SD-WAN Container Network Fabric with Virtual Gateway
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data network architectures, such as those using virtual machines, face inefficiencies in resource utilization and scalability, particularly when multiple applications share resources, leading to potential slowdowns and increased costs due to resource wastage.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a software-defined wide-area-network (SD-WAN) enabled network fabric for containers, which creates a virtual gateway instance, configures virtual networks, and deploys a virtual gateway to enable container communication, utilizing network address translation (NAT) and health monitoring to ensure efficient resource allocation and isolation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If multiple applications share system resources, then resource utilization improves, but application performance deteriorates due to resource contention
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments applications into isolated containers, each with dedicated resource allocation. The containerization mechanism divides the system into independent units (containers) that can be managed separately, preventing resource contention between applications while maintaining high overall resource utilization through efficient packing and orchestration.
2Reliability
If applications are executed on separate physical machines, then application isolation improves, but system cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple application execution environments into a single physical host by using containerization technology. Multiple containers can coexist on one machine with strong isolation boundaries, providing application isolation equivalent to separate physical machines while reducing hardware requirements and system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The container runtime and orchestration system act as intermediaries between the physical host and applications, providing isolation and management capabilities. This intermediary layer enables multiple applications to run isolated from each other on shared hardware without requiring separate physical infrastructure for each application.
3Reliability
If virtual machines are used for application isolation, then security improves, but resource overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses lightweight container instances instead of heavy virtual machine images. Containers are designed to be ephemeral and can be created, modified, and destroyed rapidly with minimal resource overhead, replacing the bulky and resource-intensive VM images while maintaining isolation capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and techniques are described for creating a software-defined wide-area-network (SD-WAN) enabled network fabric for containers. Embodiments can configure one or more virtual networks on a network node, wherein the one or more virtual networks are used for creating the SD-WAN enabled network fabric for containers. Next, the embodiments can deploy a virtual gateway on the network node by executing the virtual gateway image. The embodiments can then create a container network interface configuration based on network address information of the one or more virtual networks and the virtual gateway, and execute the container network interface configuration, thereby enabling containers on the network node to communicate via the SD-WAN enabled network fabric.