Network Protocol Parameter Provisioning for Cluster Deployment
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In virtual data center environments, the deployment and management of network clusters require significant manual configuration and result in heavy network traffic, with WAN bandwidth congestion issues due to the need for manual negotiation of protocol parameters and the pausing of all initiators during congestion, affecting data replication and recovery.
Innovation Solution
A management server selects and programs network nodes to eliminate manual provisioning steps by determining logical paths and protocol parameters, and selectively throttles traffic contributors to alleviate congestion by reducing I/O queue depth until issues are resolved.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If manual configuration of protocol parameters is performed for each host and storage device, then negotiation accuracy and compatibility are improved, but deployment time and network traffic increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The management server pre-configures protocol parameters, initiator identifiers, and target identifiers before cluster deployment. This preliminary action eliminates the need for manual configuration during deployment, reducing deployment time while ensuring parameter accuracy through centralized pre-validation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements automated self-service provisioning where the management server automatically generates and assigns protocol parameters, initiator identifiers, and target identifiers without requiring manual administrator intervention. This automation maintains negotiation accuracy through systematic generation while dramatically reducing deployment time.
2Reliability
If pause frames are transmitted to all initiators during WAN congestion, then network stability is improved, but productivity of non-contributing applications deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The management server implements selective throttling that applies different quality levels to different initiators based on their congestion contribution. Initiators identified as congestion contributors receive pause frames and throttling, while non-contributing initiators maintain normal operation. This local differentiation maintains network stability for problematic nodes while preserving productivity for healthy nodes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments initiators into two groups: congestion contributors and non-contributors. This segmentation allows targeted application of pause frames only to the contributor group, isolating the stability issue to specific nodes while maintaining uninterrupted data replication for the non-contributor group, thus preserving overall system productivity.
Data Source
AI summary
Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include a management server receiving, from each of a plurality of switches, physical topology data of network nodes. The physical topology data includes identifiers of hosts connected to each of the switches and identifiers of storage connected to each of the switches. The management server transmits a query to each of the network nodes and receives, in response to each query, the capabilities of each network node. In response to receiving a request to create a cluster of the hosts, the management server selects hosts and storage from the physical topology data to create the cluster. The hosts and storage are selected based upon the capabilities received from each network node. The management server determines transport protocol login service parameters based upon the received storage capabilities and transmits the parameters to one or more of the plurality of switches, hosts, and storage.