Express Route Transmissions Between Virtual Machines and Cloud Services
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud service providers face increased costs due to the need to enhance load balancer capacity to handle growing traffic loads, which can lead to higher expenses and potential performance issues.
Innovation Solution
Implementing techniques that allow data transmission between virtual machines (VMs) and cloud service computing devices to bypass load balancers using express routes and direct return routes, leveraging tunneling protocols like VXLAN to reduce network traffic load on load balancers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If load balancer capacity is increased to handle growing traffic loads, then traffic handling capability is improved, but cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments network traffic into two paths: express routes for VM-to-cloud service traffic that bypass load balancers, and traditional routes for other traffic that goes through load balancers. This segmentation allows traffic handling capability to be improved for specific traffic types without proportionally increasing load balancer capacity, thereby reducing cost.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts VM-to-cloud service traffic from the load balancer processing path and routes it directly through express routes. This extraction removes unnecessary traffic from the load balancer workload, improving overall traffic handling capability while reducing the capacity (and cost) required for load balancers.
2Productivity
If load balancer capacity is increased to handle growing traffic loads, then traffic handling capability is improved, but performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting traffic paths, the patent ensures that express route traffic does not contend with traditional load balancer traffic, improving performance for VM communications while maintaining overall traffic handling capability through the combined capacity of both paths.
Solution Approach 2:
Extracting VM-to-cloud service traffic from the load balancer path eliminates performance degradation caused by load balancer processing overhead and traffic contention, thereby improving reliability for critical VM communications while the load balancer continues to handle other traffic.
3Ease of operation
If traffic goes through load balancers, then traffic management and distribution is improved, but latency increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts VM-to-cloud service traffic from the load balancer path and routes it directly, eliminating load balancer processing delays and reducing latency for this traffic type while maintaining traffic management capabilities for other traffic through the load balancer.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces express routes as intermediary paths that provide direct connectivity between VMs and cloud services, bypassing the load balancer intermediary for specific traffic types. This reduces latency while the load balancer continues to serve as intermediary for other traffic requiring its management capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus includes a virtual machine (VM) that is accessible via a cloud service. The VM has a virtual switch via which data is routed to and from the VM. The virtual switch is configured to: access an express route flow table which indicates whether a particular front end computing device has previously received a first data packet from the VM, and determine, based on the express route flow table, whether to encapsulate a second data packet from the VM destined for the particular front end computing device for an express route so as to bypass a load balancer of the cloud service.