Maintenance Management for Public Cloud IP Address Drainage

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Solution Overview

Problem

Public Cloud deployments face challenges in minimizing service impact during maintenance events, particularly when moving Public Internet Protocol (IP) addresses between instances, which can cause unacceptable delays and service interruptions in real-time communication applications.

Innovation Solution

Implementing a method that involves a Maintenance Management application to register for maintenance notifications, determine public IP addresses hosted by Packet Front End applications, and notify session control applications to drain these addresses before maintenance events, ensuring minimal service disruption by ceasing IP address usage and terminating Packet Front End applications as needed.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If Public Cloud infrastructure terminates a virtual machine for maintenance, then system reliability is improved, but service interruption time increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesystem reliabilityVSAvoidservice interruption time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by detecting maintenance events before they occur and proactively draining IP addresses from the affected virtual machine. The Maintenance Management application receives maintenance event indications, identifies the virtual machine to be maintained, and drains its IP addresses before termination, allowing seamless failover to standby instances without service interruption.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system applies preliminary anti-action by preemptively draining IP addresses from the virtual machine before maintenance termination. This prevents the harmful effect of service interruption by removing the IP address binding in advance, so when the VM is terminated, no active sessions are disrupted and standby instances can immediately take over.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #9Preliminary anti-action

2Reliability

If IP addresses are moved between instances, then service continuity is improved, but IP address migration time increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveservice continuityVSAvoidIP address migration time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system extracts the IP address binding from the virtual machine before termination by draining the IP addresses. This separation allows the IP addresses to be independently reassigned to standby instances without being tied to the original VM's lifecycle, enabling rapid failover without migration delays.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The Maintenance Management application acts as an intermediary that coordinates between the cloud infrastructure maintenance events and the application layer instances. It receives maintenance indications, manages the IP address draining process, and triggers failover to standby instances, orchestrating the entire transition without service disruption.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

3Productivity

If maintenance events are handled immediately, then system updates are applied promptly, but service impact increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvemaintenance execution speedVSAvoidservice impact

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary draining of IP addresses before maintenance execution, preparing the system in advance so that when maintenance is applied, no active sessions are affected. This preliminary preparation allows immediate maintenance execution without service impact.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system provides beforehand cushioning by maintaining standby instances that are pre-prepared to take over immediately when maintenance occurs. The standby instances act as a buffer, absorbing the maintenance event without impacting service continuity, thus cushioning the system against service disruption.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #11Beforehand cushioning (Prior cushioning)

Data Source

PatentUS20250097194A1Methods, systems and apparatus for handling maintenance events in public cloud deployments

Publication Date: 2025.03.20 RIBBON COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING CO INC

AI summary

An exemplary embodiment of implementing a communications service in a Public Cloud system comprises the steps of: (i) registering, by a Maintenance Management application of the communications service, to receive notifications for maintenance events scheduled for virtual machines and/or servers of the Public Cloud system being used to implement the communications service; (ii) receiving, by the Maintenance Management application, a maintenance notification indicating a first virtual machine is to undergo a maintenance event; (iii) determining, by the Maintenance Management application, public IP addresses being hosted by a first Packet Front End application executing on the first virtual machine; and (iv) notifying session control applications of the communications service to drain the determined public IP addresses being hosted by the first Packet Front End application.