Distributed Orchestration Agents for Virtualized Infrastructure Configuration
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Solution Overview
Problem
In virtualized computing infrastructure, managing distributed resources and ensuring high availability and scalability is challenging, especially when destination hosts are under maintenance or become unreachable due to power-off or reboot, requiring effective orchestration and network configuration management across multiple nodes.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of distributed orchestration agents that execute on hosts within the computing infrastructure, aggregating local and central configuration states to maintain necessary configurations for virtual machines and network devices, ensuring seamless operation and integration with network controllers for virtual network management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If distributed orchestration agents aggregate configuration state from multiple sources, then configuration integrity and high availability are improved, but system complexity and difficulty of managing distributed resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments configuration management into distributed orchestration agents deployed on individual hosts, each responsible for local configuration state. This segmentation allows each agent to independently manage its host's configuration while contributing to overall system reliability through distributed redundancy.
Solution Approach 2:
Orchestrator 105 acts as an intermediary that coordinates between distributed orchestration agents and network controller 110. It aggregates configuration state from multiple sources and resolves conflicts, thereby improving configuration integrity while abstracting the complexity from individual components.
2Speed
If orchestration agents listen to event streams on local hosts, then responsiveness to configuration changes is improved, but resource consumption and operational complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Distributed orchestration agents are designed to autonomously listen to event streams on their respective local hosts and automatically process configuration changes. This self-service capability improves responsiveness without requiring centralized coordination for every event, while the standardized agent design keeps operational complexity manageable.
Solution Approach 2:
The system establishes event stream subscriptions and configuration state aggregation mechanisms in advance, before configuration changes occur. This preliminary setup enables immediate responsiveness to events while the initial configuration work is done beforehand, reducing operational complexity during actual changes.
3Reliability
If the system maintains configuration state across distributed hosts, then high availability during host maintenance is improved, but information loss and synchronization difficulties increase
Solution Approach 1:
Distributed orchestration agents continuously report configuration state to the orchestrator, which maintains a global view of system configuration. This feedback mechanism ensures that configuration information is synchronized across all hosts, preventing information loss while maintaining high availability during host maintenance or failure.
Solution Approach 2:
The orchestrator merges configuration state from multiple distributed sources into a unified configuration view. This combination of local agent states with centralized orchestration ensures complete configuration information is preserved and synchronized, preventing information loss while enabling high availability.
4Productivity
If virtual machines are migrated between hosts, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but network configuration management complexity and time loss increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-configures network virtualization layer 108 and establishes network policies before VM migration occurs. This preliminary network configuration preparation enables rapid VM migration without time-consuming reconfiguration, improving resource utilization efficiency while minimizing configuration management time loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The orchestrator acts as an intermediary that coordinates network configuration changes during VM migration between hosts. It manages the complex network state transitions centrally, thereby simplifying the migration process and reducing the time required for configuration management while enabling efficient resource utilization.
Data Source
AI summary
A computing device includes processing circuitry coupled to a memory device, and an orchestration agent configured for execution by the processing circuitry. The orchestration agent is an agent of an orchestrator for a computing infrastructure that includes the computing device, wherein the orchestration agent is configured to: detect configuration events from the computing device to determine local configuration state of the computing device; aggregate the local configuration state from the computing device with configuration state from a network controller to generate aggregated configuration state; and store the aggregated configuration state for application to operation of the computing device.