Cross-Spine Switch Fabric for Virtual Machine Reassignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current switch fabric architectures are unable to efficiently manage and maintain a large number of virtual machines across multiple switch fabrics, particularly when virtual machines need to be reassigned for minimizing packet latency or optimizing resource utilization, as they lack the capability to handle such re-assignments effectively.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves a cross-spine switch fabric architecture with leaf switches, spine switches, and cross-fabric spine switches, utilizing forwarding information bases and next hop capability information bases to manage and route virtual machine traffic across different switch fabrics, ensuring seamless re-assignment and efficient network traffic handling through the use of Global Tenant IDs, MAC addresses, and IP addresses.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional switch fabric architecture is used, then device complexity is reduced, but adaptability deteriorates when CVMs need to be reassigned across switch fabrics
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the switch fabric into multiple independent switch fabrics, each with its own spine switches and leaf switches. This segmentation allows CVMs to be reassigned between fabrics while maintaining manageable complexity within each fabric. The cross-fabric spine switches act as intermediaries that enable reassignment without requiring complete restructuring of the entire network.
Solution Approach 2:
Cross-fabric spine switches serve as intermediary devices between different switch fabrics. These intermediary switches enable CVM reassignment by receiving packets from one fabric and forwarding them to the appropriate leaf switch in another fabric, thus providing adaptability without requiring direct connections between all leaf switches across fabrics.
2Productivity
If multiple switch fabrics are interconnected to handle large numbers of CVMs, then productivity increases, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent adds a new dimension to the traditional two-tier switch fabric by introducing cross-fabric spine switches that operate at a higher hierarchical level. This dimensional addition allows multiple switch fabrics to be interconnected in a structured manner, increasing CVM management capacity while maintaining organized complexity through the additional hierarchical layer.
3Loss of time
If CVMs are reassigned to different switch fabrics, then packet latency is minimized and resource utilization is optimized, but control software complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The control plane software performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing forwarding entries in the forwarding information bases before CVMs are reassigned. When a CVM needs to be reassigned, the software has already prepared the necessary routing information in the cross-fabric spine switches and target leaf switches, enabling rapid reassignment with minimal latency without requiring complex real-time computation during the actual migration.
Data Source
AI summary
A fabric for container virtual machines (CM) has cross fabric spine switches coupled to spine switches, each spine switch coupled to has a leaf switches, each leaf switch coupled to servers hosting CVM processes. Each of the leaf switches has an uplink port coupled to a spine switch leaf port configured in a mesh. The spine switches have a plurality of uplink ports for coupling to a plurality of cross fabric spine (CFS) ports into a mesh. The cross fabric spine switches keep a CF-NHCIB table of entries containing capabilities, and also a CF-FIB slice table which maintains entries for assignment of CVMs to new spine switches, such as GTID range, MAC Range, IP range associated with a spine port and spine address (MAC and/or IP) for transferring packets through the fabric.