Network Controller Hard Zoning Across Transport Protocols
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current storage area network (SAN) transport protocols lack a unified and transport-independent hard zoning scheme, leading to complexity and inefficiencies, particularly as some protocols only offer soft zoning or require dedicated hardware for hard zoning.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a network controller to instantiate hard zoning in a transport-independent manner using a common hard zoning scheme across various protocols, allowing the same hardware resources to manage connectivity and visibility for devices regardless of the transport protocol, and eliminating the need for login and logout procedures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If transport-specific hard zoning schemes are implemented for each protocol, then protocol-specific connectivity control is achieved, but device complexity and hardware requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal hard zoning scheme that works across multiple transport protocols (FC, FCoE, RoCE, iSCSI) using a common hardware resource (TCAM table) and unified data structure. This allows the same hardware resources to manage connectivity for different protocols simultaneously, eliminating the need for protocol-specific hardware implementations while maintaining reliable connectivity control.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces a network controller as an intermediary that manages the TCAM-based access control lists and provides hard zoning functionality to switches. This mediator handles the complexity of implementing hard zoning across multiple protocols, allowing the switches to use a simplified, unified hardware mechanism without needing to understand protocol-specific zoning requirements.
2Reliability
If protocol-specific hard zoning schemes are implemented, then connectivity control is achieved, but network administration complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a universal hard zoning approach where a single TCAM-based access control list structure serves all transport protocols. Network administrators manage zoning configurations through a unified interface and data format that works across FC, FCoE, RoCE, and iSCSI protocols, eliminating the need to learn and manage separate zoning schemes for each protocol while maintaining secure connectivity control.
3Speed
If dedicated hardware resources are allocated for each protocol's hard zoning, then protocol-specific performance is optimized, but hardware resource utilization efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a shared TCAM-based hardware resource that serves multiple transport protocols simultaneously. The same TCAM table stores access control list entries for FC, FCoE, RoCE, and iSCSI protocols, allowing efficient hardware resource utilization while maintaining the high-speed hard zoning enforcement needed for SAN traffic. This eliminates the waste of dedicating separate hardware resources to each protocol.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges the hard zoning functionality for multiple transport protocols into a single unified TCAM-based access control mechanism. By combining protocol-specific zoning requirements into a common hardware structure with a unified data format, the system achieves efficient resource sharing while maintaining the performance characteristics needed for different SAN protocols.
Data Source
AI summary
A network controller may include a flow identifier to identify a flow using frame information. The frame information may be transmitted by a network switch. The network controller may include a retriever to retrieve hard zoning configuration data corresponding to the flow. The hard zoning configuration data may be used by the network switch to update an access control list.