Active-Standby SVE Redundancy via Virtual IP Registration
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Solution Overview
Problem
High-end data center designs face increasing complexity and energy consumption challenges due to shifting traffic patterns, which impact application response times and end-user experience, and require improved network high availability to prevent downtime.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a two-node, active-standby service virtualization endpoint (SVE) redundancy system that registers with a cloud-centric-network control point using a virtual IP address for both control and data planes, ensuring transparent failover and maintaining identical TCAM entries for load-sharing and redundancy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a single SVE is used in the service insertion architecture, then the device complexity is reduced, but the network reliability deteriorates due to single point of failure
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements redundancy by copying the SVE functionality to multiple physical devices. Multiple SVEs are deployed with identical TCAM entries and configuration, allowing any single SVE failure to be compensated by the standby SVE, thus improving network reliability without requiring complex coordination between multiple active nodes
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges multiple SVE instances into a single virtualized service node that presents a unified virtual IP address to the network. The active-standby mechanism combines the functionality of multiple physical SVEs into one logical entity, improving reliability while maintaining simplified network perception
2Reliability
If active-standby SVE redundancy is implemented, then the network availability is improved, but the failover time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The standby SVE performs preliminary actions by pre-loading identical TCAM entries and maintaining the same configuration as the active SVE. This preparation ensures that when failover is needed, the standby node can immediately assume the active role without requiring configuration changes or service re-establishment, thus minimizing failover time while maintaining high availability
Solution Approach 2:
By copying all operational state information including TCAM entries to the standby SVE, the system enables instantaneous failover. The standby node is an exact replica ready to take over immediately, reducing the time loss during failover events
3Reliability
If service chaining information is replicated to standby SVE, then the failover transparency is improved, but the data synchronization complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent simplifies data synchronization by copying static service chaining information and TCAM entries to the standby SVE. Since these are deterministic configurations rather than dynamic data streams, the synchronization process becomes a simple file copy or configuration load operation, maintaining failover transparency without introducing complex synchronization mechanisms
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for providing service virtualization endpoint (SVE) redundancy in a two-node, active-standby form. An active-standby pair of SVEs register with a cloud-centric-network control point (CCN-CP) as a single service node (SN) using a virtual IP address for both a control-plane and a data-plane. At any given time, only the active SVE is a host for the control-plane and the data-plane. When a failover happens, the hosting operation is taken over by the standby SVE, therefore the failover will be transparent to CCN-CP and the SN.