Control Cluster for Multi-Cluster Container Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing multiple containerized clusters is burdensome due to increased maintenance, updating, and operational costs as the number of clusters grows, requiring separate clusters for each application while complicating security and maintenance processes.
Innovation Solution
A control cluster is introduced to manage and deploy workloads across multiple clusters, aggregating monitoring data and providing unified alerts on a single dashboard, enabling centralized management, improved security, and reduced operational costs by automating updates and maintaining consistency across clusters.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate clusters are created for each application to improve security, then security is improved, but device complexity and operational burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple separate application clusters into a single multi-tenant cluster, allowing multiple applications to coexist in one shared environment. This reduces the total number of clusters from N (one per application) to 1, thereby decreasing device complexity and operational burden while maintaining security through namespace isolation and resource quotas.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal multi-tenant cluster that can host multiple different applications simultaneously, rather than requiring dedicated single-tenant clusters for each application. This multi-functional approach allows one cluster to serve multiple purposes and multiple applications, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining security boundaries between applications.
2Reliability
If multiple separate clusters are maintained for security, then security is improved, but maintenance time and operational costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
By merging multiple application workloads into a single multi-tenant cluster, the patent enables centralized management of security patches, updates, and maintenance operations. Instead of maintaining N separate clusters requiring N separate maintenance cycles, a single cluster can be updated and maintained once, significantly reducing maintenance time and operational costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The universal multi-tenant cluster provides a single platform that can be maintained, updated, and secured as one system rather than multiple separate systems. This reduces the cumulative maintenance time required across multiple clusters while maintaining security through shared infrastructure and centralized control mechanisms.
3Reliability
If N clusters are created for N applications, then security is improved, but operational costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent consolidates N separate application clusters into one shared multi-tenant cluster, reducing infrastructure duplication. This merging allows shared use of underlying hardware resources, control plane components, and support infrastructure, thereby reducing operational costs while maintaining security through logical isolation mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The universal multi-tenant cluster provides cost-efficient operation by allowing multiple applications to share the same infrastructure resources. Instead of each application requiring its own dedicated cluster with full set of resources, the shared cluster allows resource pooling and efficient utilization, reducing overall operational costs while maintaining security boundaries.
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosure herein describes managing multiple clusters within a container environment using a control cluster. The control cluster includes a single deployment model that manages deployment of cluster components to a plurality of clusters at the cluster level. Changes or updates made to one cluster are automatically propagated to other clusters in the same environment, reducing system update time across clusters. The control cluster aggregates and/or stores monitoring data for the plurality of clusters creating a centralized data store for metrics data, log data and other systems data. The monitoring data and/or alerts are displayed on a unified dashboard via a user interface. The unified dashboard creates a single representation of clusters and monitor data in a single location providing system health data and unified alerts notifying a user as to issues detected across multiple clusters.