment orchestrator system 116 include capabilities for allowing different versions of components of a containerized application to coexist simultaneously on different computing nodes in a collection of nodes in the containerized environment. Additionally, the system includes capabilities for generating different network policies for different versions of components and applying the generated different network policies to the different versions of components, each component potentially having different network requirements.

[0039] In some embodiments, test system 108 can be configured to perform dynamic validation of network security rules. As an example, test system 108 (or another component of test environment 112 and / or production environment 122) can include initializing connections between containers in a cluster to validate that network security policies are operational (e.g., that connections that should be allowed succeed and connections that should not be allowed fail).

[0040] FIG. 2 illustrates an example of an application (e.g., a containerized application) deployed in the containerized environment of computing environment 100 shown in FIG. 1 , according to some embodiments. Containerized applications refer to an operating system-level method used to deploy and run distributed applications without launching an entire virtual machine (VM) for each application. Multiple isolated applications or services can run on a single host and access the same OS kernel. In the illustrated example, the application includes an order processing application 200 deployed in a container-based framework within production environment 122 of computing environment 100. Multiple instances of each component run as containers on each node of a cluster of nodes within the container-based framework. By way of example, the container-based framework may be implemented using a container orchestration tool such as Kubernetes, OpenShift, or Docker Swarm.

[0041] In some examples, the order processing application 200 may include a set of components. These components may include, but are not limited to: 1) a static web application front-end component 202 that provides the user experience in a web browser; 2) an application programming interface (API) gateway component 204 to the application, which is responsible for processing API calls from web application components (e.g., web application front-end component 202) and forwarding them to the respective services that implement the business logic; 3) a set of service components that provide different functionalities of the application, such as ordering, billing, and user management (as an example, the set of service components may include, but are not limited to, an order service component 206, a user service component 208, and a billing service component 210); 4) Data middleware components for storing and processing data, including a database component 212 and a message queue component 214.

[0042] In some examples, for purposes of explanation, it is assumed that components 202-214 can communicate directly with each other. In particular implementations, each component is designated by its name and corresponding zone label. As an example, web application front-end component 202 may be designated by the app label "Web App" and the corresponding zone label "Web." Furthermore, in the illustrated example, web application front-end component 202 does not communicate with other components that make up order processing application 200, but API gateway component 204 does communicate with services 206, 208, and 210. Furthermore, in this example, all service components 206, 208, and 210 communicate with each other (though not necessarily with each other), the services communicate with database component 212, and order service component 206 and billing service component 210 access message queue component 214.

[0043] The different components of order processing application 200 shown in FIG. 2 are merely illustrative and are not intended to limit the scope of the claimed embodiments. Those skilled in the art will recognize many possible variations, alternatives, and modifications. For example, in some implementations, order processing application 200 may include more or fewer components than those shown in FIG. 1, may combine two or more components, or may have a different configuration or arrangement of components. Note that although the components shown in FIG. 2 are shown with two labels (a label indicating the app name and a label indicating the zone), any suitable number of labels may be assigned to any suitable combination of one or more components.

[0044] FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary configuration of components of an application (shown in FIG. 2) on a group of nodes 300 within a container-based framework, in accordance with at least one embodiment. Each node in the group of nodes is assigned an Internet Protocol (IP) address. In the illustrated example, the group of nodes 300 consists of four nodes (Node 1, Node 2, Node 3, and Node 4), each with an IP address within a range of a network, such as a cloud virtual cloud network (VCN) or physical network. Containers residing on each node in the group of nodes use different IP address ranges. Traffic between components on different nodes is typically tunneled, and inter-container packages are encapsulated as inter-node packages. The illustrated example illustrates a specific placement of components at a point in time snapshot of the container-based framework. The framework can distribute load by rearranging components or by moving components between nodes. Additionally, specific containers can fail, new instances can be created, and nodes can be added or removed. In such cases, it is impractical or infeasible for a container-based framework to implement any network filtering controls (e.g., network policies) based on identifying components using their IP addresses, because as containers change, their IP addresses are likely to change as well.

[0045] As previously mentioned, to address these challenges, container orchestration frameworks may include the ability to control communication between components of an application (i.e., network security) through the use of one or more pre-defined (coarse-grained) network policies. For example, in container-based frameworks such as Kubemetes or OpenShift, network security policies may be defined based on metadata of specific components, such as labels (e.g., zones), as shown in Figure 4. Additional examples of network security policies defined by container-based frameworks to control network traffic between multiple components of a containerized application are set forth in Figure 4.

[0046] FIG. 4 illustrates various examples of network security policies defined by a container-based framework for a containerized application deployed on a group of nodes within the container-based framework, according to some embodiments. For purposes of discussion, the network security policies illustrated in tables 402, 404, and 406 are described with reference to the order processing application 200 illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 3. In one implementation, as illustrated in table 402, a set of policies may be defined using “zone labels” as source and destination labels of components of the containerized application (e.g., 200). In particular implementations, the set of policies may be implemented using JavaScript® Object Description (JSON) objects or as YAML objects. The zone-based network security policies illustrated in table 402 may allow some traffic that is not part of normal system operation, such as connections from the user services component 208 to the database component 212. When routine incremental changes occur to the containerized application, for example, when more services or database middleware are added to the application, these zone-based policies do not need to be updated. Also, zone-based policies remain operational even as more services begin to communicate with each other, such as, for example, order service component 206 and invoice service component 210. Furthermore, zone-based policies defined by container-based frameworks typically allow traffic between components unless a particular path is specifically covered by the policy. Thus, to deny internal traffic to a particular component (such as the "web" zone or the "front" zone), a zone-based policy can include a policy directive with an empty start, indicated by "-".

[0047] In another approach, as shown in table 404, a set of policies may be implemented using "app labels" (e.g., "app" corresponding to each component, such as "API Gateway" 204 in FIG. 2) as source and destination labels. In this case, the "app labels" uniquely identify components of a container-based application. In this implementation, the policies that most accurately reflect the network traffic within the system take the form shown in table 404. While such policies may not allow any traffic that is not expected in the system, changes to the application require corresponding policy changes to be applied to the application's components.

[0048] In yet another implementation, a container-based framework can implement a more balanced policy that utilizes both “zone labels” and “app labels” used to uniquely identify components of an application. For example, network analysis of an application may reveal that a critical component is the message queue component 214. While it is acceptable to have general zone-based rules between the API gateway component 204 and services 206, 208, and 210, communication with the service itself, the database component 212, and the message queue component 214 needs to be strictly restricted to those services requiring access. In such a case, a set of policies may take the form shown in Table 406. Note that the terms “zone labels” and “app labels” used in this disclosure are illustrative of a type of classification of components that may be utilized by an application to define the flow of network traffic within the application. For example, a “zone label” may identify a first group of components to which a first version of the component can send traffic, and an “app label” may identify a second group of components to which the first version of the component can send traffic. A "zone label" can identify a larger group (e.g., set) of components to which the first version component can send traffic for the second group, and an "app label" can identify a particular set (e.g., subset) of components within the larger group to which the first version component can send traffic. In some embodiments, different label names, different label groups, or different tiers of labels (e.g., zone cells, a four-label model for referring to components, etc.) can be used to identify and group the components of an application.

[0049] 5 is a block diagram illustrating an example lifecycle 500 of a network traffic policy, in accordance with at least one embodiment. Network traffic policies can originate from many different sources.

[0050] As an example, a network security policy may originate as part of a cloud infrastructure (CI) / cloud deployment (CD) pipeline. A development team working on a functional change may identify the need to open or restrict certain connections. The network policy may be developed along with the corresponding code. At 502, the network policy may be packaged with the corresponding code as part of an artifact build (e.g., performance software build). At 504, the network policy may be deployed along with the corresponding code as part of a deployment process performed at 506. It may be assumed that new code, including the network security policy, will be tested using functional and integration tests before deployment. However, negative tests, i.e., tests that verify whether traffic that should not be allowed (and does not normally occur) is actually blocked, are likely not performed.

[0051] In some embodiments, an operator can interact directly with the container orchestrator to create the network security policy at 508. In some embodiments, this is the only way to configure the network security policy, for example, when not following a CI / CD practice. In some embodiments, the operator can add specific network security policies, for example, in response to a threat. In these scenarios, the operator may not perform comprehensive testing of the policy before deploying it to production systems. For example, the operator may try out the policy on a staging environment and observe whether any functional regressions occur.

[0052] Another potential source of network security policies may include automated systems that react to observed threats or changing network control needs. At 510, such automated systems can create or adjust network security policies at runtime.

[0053] The cluster orchestrator 512, the cluster's control plane, can provide an interface for configuring network security policies. In some embodiments, the cluster orchestrator 512 can determine whether a network security policy is syntactically correct. However, typically, semantics—that is, whether the policy makes sense or whether the policy is effective or non-destructive—is tested. In a general framework, policies are recorded in the cluster state 514.

[0054] The network orchestrator 516 (e.g., a network driver) can execute network security policies and create network controls 518. The network orchestrator 516 may be a separate, pluggable module deployed within the cluster to orchestrate networking between containers. A cloud network interface can be used to define a common interface for such a model. However, different network drivers offer different levels of support for network security policies. Some do not provide such support at all and only deliver packages. In this case, the cluster utilizes multiple drivers: one driver for general connectivity and another for network policy support. In many cases, it is not the network orchestrator 516 itself that manages packet flow. Instead, the network orchestrator 516 typically coordinates downstream systems, such as worker nodes, network stacks, or cloud provider network configurations. Thus, for example, policies created within the cluster can be picked up by the network orchestrator 516 and translated into host-native mechanisms for controlling traffic, such as rules in Internet Protocol (IP) tables on each node.

[0055] Additionally, network security policies can be overridden by external configuration of that particular mechanism. For example, an operator managing the host itself may mistakenly add a rule that overrides a rule set by the network orchestrator 516. This error is typically not directly visible to an operator analyzing the policy at the cluster level.

[0056] The information used by network orchestrator 516 is not accessed (or directly accessed) by anyone interacting with the cluster. If a cluster's network driver does not support network security policies, an operator can still create a network security policy in the cluster, see it recorded in the cluster state at 514, and see it listed among all existing policies. Traditionally, no error or warning is provided that the policy is not in effect (e.g., because the network driver, network orchestrator 516, does not support network security policies). The network driver is removed or reconfigured at a later stage. This effectively disables enforcement of the policy, but it is not reflected in cluster state 514. An operator or automated system would notice that the network security policy is still in effect in the cluster when looking at the cluster state.

[0057] As mentioned above, there are multiple potential points where a network security policy may fail to deliver the expected results. This can be due to semantic errors in the policy definition, the influence of another policy, or missing or misconfigured network drivers or host / cloud level controls that disable the policy. These situations traditionally do not provide feedback to the operator or automated systems that deploy the network security policy.

[0058] 6 is a block diagram 600 illustrating example operations performed by a validation system to statically validate one or more network security rules, according to at least one embodiment. The operations may be performed by the test system 108 of FIG. 1, the cluster orchestrator 602 (e.g., the example deployment orchestrator system 116 of FIG. 1), or a separate component (not shown) configured to perform such validation operations.

[0059] At 604, a network security policy (e.g., a positive path or a negative path) may be obtained. As described above, the network security policy may be obtained (from a memory location configured to store such information, e.g., network security policy data store 120 of FIG. 1) as part of a process to obtain a baseline set of network security policies. The network security policy may be one of the baseline set of network security policies.

[0060] In some embodiments, a baseline set of network security policies specifying allowed and / or restricted connections and / or traffic flows can be defined by a user or by the system. As another example, the network security policies can be generated automatically. An example of such a technique is described in U.S. Patent Application No. 17 / 124,162, entitled "Technique for Generating Network Security Policies for Application Components Deployed in a Computing Environment." As yet another example, the baseline set of network security policies can be generated at least in part based on monitoring the system's traffic. For example, the system can generate a list of routes by recording traffic routes within a cluster and continue to monitor the list as the system observes new traffic. The system can identify positive routes by observing network traffic (e.g., identifying traffic flowing from one container to another, preferably through a specific port). Once a set of positive routes is established, negative routes can also be generated by identifying routes not included in the set of positive routes.

[0061] In some embodiments, the network security policy obtained at 604 may be validated at 606 to ensure the policy is syntactically valid. Syntax validation is the process of checking the syntax of a program, including programming or stylistic editors. Numerous tools exist to check the syntax of almost any programming language. If the network security policy is determined to be invalid at 606, the user may be notified at 608 (e.g., via any suitable electronic means, such as email, text message, alert, alarm, etc.).

[0062] If the network security policy is syntactically valid, then at 610, the network security policy is again validated against the baseline set of network security policies. The system can use many predefined actions (e.g., set actions, relationships) to perform this validation. As an example, some actions may be performed based at least in part on associating various objects through their labels (also referred to as determining the applicability of the labels). A label in a first set is consistent with a label in a second set if the label in the first set is a subset of the label in the second set. The subset symbol ⊆ can be used to indicate a subset of labels.

[0063] For example, given the following label set:

[0064]

number

[0065] The system may be configured to consider the following statements to be true (e.g., the label set on the left is a subset of the set on the right): The empty set (denoted as "{}") may be considered to be a subset of any other set:

[0066]

number

[0067] The "result" may specify the relationship between the rule and the path. By way of example, in some embodiments, the result may be one of three values: "none," "allow," and "deny" (more values ​​may be utilized if desired). Note that these values ​​may be represented in any suitable manner (e.g., the integer 0 may be used to represent "none," the integer 1 may be used to represent "allow," and the integer 2 may be used to represent "deny"). The "none" result indicates that the rule does not select the component specified by the path. The "allow" result indicates that the rule selects the component specified by the path and permits traffic to / from the other end of the path. The "deny" result indicates that the rule selects the component specified by the path but does not permit traffic to / from the other end of the path.

[0068] The system may be configured to generate results by identifying the "scope of application" of a rule, i.e., by mapping a connection path (specified in the path data structure) to an inbound or outbound rule. As an example, the scope of application of an inbound rule may be shown as follows:

[0069]

number

[0070] Similarly, the scope of the transmission rule can be expressed as follows:

[0071]

number

[0072] In some embodiments, the system may be configured to determine rule equivalence. Rule equivalence may refer to a binary relationship between two rules of the same type (e.g., two outgoing rules, two incoming rules). If both rules have the same result for a set of routes, the system may be configured to consider the two rules equivalent. As an example, the relationship for incoming rules is defined as follows:

[0073]

number

[0074] The relationship of the transmission rules is defined as follows:

[0075]

number

[0076] For static route sets, the equivalence relation is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive, and can be shown as follows:

[0077]

number

[0078] In some embodiments, the system may be configured to combine the results of multiple rules. In some embodiments, for example, if any of the results are "allow," the combined result may be considered as "allow," if any of the results are "deny," the combined result may be considered as "deny," and if none of the results are "allow" or "deny," the result may be considered as "none," as follows:

[0079]

number

[0080] For example, if any of the results are allow, it may be considered a selection of allow. If none of the results are allow, it may be considered a selection of deny. If any of the results are deny, none of the results are allow, and none of the results are deny, it may be considered no selection. Given the above, the definition of rule scope may be extended to any rule set as follows:

[0081]

number

[0082] Relationships for transmission rules can be defined similarly. Furthermore, the equivalence relationship can be extended to any rule set.

[0083]

number

[0084] The relationships of the transmission rule sets can be defined similarly. The system may be configured to define many additional relationships. For example, a relationship "IngressPolicyCoverage" may be used to map a route and an inbound policy to a set of outcome / rule tuples. Another relationship, "EgressPolicyCoverage," may be used to map a route and an outbound policy to a set of outcome / rule tuples. Another relationship, "PolicyCoverage," may be used to map an entire route and policy to a set of outcome / rule tuples, and may be defined as the union of the inbound and outbound rule mappings (e.g., the union of the inbound policy's "IngressPolicyCoverage" and the outbound policy's "EgressPolicyCoverage"). Another relationship, "PolicyTrafficCoverage," may be used to map a route and a policy to a set of outcome / rule tuples. Yet another relationship, "PolicyTrafficOutcome," may be used to map a route and a policy to a set of outcome / rule tuples (e.g., PolicyTrafficCoverage). These results may be combined in the manner described above to determine a single outcome.

[0085] Thus, at 610, the coverage of each network security policy for each connection path (or at least the received network security policy for the corresponding connection path) may be determined and compared to the expected behavior defined by the system's network security policy (e.g., the received security policy). If the coverage matches the expected behavior, the network security policy may be considered valid. If a mismatch is identified, the network security policy may be considered invalid.

[0086] If the network security policy is not valid against the baseline set of network security policies, the user is notified via any suitable electronic means at 608. However, if the network security policy is determined to be valid, the network security policy may be packaged and deployed by cluster orchestrator 602 at any suitable time.

[0087] Another network security policy can be obtained at 612. As one example, an operator can modify an existing network security policy or generate a new network security policy via a user interface of the cluster orchestrator 602. As another example, the system can be configured to modify / generate a network security policy based at least in part on detecting a network condition (e.g., a threshold amount of traffic along one connection path can trigger a network security policy that blocks all traffic between two components).

[0088] At 614, the cluster orchestrator 602 may be configured to perform operations to determine whether the network security policy received at 612 is syntactically valid. At 616, the cluster orchestrator 602 may be configured to perform operations to determine whether the network security policy received at 612 is valid against a baseline. These operations may be the same or similar to the operations performed at 610 with respect to the network security policy received at 604. If the check is determined to be invalid at 614, the user may be notified via any suitable electronic means at 618. Otherwise, the network security policy may be recorded in the cluster state at 620. In response to determining that the network security policy has been recorded in the cluster state at 622, a network driver (e.g., the example network orchestrator 516 of FIG. 5 ) may be configured to implement one or more network controls to allow and / or block traffic to and / or from the node in accordance with the network security policy.

[0089] In some embodiments, recording a network security policy to the cluster state may be viewed as a trigger to dynamically validate one or more network security rules, as described in connection with FIG.

[0090] 7 is a block diagram 700 illustrating example operations performed by a validation system to dynamically validate one or more network security rules, according to at least one embodiment. The operations may be performed by test system 108 of FIG. 1, deployment orchestrator system 116 of FIG. 1, cluster orchestrator 602 of FIG. 6, or a separate component (not shown) configured to perform such validation operations.

[0091] At 702, an event-based trigger is received. The trigger may take various forms. In some embodiments, the trigger may be the detection that the cluster state includes a new or modified (adjusted or deleted) network security policy. In some embodiments, the event-based trigger may be received in response to a user adding a new network security policy and / or the system generating a new network security policy.

[0092] At 704, a periodic trigger is received at a predetermined frequency and / or periodicity and / or according to a predetermined schedule. By way of non-limiting example, the predetermined schedule may indicate dynamically validating the network security policy on a particular day and / or time.

[0093] At 706, event-based triggers and periodic triggers can each initiate a dynamic validation process. Dynamic validation may include generating synthetic traffic within the cluster to validate that network security policies are operational. Validating that connections are blocked is important because there are multiple ways to defeat policy mechanisms. However, dynamic validation may also catch unlikely misconfigurations that cause traffic to be blocked, such as host-level or underlying network-level rules that block all incoming traffic.

[0094] In some embodiments, dynamic verification is an asynchronous process that involves initiating a test and waiting for the test results. The test involves verifying the connection or non-connection of an expected set of paths. If any of the path connections differ from expectations, a warning is generated.

[0095] In some embodiments, dynamic validation involves determining, for a given path, the following: 1. Identifying a container instance as the source of a connection (since connection paths are typically specified using labels, this process involves identifying one or more containers (containing this instance) that match a set of labels); 2. Identifying the container instance to connect to; 3. Initiating a connection from the source container to the destination container; 4. Observing the results of the connection; 5. Including reporting the success or failure of the test.

[0096] Test success or failure does not necessarily correspond to connection success or failure. For example, if a route is expected to be blocked but the connection succeeds, these conditions indicate a test failure. Failure validation should match the behavior of the network policy implementation. For example, if the network security policy simply ignores the connection attempt (e.g., via an IP Table DROP target), the expected behavior should be a connection timeout. Other types of connection failures, such as connections rejected with ICMP packets delivered to the source, are considered anomalous and indicate a problem with the network security policy.

[0097] Container orchestrators typically provide a programmable interface that allows listing running containers that match certain criteria, such as labels. Using the programmable interface, the system can establish a finite set of all containers that can act as the source and destination for a given test. For example, for the label {app:userservice}, all services with that label (e.g., userservice 208 in FIG. 2) are selected. In another example, for the label {zone:service}, all containers with labels associated with the zone "service" (e.g., orderservice 206, userservice 208, billingservice 210 in FIG. 2) are selected.

[0098] For large clusters or clusters with very broadly specified paths (i.e., paths using labels that select multiple different containers), the number of possible combinations is enormous. However, the dynamic verification process does not need to process all combinations to produce reliable results. In some embodiments, the number of containers selected is configurable. For example, the system may be configured to randomly test a specific subset of containers at each destination, or to test only new containers, or only containers that did not verify connectivity in a previous dynamic verification run (in which case the system tracks the status of verified containers), or containers selected by recently added policies, or any combination of these factors. The selection of factors to consider when selecting containers may depend on the trigger for dynamic verification. For example, selection based on percentage or unverified containers may be made for periodic triggers, selection of containers specified by recently added policies may be made when verification is triggered by the addition of a new policy, or selection based on the age of the container may be made when a new container is added to the cluster. System administrators can adjust these rules to achieve optimal results for their particular workload and intended scope.

[0099] To perform end-to-end validation, the validation process must initiate a connection from the container's network namespace to the target container's IP address, typically an ephemeral IP address in the cluster's overlay network. To do this, the software executing the test must run in the container's execution environment. This can be achieved in several ways. As an example, a sidecar application can be used. In some embodiments, a cluster orchestrator can provide a mechanism to dynamically deploy a sidecar application in a newly created pod. The sidecar application can then be used to initiate a connection from a given container's namespace to another container. Another way to perform validation is to use a privileged process running on the compute instance hosting the container. The privileged process can enter the given container's network namespace and perform network connections from the container environment. A system (e.g., Linux, a standard platform for hosting containerized workloads) can switch between such namespaces. As another example, a system can use a mechanism such as Kubernetes' DaemonSet to ensure that an instance of the validation software is hosted on every instance in the cluster.

[0100] In some embodiments, each positive and negative path can be tested. In some embodiments, negative paths can be defined or inferred by a user based on a set of positive paths known to the system (e.g., negative paths can be generated by identifying a set of paths that are not included in the set of positive paths). As an example, automatic validation of negative paths can occur when the baseline including positive paths is considered complete, i.e., when it includes all expected traffic in the cluster. The system can then validate negative paths heuristically or by random selection. For example, random selection can be based on the following: 1. (Source) Randomly select a container; 2. Randomly selecting another (destination) container; 3. Select all (or random) ports exposed by the destination container, 4. It can function to check whether a particular path between two containers is rejected by any of the baseline paths.

[0101] Another approach may involve more direct selection. For example, the selection process may involve: 1. Select the source container, 2. Identify all containers / ports that allow traffic from the source container. 3. This may include selecting a destination container from a set of containers / ports that exist in the cluster but are not included within the set of allowed destinations from this particular container obtained in the previous step.

[0102] All of the considerations discussed in "Selecting a Container for Dynamic Verification" also apply here: the source of the destination container may be selected based on any of the criteria discussed there.

[0103] At 708, the system can obtain test results. In some embodiments, the test results may include all results obtained from all tests performed, or the test results may include only some results obtained from a subset of tests performed. For example, obtaining the test results may include obtaining all test results before checking for validity at 710. In other embodiments, the test results are obtained incrementally, with each test being checked for validity before proceeding to the next set of test results.

[0104] At 710, the system may determine the validity of the test. By way of example, test results for each test may be obtained incrementally. Thus, for each test result, it may be determined whether the test is valid (expected connection behavior was observed) or invalid (the observed actual connection behavior did not match the expected connection behavior). If the test is invalid (the observed actual connection behavior did not match the expected connection behavior), at 712, the user may be alerted using any suitable electronic means (e.g., email, text, alert, alarm, push notification, etc.). When test results are obtained incrementally, the operations of 708-712 may be performed any suitable number of times depending on the number of tests being performed.

[0105] If all test results are determined to be valid at 714 (eg, the expected connection behavior is observed in each test result), the process is complete.

[0106] FIG. 8 illustrates an example method 800 for validating one or more network security rules in accordance with at least one embodiment. Method 800 may be performed in any suitable order. Note that while some operations are described with reference to FIG. 8, more or fewer operations may be utilized. In some embodiments, method 800 may be performed by a query processing system (e.g., as part of test system 108 of FIG. 1 or as part of applications and / or services in production environment 122 of FIG. 1).

[0107] Method 800 begins at 802. At 802, a set of connection paths for a containerized environment (e.g., environment 200) may be obtained. In some embodiments, the set of connection paths may represent connections between pairs of containers within the containerized environment.

[0108] At 804, a first container and a second container of a pair of containers can be identified based at least in part on one connection path from the set of connection paths. As an example, the connection path can identify a label or a set of labels corresponding to a source container. This label or set of labels can be matched with labels associated with each container to identify one or more containers associated with the same label. Similarly, the connection path can identify another label (or set of labels) corresponding to a destination container. This label or set of labels can be matched with labels associated with each container to identify one or more containers associated with the same label. Thus, the system can identify one or more containers that can serve as source containers and one or more containers that can serve as destination containers.

[0109] At 806, a network policy corresponding to the connection path can be determined. In some embodiments, the network policy indicates the expected outcome of a particular connection between a first container and a second container. As an example, a source container can be identified from one or more source containers identified at 804, and a destination container can be identified from one or more destination containers identified at 804. The system can then obtain a network policy (e.g., a communication policy data structure) that identifies a label corresponding to the source container and a label corresponding to the destination container. The policy can indicate whether traffic is allowed or blocked. In some embodiments, the policy may be associated with a particular port.

[0110] At 808, a connection from the first container to the second container can be initialized. As a non-limiting example, the sidecar application can be deployed using an interface provided by a cluster orchestrator (e.g., deployment orchestrator system 116 of FIG. 1, cluster orchestrator 602 of FIG. 6, etc.). The cluster orchestrator can utilize the sidecar application to initialize a connection from the first container to the second container.

[0111] The result of the connection can be determined at 810. By way of example, the connection initiated by the sidecar application may be established, or the connection establishment may have failed.

[0112] At 812, the system can present the results to a user device (e.g., user device 116 of FIG. 1 ) based at least in part on a determination that the results differ from the expected results indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path. For example, if the network security policy for the path indicates that the traffic is allowed, but the test results indicate that the connection failed, an email can be sent to the user.

[0113] Exemplary Architecture 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 elements (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 can offer various services (e.g., billing, monitoring, logging, load balancing, clustering, etc.) associated with the infrastructure elements. Therefore, because these services can be policy-driven, IaaS users can implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance.

[0114] In some examples, IaaS customers can access resources and services over a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet, and use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining elements of their application stack. For example, a user can 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 install enterprise software on the VMs. Customers can use the provider's services to perform a variety of functions, including balancing network traffic, troubleshooting applications, monitoring performance, managing disaster recovery, and more.

[0115] In most cases, the cloud computing model requires the participation of a cloud provider, which can be, but does not have to be, a third-party service provider specializing in providing (e.g., offering, renting, or selling) IaaS. Alternatively, an enterprise can deploy a private cloud and become a provider of infrastructure services.

[0116] In some examples, IaaS deployment is the process of deploying a new application or a new version of an application onto a provisioned application server, etc. IaaS deployment may include the process of provisioning the server (e.g., installing libraries, daemons, etc.). IaaS deployment is often managed by the cloud provider below the hypervisor layer (e.g., servers, storage, network hardware, and virtualization). Thus, customers can perform OS, middleware, and / or application deployment (e.g., self-service virtual machines (e.g., that can be spun up on demand)).

[0117] In some instances, IaaS provisioning may include obtaining the computer or virtual host to be used and installing the necessary libraries or services on the computer or virtual host. In most cases, deployment does not include provisioning, which must be performed first.

[0118] In some cases, IaaS provisioning presents two distinct challenges. First, there is the challenge of provisioning an initial set of infrastructure before anything can be done. Second, there is the challenge of evolving the existing infrastructure (e.g., adding new services, modifying services, removing services) 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 elements are needed and how these elements interact) can be defined by one or more configuration files. Thus, the overall topology of the infrastructure (e.g., which resources depend on which and how they work together) can be described declaratively. In some instances, once the topology is defined, workflows can be generated to create and / or manage the different elements described in the configuration files.

[0119] In some examples, the infrastructure can include many interconnected elements. For example, there may be one or more virtual private clouds (VPCs) (e.g., potentially on-demand pools of configurable and / or shared computing resources), also known as a core network. In some examples, there may be one or more group rules and one or more virtual machines (VMs) that are provisioned to define how the network is configured. Other infrastructure elements, such as load balancers, databases, etc., may also be provisioned. The infrastructure can evolve incrementally as more infrastructure elements are desired and / or added.

[0120] In some examples, continuous deployment techniques may be employed to enable deployment of infrastructure code across various virtual computing environments. The described techniques may also 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, typically many, different production environments (e.g., across a variety of different geographic locations, sometimes spanning the entire world). However, in some examples, the infrastructure for deploying the code must first be set up. In some examples, provisioning may be done manually, with provisioning tools used to provision resources and / or deployment tools used to deploy the code after the infrastructure has been provisioned.

[0121] 9 is a block diagram 900 illustrating an example pattern of an IaaS architecture, according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 902 may be communicatively connected to a secure host tenancy 904, which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 906 and a secure host subnet 908. In some examples, the service operator 902 may use one or more client computing devices. The one or more client computing devices may run software such as Microsoft Windows Mobile® and / or various mobile operating systems such as iOS, Windows Phone, Android®, BlackBerry 9, and Palm OS, and may be Internet, email, short message service (SMS), BlackBerry®, or other communication protocol-enabled handheld mobile devices (e.g., iPhone®, mobile phone, iPad®, tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA), or wearable device (e.g., Google Glass® head-mounted display). The client computing devices may be general-purpose personal computers, including, by way of example, personal computers and / or laptop computers running various versions of the Microsoft Windows® operating system, the Apple Macintosh® operating system, and / or the Linux® operating system. Alternatively, the client computing devices may be workstation computers running various commercially available UNIX® or UNIX-like operating systems, including, but not limited to, various GNU / Linux operating systems, e.g., Google Chrome® OS.Alternatively or additionally, the client computing device may be other electronic devices capable of communicating over VCN 906 and / or a network with access to the Internet, such as a thin client computer, an Internet-enabled gaming system (e.g., a Microsoft Xbox® game console with or without a Kinect® gesture input device), and / or a personal messaging device.

[0122] VCN 906 can include a local peering gateway (LPG) 910, which can be communicatively connected to a secure shell (SSH) VCN 912 via an LPG 910 included in SSH VCN 912. SSH VCN 912 can include an SSH subnet 914, which can be communicatively connected to a control plane VCN 916 via an LPG 910 included in control plane VCN 916. SSH VCN 912 can also be communicatively connected to a data plane VCN 918 via LPG 910. The control plane VCN 916 and the data plane VCN 918 can be included in a service tenancy 919, which can be owned and / or operated by an IaaS provider.

[0123] The control plane VCN 916 may include a control plane demilitarized zone (DMZ) tier 920 that functions as a perimeter network (e.g., a portion of the enterprise network between the enterprise intranet and an external network). DMZ-based servers have a particular level of reliability and can contain security breaches. Furthermore, the DMZ tier 920 may include one or more load balancer (LB) subnets 922, a control plane app tier 924 that may include an app subnet 926, and a control plane data tier 928 that may include a database (DB) subnet 930 (e.g., a front-end DB subnet and / or a back-end DB subnet). The LB subnet 922 included in the control plane DMZ tier 920 may be communicatively connected to the app subnet 926 included in the control plane app tier 924 and to an Internet gateway 934 that may be included in the control plane VCN 916, and the app subnet 926 may be communicatively connected to the DB subnet 930, a service gateway 936, and a network address translation (NAT) gateway 938, all of which are included in the control plane data tier 928. The control plane VCN 916 may include a service gateway 936 and a NAT gateway 938 .

[0124] The control plane VCN 916 can include a data plane mirror app layer 940, which can include an app subnet 926. The app subnet 926 included in the data plane mirror app layer 940 can include a virtual network interface controller (VNIC) 942 on which a compute instance 944 can run. The compute instance 944 can communicatively connect the app subnet 926 of the data plane mirror app layer 940 to the app subnet 926, which can be included in the data plane app layer 946.

[0125] The data plane VCN 918 may include a data plane app layer 946, a data plane DMZ layer 948, and a data plane data layer 950. The data plane DMZ layer 948 may include a LB subnet 922 that may be communicatively connected to an app subnet 926 of the data plane app layer 946 and an internet gateway 934 of the data plane VCN 918. The app subnet 926 may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 936 of the data plane VCN 918 and a NAT gateway 938 of the data plane VCN 918. Additionally, the data plane data layer 950 may include a DB subnet 930 that may be communicatively connected to the app subnet 926 of the data plane app layer 946.

[0126] The internet gateway 934 of the control plane VCN 916 and the internet gateway 934 of the data plane VCN 918 may be communicatively connected to a metadata management service 952, which may be communicatively connected to the public internet 954. The public internet 954 may be communicatively connected to a NAT gateway 938 of the control plane VCN 916 and the NAT gateway 938 of the data plane VCN 918. The service gateway 936 of the control plane VCN 916 and the service gateway 936 of the data plane VCN 918 may be communicatively connected to cloud services 956.

[0127] In some examples, a service gateway 936 of a control plane VCN 916 or a data plane VCN 918 can make application programming interface (API) calls to a cloud service 956 without traversing the public internet 954. API calls from the service gateway 936 to the cloud service 956 can be one-way. The service gateway 936 can make API calls to the cloud service 956, and the cloud service 956 can send request data to the service gateway 936. However, the cloud service 956 may not initiate the API call to the service gateway 936.

[0128] In some examples, secure host tenancy 904 may be directly connected to service tenancy 919, which may be an orphan. Secure host subnet 908 may communicate with SSH subnet 914 through LPG 910, which allows bidirectional communication with the orphan system. By connecting secure host subnet 908 to SSH subnet 914, secure host subnet 908 may access other entities in service tenancy 919.

[0129] The control plane VCN 916 allows users of the service tenancy 919 to configure or provision desired resources. The desired resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 916 can be deployed or used in the data plane VCN 918. In some examples, the control plane VCN 916 may be isolated from the data plane VCN 918, and the data plane mirror app layer 940 of the control plane VCN 916 can communicate with the data plane app layer 946 of the data plane VCN 918 via a VNIC 942, which may be included in the data plane mirror app layer 940 and the data plane app layer 946.

[0130] In some examples, a user or customer of the system may make a request, such as a create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) operation, via the public internet 954, which may communicate the request to a metadata management service 952. The metadata management service 952 may communicate the request to the control plane VCN 916 via an internet gateway 934. The request may be received by a LB subnet 922 included in the control plane DMZ tier 920. The LB subnet 922 may determine that the request is valid, and in response to this determination, the LB subnet 922 may send the request to an app subnet 926 included in the control plane app tier 924. If the request is validated and requires a call to the public internet 954, the call to the public internet 954 may be sent to a NAT gateway 938, which may make the call to the public internet 954. Memory for storing the request may be stored in the DB subnet 930.

[0131] In some examples, the data plane mirror app layer 940 can facilitate direct communication between the control plane VCN 916 and the data plane VCN 918. For example, it may be desirable for changes, updates, or other suitable modifications to a configuration to be applied to resources included in the data plane VCN 918. The control plane VCN 916 can communicate directly with the resources included in the data plane VCN 918 via VNICs 942, allowing the changes, updates, or other suitable modifications to the configuration to be implemented.

[0132] In some embodiments, the control plane VCN 916 and the data plane VCN 918 may be included in the service tenancy 919. In this case, a user or customer of the system may not own or operate either the control plane VCN 916 or the data plane VCN 918. Instead, an IaaS provider may own or operate the control plane VCN 916 and the data plane VCN 918, both of which may be included in the service tenancy 919. This embodiment can prevent users or customers from interacting with other users' or customers' resources by enabling network isolation. This embodiment can also allow users or customers of the system to store databases privately without having to rely on the public internet 954, which may not have the desired level of security for storage.

[0133] In another embodiment, the LB subnet 922 included in the control plane VCN 916 may be configured to receive signals from the service gateway 936. In this embodiment, the control plane VCN 916 and the data plane VCN 918 may be configured to be called by the IaaS provider's customers without calling the public internet 954. Customers of the IaaS provider may desire this embodiment because databases used by the customers may be stored in the service tenancy 919, which may be controlled by the IaaS provider and isolated from the public internet 954.

[0134] 10 is a block diagram 1000 illustrating another example parameter of an IaaS architecture, according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1002 (e.g., service operator 902 of FIG. 9 ) may be communicatively connected to a secure host tenancy 1004 (e.g., secure host tenancy 904 of FIG. 9 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1006 (e.g., VCN 906 of FIG. 9 ) and a secure host subnet 1008 (e.g., secure host subnet 908 of FIG. 9 ). VCN 1006 may include a local peering gateway (LPG) 1010 (e.g., LPG 910 of FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to a secure shell (SSH) VCN 1012 (e.g., SSH VCN 912 of FIG. 9 ) via an LPG 910 included in SSH VCN 1012. SSH VCN 1012 can include SSH subnet 1014 (e.g., SSH subnet 914 in FIG. 9 ), and SSH VCN 1012 can be communicatively connected to control plane VCN 109 (e.g., control plane VCN 916 in FIG. 9 ) via LPG 1010 included in control plane VCN 1016. Control plane VCN 109 can be included in service tenancy 1019 (e.g., service tenancy 919 in FIG. 9 ), and data plane VCN 1018 (e.g., data plane VCN 918 in FIG. 9 ) can be included in customer tenancy 1021, which can be owned or operated by a user or customer of the system.

[0135] The control plane VCN 1016 may include a control plane DMZ layer 1020 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 920 of FIG. 9 ) that may include a LB subnet 1022 (e.g., LB subnet 922 of FIG. 9 ), a control plane app layer 1016 (e.g., control plane app layer 924 of FIG. 9 ) that may include an app subnet 1026 (e.g., app subnet 926 of FIG. 9 ), and a control plane data layer 1028 (e.g., control plane data layer 928 of FIG. 9 ) that may include a database (DB) subnet 1030 (e.g., similar to DB subnet 930 of FIG. 9 ). The LB subnet 1022 included in the control plane DMZ layer 1020 may be communicatively connected to the app subnet 1026 included in the control plane app layer 1016 and to an Internet gateway 1034 (e.g., Internet gateway 934 of FIG. 9 ), which may be included in the control plane VCN 1016. The app subnet 1026 may be communicatively connected to a DB subnet 1030, a service gateway 1036 (e.g., the service gateway in FIG. 9 ), and a network address translation (NAT) gateway 1038 (e.g., the NAT gateway 938 in FIG. 9 ) included in the control plane data layer 1028. The control plane VCN 1016 may include the service gateway 1036 and the NAT gateway 1038.

[0136] The control plane VCN 1016 can include a data plane mirror app layer 1040 (e.g., data plane mirror app layer 940 of FIG. 9 ), which can include an app subnet 1026. The app subnet 1026 included in the data plane mirror app layer 1040 can include a virtual network interface controller (VNIC) 1042 (e.g., VNIC 942) on which a compute instance 1044 (e.g., similar to compute instance 944 of FIG. 9 ) can run. The compute instance 1044 can facilitate communication between the app subnet 1026 of the data plane mirror app layer 1040 and the app subnet 1026, which can be included in the data plane app layer 1046 (e.g., data plane app layer 946 of FIG. 9 ), via the VNIC 1042 included in the data plane mirror app layer 1040 and the VNIC 1042 included in the data plane app layer 1046.

[0137] The internet gateway 1034 included in the control plane VCN 1016 may be communicatively connected to a metadata management service 1052 (e.g., metadata management service 952 of FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to the public internet 1054 (e.g., public internet 954 of FIG. 9 ). The public internet 1054 may be communicatively connected to a NAT gateway 1038 included in the control plane VCN 1016. The service gateway 1036 included in the control plane VCN 1016 may be communicatively connected to cloud services 1056 (e.g., cloud services 956 of FIG. 9 ).

[0138] In some examples, the data plane VCN 1018 may be included in the customer tenancy 1021. In this case, the IaaS provider may provide a control plane VCN 1016 for each customer, and the IaaS provider may configure a unique compute instance 1044 for each customer that is included in the service tenancy 1019. Each compute instance 1044 may allow communication between the control plane VCN 1016 included in the service tenancy 1019 and the data plane VCN 1018 included in the customer tenancy 1021. The compute instance 1044 may allow resources provisioned in the control plane VCN 1016 included in the service tenancy 1019 to be deployed or used in the data plane VCN 1018 included in the customer tenancy 1021.

[0139] In another example, a customer of the IaaS provider may have a database that resides in customer tenancy 1021. In this example, control plane VCN 1016 may include data plane minor app tier 1040, which may include app subnet 1026. The data plane mirror app tier 1040 may reside in data plane VCN 1018, but the data plane mirror app tier 1040 may not reside in the data plane VCN 1018. That is, the data plane mirror app tier 1040 has access to customer tenancy 1021, but the data plane mirror app tier 1040 may not reside in the data plane VCN 1018 and may not be owned or operated by the IaaS provider's customer. The data plane mirror app tier 1040 may be configured to make calls to the data plane VCN 1018, but may not be configured to make calls to any entities included in the control plane VCN 1016. A customer may desire to deploy or use resources in the data plane VCN 1018 provisioned to the control plane VCN 1016, and the data plane mirror application tier 1040 may facilitate the desired deployment or other use of the customer's resources.

[0140] In some embodiments, the IaaS provider's customer can apply filters to the data plane VCN 1018. In this embodiment, the customer can determine what the data plane VCN 1018 can access, and the customer can restrict access from the data plane VCN 1018 to the public internet 1054. The IaaS provider may not be able to apply filters or control access from the data plane VCN 1018 to any external networks or databases. Applying filters and controls to the data plane VCN 1018 included in the customer tenancy 1021 can help isolate the data plane VCN 1018 from other customers and the public internet 1054.

[0141] In some embodiments, cloud services 1056 can be called by the service gateway 1036 to access services that may not reside on the public internet 1054, on the control plane VCN 1016, or on the data plane VCN 1018. The connection between the cloud services 1056 and the control plane VCN 1016 or the data plane VCN 1018 may not be live or continuous. The cloud services 1056 may reside on a separate network owned or operated by the IaaS provider. The cloud services 1056 may be configured to receive calls from the service gateway 1036 and may not be configured to receive calls from the public internet 1054. Some cloud services 1056 may be isolated from other cloud services 1056, and the control plane VCN 1016 may be isolated from cloud services 1056 that may not be located in the same region as the control plane VCN 1016. For example, the control plane VCN 1016 may be located in “Region 1,” and cloud service “Deployment 8” may be located in “Region 1” and “Region 2.” If a call to deployment 8 is made by a service gateway 1036 included in a control plane VCN 1016 located in region 1, the call may be sent to deployment 8 in region 1. In this example, control plane VCN 1016 or deployment 8 in region 1 may not be communicatively connected to deployment 8 in region 2.

[0142] 11 is a block diagram 1100 illustrating another example pattern of an IaaS architecture, according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1102 (e.g., service operator 902 of FIG. 9 ) may be communicatively connected to a secure host tenancy 1104 (e.g., secure host tenancy 904 of FIG. 9 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1106 (e.g., VCN 906 of FIG. 9 ) and a secure host subnet 1108 (e.g., secure host subnet 908 of FIG. 9 ). VCN 1106 may include an LPG 1110 (e.g., LPG 910 of FIG. 9 ) that may be communicatively connected to an SSH VCN 1112 (e.g., SSH VCN 912 of FIG. 9 ) via an LPG 1110 included in SSH VCN 1112. SSH VCN 1112 can include SSH subnet 1114 (e.g., SSH subnet 914 in FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to control plane VCN 1116 (e.g., control plane VCN 916 in FIG. 9 ) via LPG 1110 included in control plane VCN 1116, and may be communicatively connected to data plane VCN 1118 (e.g., data plane 918 in FIG. 9 ) via LPG 1110 included in data plane VCN 1118. Control plane VCN 1116 and data plane VCN 1118 may be included in service tenancy 1119 (e.g., service tenant 919 in FIG. 9 ).

[0143] The control plane VCN 1116 may include a control plane DMZ tier 1120 (e.g., control plane DMZ tier 920 of FIG. 9 ) that may include a load balancer (LB) subnet 1122 (e.g., LB subnet 922 of FIG. 9 ), a control plane app tier 1124 (e.g., control plane app tier 924 of FIG. 9 ) that may include an app subnet 1126 (e.g., similar to app subnet 926 of FIG. 9 ), and a control plane data tier 1128 (e.g., control plane data tier 928 of FIG. 9 ) that may include a DB subnet 1130. The LB subnet 1122 included in the control plane DMZ tier 1120 may be communicatively connected to the app subnet 1126 included in the control plane app tier 1124 and to an Internet gateway 1134 (e.g., Internet gateway 934 of FIG. 9 ), which may be included in the control plane VCN 1116. The app subnet 1126 may be communicatively connected to a DB subnet 1130 included in the control plane data layer 1128, and to a service gateway 1136 (e.g., the service gateway in FIG. 9 ) and a network address translation (NAT) gateway 1138 (e.g., the NAT gateway 938 in FIG. 9 ). The control plane VCN 1116 may include the service gateway 1136 and the NAT gateway 1138.

[0144] The data plane VCN 1118 may include a data plane app layer 1146 (e.g., data plane app layer 946 in FIG. 9 ), a data plane DMZ layer 1148 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 948 in FIG. 9 ), and a data plane data layer 1150 (e.g., data plane data layer 950 in FIG. 9 ). The data plane DMZ layer 1148 may include a LB subnet 1122 that may be communicatively connected to a trusted app subnet 1160 and an untrusted app subnet 1162 of the data plane app layer 1146 and an internet gateway 1134 included in the data plane VCN 1118. The trusted app subnet 1160 may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1136 included in the data plane VCN 1118, a NAT gateway 1138 included in the data plane VCN 1118, and a DB subnet 1130 included in the data plane data layer 1150. The untrusted app subnet 1162 may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1136 included in the data plane VCN 1118 and to a DB subnet 1130 included in the data plane data layer 1150. The data plane data layer 1150 may include a DB subnet 1130 that may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1136 included in the data plane VCN 1118.

[0145] The untrusted app subnet 1162 may include one or more primary VNICs 1164(1)-(N), which may be communicatively connected to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 1166(1)-(N). Each tenant VM 1166(1)-(N) may be communicatively connected to a respective app subnet 1167(1)-(N), which may be included in a respective container egress VCN 1168(1)-(N), which may be included in a respective customer tenancy 1170(1)-(N). Each secondary VNIC 1172(1)-(N) may facilitate communication between the untrusted app subnet 1162 included in the data plane VCN 1118 and the app subnet included in the container egress VCN 1168(1)-(N). Each container egress VCN 1168(1)-(N) may include a NAT gateway 1138, which may be communicatively connected to the public internet 1154 (e.g., public internet 954 in FIG. 9 ).

[0146] The internet gateway 1134 included in the control plane VCN 1116 and the internet gateway 1134 included in the data plane VCN 1118 may be communicatively connected to a metadata management service 1152 (e.g., metadata management system 952 of FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to the public internet 1154. The public internet 1154 may be communicatively connected to a NAT gateway 1138 included in the control plane VCN 1116 and the NAT gateway 1138 included in the data plane VCN 1118. The service gateway 1136 included in the control plane VCN 1116 and the service gateway 1136 included in the data plane VCN 1118 may be communicatively connected to cloud services 1156.

[0147] In some embodiments, data plane VCN 1118 may be integrated into customer tenancy 1170. This integration may be useful or desirable for an IaaS provider's customer in some cases, such as when they may want support when running their code. Customers may provide code that, when run, may be disruptive, may communicate with other customer resources, or may cause undesirable effects. Thus, the IaaS provider may determine whether or not to run code that a customer has provided to the IaaS provider.

[0148] In some examples, a customer of an IaaS provider can grant temporary network access to the IaaS provider and request a feature to be added to the data plane app layer 1146. The code to perform the feature can run in VMs 1166(1)-(N) but cannot be configured to run elsewhere on the data plane VCN 1118. Each VM 1166(1)-(N) can be connected to one customer tenancy 1170. Each container 1171(1)-(N) included in a VM 1166(1)-(N) can be configured to run code. In this case, double isolation (e.g., containers 1171(1)-(N) can run code, and containers 1171(1)-(N) can be included in at least VMs 1166(1)-(N) included in the untrusted app subnet 1162) can exist, which can help prevent erroneous or unwanted code from damaging the IaaS provider's network or the network of a different customer. Containers 1171(1)-(N) may be communicatively connected to customer tenancy 1170 and may be configured to send or receive data from customer tenancy 1170. Containers 1171(1)-(N) may not be configured to send or receive data from any other entity in data plane VCN 1118. Once code execution is complete, the IaaS provider can kill or discard containers 1171(I)-(N).

[0149] In some embodiments, trusted app subnet 1160 can execute code that may be owned or operated by the IaaS provider. In this embodiment, trusted app subnet 1160 can be communicatively connected to DB subnet 1130 and configured to perform CRUD operations on DB subnet 1130. Untrusted app subnet 1162 can be communicatively connected to DB subnet 1130, but in this embodiment, the untrusted app subnet can be configured to perform read operations within DB subnet 1130. Containers 1171(1)-(N) included in each customer's VMs 1166(1)-(N) and capable of executing code from the customer may not be communicatively connected to DB subnet 1130.

[0150] In other embodiments, the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118 may not be directly communicatively coupled. In this embodiment, there may be no direct communication between the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118. However, there may be indirect communication by at least one method. An LPG 1110 may be established by an IaaS provider that can facilitate communication between the control plane VCN 1116 and the data plane VCN 1118. In another example, the control plane VCN 1116 or the data plane VCN 1118 can make a call to a cloud service 1156 through a service gateway 1136. For example, a call from the control plane VCN 1116 to the cloud service 1156 may include a request for a service that can communicate with the data plane VCN 1118.

[0151] 12 is a block diagram 1200 illustrating further example parameters of an IaaS architecture, according to at least one embodiment. A service operator 1202 (e.g., service operator 902 of FIG. 9 ) may be communicatively connected to a secure host tenancy 1204 (e.g., secure host tenancy 904 of FIG. 9 ), which may include a virtual cloud network (VCN) 1206 (e.g., VCN 906 of FIG. 9 ) and a secure host subnet 1208 (e.g., secure host subnet 908 of FIG. 9 ). VCN 1206 may include an LPG 1210 (e.g., LPG 910 of FIG. 9 ) that may be communicatively connected to an SSH VCN 1212 (e.g., SSH VCN 912 of FIG. 9 ) via an LPG 1210 included in SSH VCN 1212. SSH VCN 1212 can include SSH subnet 1214 (e.g., SSH subnet 914 in FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to control plane VCN 1216 (e.g., control plane VCN 916 in FIG. 9 ) via LPG 1210 included in control plane VCN 1216, and may be communicatively connected to data plane VCN 1218 (e.g., data plane 918 in FIG. 9 ) via LPG 1210 included in data plane VCN 1218. Control plane VCN 1216 and data plane VCN 1218 may be included in service tenancy 1219 (e.g., service tenancy 919 in FIG. 9 ).

[0152] Control plane VCN 1216 may include a control plane DMZ layer 1220 (e.g., control plane DMZ layer 920 of FIG. 9 ), which may include a LB subnet 1222 (e.g., LB subnet 922 of FIG. 9 ), a control plane app layer 1224 (e.g., control plane app layer 924 of FIG. 9 ), which may include an app subnet 1226 (e.g., app subnet 926 of FIG. 9 ), and a control plane data layer 1228 (e.g., control plane data layer 928 of FIG. 9 ), which may include a DB subnet 1230 (e.g., DB subnet 1130 of FIG. 11 ). LB subnet 1222 included in control plane DMZ layer 1220 may be communicatively connected to app subnet 1226 included in control plane app layer 1224 and to an Internet gateway 1234 (e.g., Internet gateway 934 of FIG. 9 ), which may be included in control plane VCN 1216. The app subnet 1226 may be communicatively connected to a DB subnet 1230 included in the control plane data layer 1228, a service gateway 1236 (e.g., the service gateway in FIG. 9 ) and a network address translation (NAT) gateway 1238 (e.g., the NAT gateway 938 in FIG. 9 ). The control plane VCN 1216 may include the service gateway 1236 and the NAT gateway 1238.

[0153] Data plane VCN 1218 may include a data plane app layer 1246 (e.g., data plane app layer 946 in FIG. 9 ), a data plane DMZ layer 1248 (e.g., data plane DMZ layer 948 in FIG. 9 ), and a data plane data layer 1250 (e.g., data plane data layer 950 in FIG. 9 ). Data plane DMZ layer 1248 may include a trusted app subnet 1260 (e.g., trusted app subnet 1160 in FIG. 11 ) and an untrusted app subnet 1262 (e.g., untrusted app subnet 1162 in FIG. 11 ) of data plane app layer 1246 and an LB subnet 1222 that may be communicatively connected to an Internet gateway 1234 included in data plane VCN 1218. Trusted app subnet 1260 may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1236 included in data plane VCN 1218, a NAT gateway 1238 included in data plane VCN 1218, and a DB subnet 1230 included in data plane data layer 1250. The untrusted app subnet 1262 may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1236 included in the data plane VCN 1218 and to a DB subnet 1230 included in the data plane data layer 1250. The data plane data layer 1250 may include a DB subnet 1230 that may be communicatively connected to a service gateway 1236 included in the data plane VCN 1218.

[0154] The untrusted app subnet 1262 may include primary VNICs 1264(1)-(N) that may be communicatively connected to tenant virtual machines (VMs) 1266(1)-(N) that reside in the untrusted app subnet 1262. Each tenant VM 1266(1)-(N) may execute code in a respective container 1267(1)-(N) and may be communicatively connected to an app subnet 1226 that may be included in a data plane app layer 1246 that may be included in a container egress VCN 1268. Each secondary VNIC 1272(1)-(N) may facilitate communication between the untrusted app subnet 1262 included in the data plane VCN 1218 and the app subnet included in the container egress VCN 1268. The container egress VCN may include a NAT gateway 1238 that may be communicatively connected to the public internet 1254 (e.g., public internet 954 in FIG. 9 ).

[0155] The internet gateway 1234 included in the control plane VCN 1216 and the internet gateway 1234 included in the data plane VCN 1218 may be communicatively connected to a metadata management service 1252 (e.g., metadata management system 952 of FIG. 9 ), which may be communicatively connected to the public internet 1254. The public internet 1254 may be communicatively connected to the internet gateway 1234 included in the control plane VCN 1216 and the NAT gateway 1238 included in the data plane VCN 1218. The internet gateway 1234 included in the control plane VCN 1216 and the service gateway 1236 included in the data plane VCN 1218 may be communicatively connected to cloud services 1256.

[0156] In some examples, the pattern illustrated by the architecture of block diagram 1200 in FIG. 12 may be considered an exception to the pattern illustrated by the architecture of block diagram 1100 in FIG. 11 and may be desirable for an IaaS provider's customers when the IaaS provider cannot communicate directly with the customers (e.g., in unconnected regions). The customers can access each of the containers 1267(1)-(N) contained in each customer's VMs 1266(1)-(N) in real time. The containers 1267(1)-(N) can be configured to call each of the secondary VNICs 1272(1)-(N) contained in the app subnet 1226 of the data plane app tier 1246, which can be included in the container egress VCN 1268. The secondary VNICs 1272(1)-(N) can send the call to the NAT gateway 1238, which can send the call to the public Internet 1254. In this example, containers 1267(1)-(N) that a customer can access in real time may be isolated from control plane VCN 1216 and may be isolated from other entities included in data plane VCN 1218. Containers 1267(1)-(N) may also be isolated from resources of other customers.

[0157] In another example, a customer can invoke cloud service 1256 using containers 1267(1)-(N). In this example, the customer can execute code in containers 1267(1)-(N) that requests a service from cloud service 1256. Containers 1267(1)-(N) can send the request to secondary VNICs 1272(1)-(N), which can send the request to a NAT gateway that can send the request to public internet 1254. Public internet 1254 can send the request to LB subnet 1222, which is included in control plane VCN 1216, via internet gateway 1234. In response to determining that the request is valid, LB subnet 1226 can send the request to app subnet 1226, which can send the request to cloud service 1256 via service gateway 1236.

[0158] It should be noted that the illustrated IaaS architectures 900, 1000, 1100, and 1200 may include elements other than those shown. Furthermore, the illustrated embodiments are only examples of some cloud infrastructure systems that may incorporate embodiments of the present disclosure. In other embodiments, an IaaS system may have more or fewer elements than those shown, may combine two or more elements, or may have a different configuration or arrangement of elements.

[0159] In certain embodiments, the IaaS system described in this disclosure may include 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. One example of such an IaaS system is the Oracle® Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offered by the present applicant.

[0160] 13 illustrates an exemplary computer system 1300 on which various embodiments may be implemented. System 1300 may be used to implement any of the computer systems described above. As shown, computer system 1300 includes a processing unit 1304 that communicates with a number of peripheral subsystems via a bus subsystem 1302. These peripheral subsystems may include a processing acceleration unit 1306, an I / O subsystem 1308, a storage subsystem 1318, and a communications subsystem 1324. Storage subsystem 1318 includes a tangible computer-readable storage medium 1322 and a system memory 1310.

[0161] Bus subsystem 1302 provides a mechanism for allowing the various components and subsystems of computer system 1300 to communicate with each other as intended. While bus subsystem 1302 is shown schematically as a single bus, alternative embodiments of the bus subsystem may utilize multiple buses. Bus subsystem 1302 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 MicroChannel Architecture (MCA), an Bus Extended 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 in accordance with the IEEE P1386.1 standard.

[0162] Processing unit 1304, which may be implemented as one or more integrated circuits (e.g., conventional microprocessors or microcontrollers), controls the operation of computer system 1300. Processing unit 1304 may include one or more processors. These processors may include single-core or multi-core processors. In some embodiments, processing unit 1304 may be implemented as one or more independent processing units 1332 and / or 1334, with single-core or multi-core processors included in each processing unit. In other embodiments, processing unit 1304 may be implemented as a quad-core processing unit formed by integrating two dual-core processors into a single chip.

[0163] In various embodiments, the processing unit 1304 may execute various programs in response to program code and may maintain multiple programs or processes executing simultaneously. At any given time, some or all of the program code being executed may reside in the processor 1304 and / or the storage subsystem 1318. The processor 1304, through appropriate programming, may provide the various functionality described above. The computer system 1300 may further include a processing acceleration unit 1306, which may include a digital signal processor (DSP), a special purpose processor, and / or the like.

[0164] The I / O subsystem 1308 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 also include a motion detection and / or gesture recognizer, such as a Microsoft Kinect® motion sensor. The Microsoft Kinect® motion sensor can control and interact with input devices such as a Microsoft Xbox® 360 game controller through a natural user interface (NUI) that utilizes gestures and voice commands. User interface input devices may also include an eye gesture recognizer, such as a Google Glass® blink detector. The Google Glass® blink detector detects a user's eye activity (e.g., "blinks" when taking a picture and / or selecting a menu) and converts the eye activity into input for input into an input device (e.g., Google Glass®). Additionally, the user interface input device may include a voice recognition detection device that allows a user to interact with a voice recognition system (e.g., Siri® Navigator) via voice commands.

[0165] User interface input devices may also include, but are not limited to, three-dimensional (3D) mice, joysticks or pointing sticks, gamepads, graphics tablets, audio / visual devices such as speakers, digital cameras, digital video cameras, portable media players, webcams, image scanners, fingerprint scanners, barcode readers, 3D scanners, 3D printers, laser range finders, and eye-tracking devices. User interface input devices may also include medical imaging input devices such as computed tomography (CT) scanners, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, ultrasound emission tomography (EMC) scanners, and medical ultrasound scanners. User interface input devices may also include audio input devices such as MIDI keyboards and electronic musical instruments.

[0166] 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, for example, a flat-panel device using a cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal display (LCD), or plasma display, a projection device, or a touchscreen. In general, when the term "output device" is used, it is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for outputting information from computer system 1300 to a user or to another computer. For example, user interface output devices include, but are not limited to, various display devices that visually convey text, images, and audio / video information, such as monitors, printers, speakers, headphones, car navigation systems, plotters, voice output devices, and modems.

[0167] Computer system 1300 may include a storage subsystem 1318. Storage subsystem 1318 comprises software elements, which are illustratively located in system memory 1310. System memory 1310 may store program instructions loadable and executable by processing unit 1304, as well as data generated by the execution of these programs.

[0168] Depending on the configuration and type of computer system 1300, the system memory 1310 may be volatile memory (e.g., random access memory (RAM)) and / or non-volatile memory (e.g., read-only memory (ROM), flash memory). RAM typically contains data and / or program modules that are immediately accessible to and / or currently being operated on and executed by the processing unit 1304. In some implementations, the system memory 1310 may include several different types of memory, such as static random access memory (SRAM) or dynamic random access memory (DRAM). In some implementations, a basic input / output system (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the computer system 1300, such as during start-up, may typically be stored in ROM. By way of example and not limitation, system memory 1310 also illustrates application programs 1312, program data 1314, and an operating system 1316, which may include client applications, web browsers, mid-tier applications, relational database management systems (RDBMS), and the like.By way of example, operating system 1316 may include various versions of 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® 13 OS, and Palm® OS operating systems.

[0169] Additionally, the storage subsystem 1318 may provide a tangible, computer-readable storage medium for storing the basic programming and data constructs that provide the functionality of some embodiments. Software (programs, code modules, instructions) that, when executed by a processor, provide the above-described functionality may be stored in the storage subsystem 1318. These software modules or instructions may be executed by the processing unit 1304. The storage subsystem 1318 may also provide a repository for storing data used in accordance with the present disclosure.

[0170] Storage subsystem 1300 may also include a computer-readable storage medium reader 1320 further connectable to computer-readable storage medium 1322. Computer-readable storage medium 1322 may comprehensively represent remote, local, fixed, and / or removable storage devices, as well as storage media for temporarily and / or permanently containing, storing, transmitting, and retrieving computer-readable information together with, or optionally in combination with, system memory 1310.

[0171] Additionally, the computer-readable storage medium 1322 containing the code or portions of code may include any suitable medium known or used in the art, including storage 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. This 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, or other tangible computer-readable media. This may also include intangible computer-readable media, such as a data signal, data transmission, or other medium usable to transmit the desired information and accessible by computer system 1300.

[0172] By way of example, computer-readable storage medium 1322 may include a hard disk drive that reads from or writes to non-removable, non-volatile magnetic media, a magnetic disk drive that reads from or writes to removable, non-volatile magnetic disks, and an optical disk drive that reads from or writes to removable, non-volatile optical disks such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, and Blu-ray disks or other optical media. Computer-readable storage medium 1322 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 1322 may also include flash memory-based SSDs, enterprise flash drives, solid-state drives (SSDs) based on non-volatile memory such as solid-state ROM, SSDs based on volatile memory such as solid-state RAM, dynamic RAM, static RAM, DRAM-based SSDs, magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) SSDs, and hybrid SSDs that use a combination of DRAM and flash memory-based SSDs. Disk drives and their associated computer-readable media can provide non-volatile storage of computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, and other data for the computer system 1300.

[0173] The communications subsystem 1324 provides an interface with other computer systems and networks. The communications subsystem 1324 serves as an interface for receiving data from other systems and transmitting data from the computer system 1300 to other systems. For example, the communications subsystem 1324 may enable the computer system 1300 to connect to one or more devices via the Internet. In some embodiments, the communications subsystem 1324 may include radio frequency (RF) transceiver components for accessing wireless voice and / or data networks (e.g., using cellular technologies, 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 1324 may provide a wired network connection (e.g., Ethernet) in addition to or instead of a wireless interface.

[0174] Additionally, in some embodiments, the communications subsystem 1324 may receive incoming communications in the form of structured and / or unstructured data feeds 1326, event streams 1328, event updates 1330, etc., on behalf of one or more users who may be using the computer system 1300.

[0175] As an example, the communications subsystem 1324 may be configured to receive data feeds 1326, such as web feeds like Twitter® feeds, Facebook® updates, Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, etc., in real time from users of social networks and / or other communications services, and / or to receive real-time updates from one or more third-party sources.

[0176] The communications subsystem 1324 may also be configured to receive data in the form of a continuous data stream, which may include an event stream 1328 of real-time events that may be continuous or may be essentially unbounded with no clear ends and / or event updates 1330. 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.

[0177] The communications subsystem 1324 may also be configured to output structured and / or unstructured data feeds 1326, event streams 1328, event updates 1330, etc. to one or more databases that may communicate with one or more streaming data source computers coupled to the computer system 1300.

[0178] The computer system 1300 may be one of a variety of types, including a handheld mobile 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 kiosk, a server rack, or other data processing system.

[0179] Because computers and networks are constantly evolving, the description of the illustrated computer system 1300 is intended only as a specific example. Many other configurations having more or fewer components than the illustrated system are possible. For example, customized hardware may also be used and / or particular elements may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software (including applets), or a combination. Additionally, connections to other computing devices, such as network input / output devices, may be utilized. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided in this disclosure, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate other means and / or methods for implementing various embodiments.

[0180] While specific embodiments of the present disclosure have been described, various modifications, variations, alternative configurations, and equivalents are encompassed within the scope of the present disclosure. The embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited to operating in a particular data processing environment, but can freely operate in multiple data processing environments. Furthermore, while embodiments of the present disclosure have been described using a particular series of actions and steps, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the scope of the present disclosure is not limited to the series of actions and steps described. Various features and aspects of the above-described embodiments can be used individually or jointly.

[0181] Furthermore, while embodiments of the present disclosure have been described using a particular combination of hardware and software, it should be appreciated that other combinations of hardware and software are within the scope of the present disclosure. Embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented using only hardware, only software, or a combination thereof. The various processes described in this disclosure may run on the same processor or any combination of different processors. Thus, when a component or module is described as being configured to perform a particular process, that configuration may be achieved, for example, by designing electronic circuitry to perform the process, by programming a programmable electronic circuit (such as a microprocessor) to perform the process, or a combination thereof. Processes may communicate using a variety of 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.

[0182] Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense. It will be apparent, however, that additions, subtractions, deletions, and other modifications and changes may be made without departing from the broad spirit and scope defined by the appended claims. Accordingly, while specific embodiments of the present disclosure have been described, these embodiments are not intended to be limiting. Various modifications and equivalents thereof are intended to be encompassed within the scope of the appended claims.

[0183] The indefinite articles "a" / "an," the definite article "the," and similar references used in the context of describing this disclosure (particularly in the context of the claims) should be construed to include both the singular and the plural unless otherwise stated in this disclosure or the context clearly indicates otherwise. The terms "comprising," "having," "including," and "containing" should be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning "including, but not limited to") unless otherwise indicated. The term "connected" should be construed as partly or wholly contained within, attached to, or joined together, even if there is something intervening. In this disclosure, the recitation of ranges of values ​​is intended merely as a shorthand method of referring to each individual value contained within the range, and unless otherwise stated in this disclosure, each individual value is incorporated into this disclosure as if set forth individually in this disclosure. Unless otherwise stated in this disclosure or the context clearly indicates otherwise, all methods described in this disclosure can be performed in any suitable order. In this disclosure, the use of any and all examples or exemplary language (e.g., "such as") is intended to further clarify embodiments of the disclosure and does not limit the scope of the disclosure unless otherwise specified. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element essential to the practice of the disclosure.

[0184] Disjunctive language, such as the phrase "at least one of X, Y, or Z," is intended to be understood in context as generally used to indicate that an item, term, etc. may be either X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and / or Z), unless otherwise specified. Thus, such disjunctive language is not generally intended to or imply that a particular embodiment requires that at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z be present.

[0185] Preferred embodiments of the present disclosure are described herein, including the best mode known for carrying out the disclosure. Variations of these preferred embodiments will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the foregoing description. Those skilled in the art can employ such variations as appropriate, and the present disclosure may be practiced otherwise 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 thereof is encompassed by this disclosure unless otherwise indicated herein.

[0186] All references cited herein, including publications, patent applications, and patents, are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual reference was individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and was set forth in its entirety herein.

[0187] In the foregoing specification, aspects of the disclosure have been described with reference to particular embodiments thereof, but those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosure is not limited thereto. Various features and aspects of the above-described disclosure may be used individually or jointly. Moreover, the embodiments can 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 regarded as illustrative rather than restrictive.

Claims

1. 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: The method includes the computer obtaining a set of connection paths of a containerized environment, the set of connection paths each indicating a connection between a pair of containers in the containerized environment, the method comprising: the computer identifying a first container and a second container of the pair of containers based at least in part on one connection path of the set of connection paths; and determining, by the computer, a network policy corresponding to the connection path, the network policy indicating an expected outcome of a particular connection between the first container and the second container, the method comprising: the computer initiating a connection from the first container to the second container; determining by the computer whether the initialized connection is established; presenting the result of the determination to a user device based at least in part on the result being different from the expected result indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path; and identifying connection paths of the first subset of connection paths as positive paths based at least in part on one or more network policies each corresponding to each connection path in the first subset of connection paths, wherein identifying a particular connection path as a positive path includes determining that a connection between two containers of the connection path is allowed based at least in part on the corresponding network policy, and the method further comprises: generating a second subset of connection paths from the set of connection paths, the second subset of connection paths corresponding to negative paths, the second subset of connection paths being generated based at least in part on identifying the first subset of connection paths.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the result indicates that the connection was established or that the establishment of the connection failed.

3. The obtaining of the set of connection paths includes, for at least one connection path of the set of connection paths: monitoring network traffic between two containers in the containerized environment at runtime; and generating a corresponding connection path based at least in part on said monitoring.

4. 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the set of connection paths further comprises obtaining, for at least one connection path in the set of connection paths, a predetermined connection path that indicates whether a particular connection between a particular pair of containers is allowed or not allowed.

5. 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising identifying the first container and the second container based at least in part on a determination that the first container is associated with a first label and the second container is associated with a second label.

6. the first container is one of a plurality of containers associated with the first label; The method comprises: initiating an additional connection between at least one other container of the plurality of containers and the second container; determining, by the computer, a result of adding the additional connection; 6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising: presenting the additional results based at least in part on a determination that the additional results differ from the expected results indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path.

7. 1. A computing device comprising: a processor; and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to: and obtaining a set of connection paths of a containerized environment, the set of connection paths each indicating a connection between a pair of containers in the containerized environment, the instructions causing the computing device to: identifying a first container and a second container of a pair of containers based at least in part on one connection path of the set of connection paths; determining a network policy corresponding to the connection path, the network policy indicating an expected outcome of a particular connection between the first container and the second container, the instructions causing the computing device to: Initiating a connection from the first container to the second container; determining whether the initialized connection is established; causing a user device to present a result of the determination based at least in part on the result being different from the expected result indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path; and causing the computing device to identify connection paths of the first subset of the set of connection paths as positive paths based at least in part on one or more network policies each corresponding to each connection path in the first subset of connection paths, wherein identifying a particular connection path as a positive path includes determining that a connection between two containers of the connection path is allowed based at least in part on the corresponding network policy, and the instructions further cause the computing device to: generating a second subset of connection paths from the set of connection paths, the second subset of connection paths corresponding to negative paths, the second subset of connection paths being generated based at least in part on identifying the first subset of connection paths.

8. The computing device of claim 7 , wherein the result indicates that the connection was established or that the establishment of the connection failed.

9. Executing the instructions to obtain the set of connection paths causes the computing device to, for at least one connection path of the set of connection paths: monitoring, at runtime, network traffic between two containers in the containerized environment; The computing device of claim 7 or 8, configured to generate corresponding connection paths based at least in part on the monitoring.

10. 10. The computing device of claim 7, wherein executing the instructions to obtain the set of connection paths further causes the computing device to obtain, for at least one connection path of the set of connection paths, a predetermined connection path indicating whether a particular connection between a particular pair of containers is allowed or not allowed.

11. 11. The computing device of claim 7, wherein executing the instructions causes the computing device to identify the first container and the second container based at least in part on a determination that the first container is associated with a first label and the second container is associated with a second label.

12. the first container is one of a plurality of containers associated with the first label; Executing the instructions causes the computing device to: initiating an additional connection between at least one other container of the plurality of containers and the second container; Verifying the results of adding the additional connection; 12. The computing device of claim 11, causing the additional results to be presented based at least in part on determining that the additional results differ from the expected results indicated by the network policy corresponding to the connection path.

13. A program for causing a computer to execute the method according to any one of claims 1 to 6.

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