Network Proxy for Decoupling Application Connections During Downtime
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing network event monitoring systems face challenges in minimizing downtime during upgrades, particularly in ensuring the lossless transmission of critical log events, even with load balancing and failover techniques, and managing distributed log applications poses inter-node traffic security and topology management issues.
Innovation Solution
A method that decouples network connections from applications during downtime by using a proxy instance as an intermediary, which buffers incoming data when the application is offline and redirects it back when the application is online, ensuring no data loss and maintaining network connectivity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If load balancing and failover techniques are employed in a distributed log application, then system availability is improved, but event loss may still occur during critical failover moments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a network proxy as an intermediary component between network devices and the log application. The proxy maintains persistent TCP connections with network devices and buffers incoming log events during application downtime or failover transitions. This intermediary absorbs the connection complexity and ensures events are captured and delivered reliably, preventing event loss during critical moments when the application is unavailable.
Solution Approach 2:
The network proxy establishes and maintains TCP connections with network devices in advance, before any failover or downtime occurs. By pre-establishing these persistent connections and being ready to buffer events immediately, the system ensures no events are lost during the transition period when the log application is unavailable or being failovered.
2Ease of manufacture
If a log application is taken down for upgrades, then system maintenance is enabled, but network data loss occurs during the downtime
Solution Approach 1:
The network proxy serves as a mediator that remains active during log application upgrades. It continues to receive and buffer log events from network devices while the application is down, then forwards the buffered events to the application once it restarts. This allows maintenance operations without data loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The network proxy ensures continuous event capture and forwarding capability even when the log application is unavailable for upgrades. By maintaining the event collection and buffering function independently of the application's operational state, the system achieves continuous useful action throughout the maintenance window.
3Productivity
If UDP protocol is used for log transmission, then network efficiency is improved, but event delivery reliability deteriorates due to lack of acknowledgment
Solution Approach 1:
The network proxy acts as an intermediary that implements reliable delivery semantics between UDP-based network devices and the log application. The proxy establishes persistent TCP connections with devices, providing acknowledgment and retransmission capabilities, while maintaining the simplicity of UDP for the application layer. This resolves the contradiction by absorbing the reliability mechanism in the proxy layer.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent substitutes the unreliable UDP protocol with a reliable TCP-based mechanism at the proxy layer. The network proxy uses TCP's built-in acknowledgment and retransmission features to ensure reliable event delivery, while presenting a simplified interface to both the network devices and the log application.
4Reliability
If TCP protocol is used for log transmission, then event delivery reliability is improved, but event loss occurs when the log server is overloaded
Solution Approach 1:
The network proxy serves as a buffer and traffic management intermediary between network devices and the log application. When the application becomes overloaded, the proxy can temporarily buffer events locally or implement rate limiting, preventing event loss due to server overload while maintaining reliable delivery semantics.
5Loss of information
If a proxy instance is introduced to decouple connections, then event loss during downtime is prevented, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The network proxy introduces a single intermediary component that centralizes connection management and event buffering logic. While this adds one element to the system, it simplifies the overall architecture by consolidating complexity in the proxy rather than requiring complex distributed session management across multiple application instances.
Data Source
AI summary
Some embodiments provide a method for saving data communicated with an application during the application downtime. The method, in some embodiments, receives incoming data from an interface of a machine. The incoming data includes data that is originated by different resources to be sent to a particular application that executes on the machine. The method forwards the incoming data to the particular application when the particular application is available, and forwards the incoming data to a data storage to be buffered when the particular application is unavailable for receiving the incoming data.