Highly scalable application network appliances with virtualized services

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a machine, cause the machine to:

• receive one or more packets of a network transaction from a client over a first network for accessing an application server of a datacenter over a second network;
• store meta-data associated with each of the packets, wherein the meta-data stores information for communication links and including session information and transaction information of the packets in the form of unique communication identifiers and information for converting a protocol data unit (PDU) of the packet into a data stream for application layer processing;
• identify a context associated with application services to be performed on the received packets based on a priority level assigned to each of the packets, the context including authorization and authentication policies;
• associate the context with the received packets;
• split processing operations of the packets into two independent processing domains such that a first processing domain is for layer 2 network service processing of the packets and a second processing domain is for layer 7 application service processing of the packets;
• provide one or more virtual communication links which share a single physical link that maps to a network unit having multiple network servers and application servers and wherein each of the virtual communication links of the physical link is associated with at least one network server of the network unit to provide the layer 2 network service processing on each of the received packets and at least one application server of the network unit to provide the layer 7 application service processing on each of the received packets based on the identified context;
• map the received packets to one or more virtual communication links based on the context and application services to be provided on the received packets such that the virtual links provide differentiated application services on the received packets based on a service level associated with the context in order to control processing resources of the network element;
• and
• designate one or more packets as high priority packets based on the service level associated with the packets to guarantee isolation of the context and domain of the packet based on one or more service policies set by the application server;
• and
• map the high priority packets to one of the virtual communication links designated as a high priority virtual communication link such that the high priority packets are mapped to the at least one network server and the at least one application server of the network unit before other packets.

An apparatus comprising:

• a network interface;
• a memory;
• and
• a processor coupled to the network interface and memory, and configured to:
• receive one or more packets of a network transaction from a client over a first network for accessing an application server of a datacenter over a second network;
• store meta-data associated with each of the packets, wherein the meta-data stores information for communication links and including session information and transaction information of the packets in the form of unique communication identifiers and information for converting a protocol data unit (PDU) of the packet into a data stream for application layer processing;
• identify a context associated with application services to be performed on the received packets based on a priority level assigned to each of the packets, the context including authorization and authentication policies;
• associate the context with the received packets;
• split processing operations of the packets into two independent processing domains such that a first processing domain is for layer 2 network service processing of the packets and a second processing domain is for layer 7 application service processing of the packets;
• provide one or more virtual communication links which share a single physical link that maps to a network unit having multiple network servers and application servers and wherein each of the virtual communication links of the physical link is associated with at least one network server of the network unit to provide the layer 2 network service processing on each of the received packets and at least one application server of the network unit to provide the layer 7 application service processing on each of the received packets based on the identified context;
• map the received packets to the one or more virtual communication links based on the context and application services to be provided on the received packets such that the virtual links provide differentiated application services on the received packets based on a service level associated with the context in order to control processing resources of the apparatus;
• and
• designate one or more packets as high priority packets based on the service level associated with the packets to guarantee isolation of the context and domain of the packet based on one or more service policies set by the application server;
• and
• map the high priority packets to one of the virtual communication links designated as a high priority virtual communication link such that the high priority packets are mapped to the at least one network server and the at least one application server of the network unit before other packets.