US 9,753,942 B2Granted

Traffic statistic generation for datacenters

AssigneeRobin Systems, Inc.

InventorsRafit Izhak-Ratzin, Krishna Satyasai Yeddanapudi, Haim Helman

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for generating traffic statistics for a datacenter. Distributed, parallel processing may be used to generate traffic statistics from data sets about traffic in a datacenter. To reduce data sets from which such statistics are derived to manageable sizes and relevant processing times for distributed, parallel processing, traffic agents may be provided at end hosts in the datacenter. The traffic agents may summarize data traffic over large numbers of packets in terms of the various sockets over which they are transmitted. Reports on the various sockets may be sent by the various flow agents that monitor them to an analytic controller. The analytic controller may aggregate, provide flow-path information for, further reduce, and/or provision the resultant data for distributed parallel processing.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A system for generating traffic statistics for a datacenter comprising:

an end host in a datacenter, the end host comprising a memory, a processor, and a Network Interface Controller (NIC) to execute:
summarizing traffic data at a level of a portion of a traffic flow between a computing node at the end host and a second computing node in the datacenter, and
bundling the traffic data for the portion with source information for the traffic flow, and
reporting the traffic data with source information to an analytic controller;
and
the analytic controller hosted by a computer in the datacenter comprising memory, a processor, and an NIC to:
aggregating traffic data with bundled source information from multiple flow agents hosted by multiple end hosts in the datacenter to obtain aggregated traffic data;
and
retrieving, from a look up table, a list of links and nodes between the end host and the second computing node, the list of links and nodes between the end host and the second computing node corresponding to an enforced path between the end host and the second computing node, the list of links and nodes between the end host and the second computing node including two or more intermediate nodes;
bundling the list of links and nodes between the end host and the second computing node with the aggregated traffic data;
and
provisioning the aggregated traffic data for traffic-statistic-producing parallel processing;
maintaining a counter operable to indicate when a grouping time period has expired;
combining traffic data for multiple traffic flows with a common source and destination within the grouping time period into a common tuple-traffic group, the common tuple-traffic group describable by common parameter values for the common source and destination within the source information used to transmit traffic flows belonging to the common tuple-traffic group, and combined traffic data summarizing the traffic scheduled for the common tuple-traffic group and comprising at least one of the traffic data summarizing the portion of the traffic flows and additional traffic data summarizing a second portion of a second traffic flow along the common tuple-traffic group;
and
generating a pre-activity file with the combined traffic data and corresponding source information for communication to the analytic controller.

13 more elements

A method for calculating statistics about traffic within a datacenter, the method comprising:

summarizing, by a flow agent at an end host in a datacenter, data transmissions across multiple packets at, at least one of, a traffic-flow level and a traffic-tuple level for packets transmitted from a common socket;
communicate the data-transmission summaries with corresponding identification information to an analytic controller;
aggregate data-transmission summaries and accompanying identification information from multiple flow agents at the analytic controller;
store aggregated, data-transmission summaries at different nodes within a cluster of computing nodes in preparation for parallel processing;
maintaining topology information for the datacenter at the analytic controller, the topology information including a plurality of enforced paths including a list of one or more edges and two or more intervening nodes enforced on packets with common destinations and sources by a connection based packet switching protocol implemented by the datacenter and to convert identification information for at least one of a traffic flow and a tuple-traffic group to a path through the datacenter, the path described by at least one edge and at least two nodes traversed;
and
pre-processing the aggregated data-transmission summaries by translating, with the topology information, the accompanying identification information into paths of edges and nodes and storing the paths of edges and nodes in the data transmission summaries;
and
uncover traffic statistics for the datacenter by performing data mining during parallel processing of the aggregated data-transmission summaries within the cluster of computing nodes;
wherein the method further comprises, by the flow agent:
maintaining a counter to indicate when a grouping time period has expired;
combining traffic data for multiple traffic flows with a common source and destination within the grouping time period into a common tuple-traffic group, the common tuple-traffic group describable by common parameter values for the common source and destination within the source information used to transmit traffic flows belonging to the common tuple-traffic group;
generating combined traffic data summarizing traffic scheduled for the common tuple-traffic group;
and
generating a pre-activity file with the combined traffic data and corresponding source information for communication to the analytic controller.

12 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 14/454,674Filed 7 Aug 2014 · continuation in part
Priority: 10 Sep 2013
Published: US 2015/0071072 A112 Mar 2015
Granted: 5 Sep 2017
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification10 codes

G06F 16/182
File system types: distributed file systems
H04L 43/026
Capturing of monitoring data: using flow identification
H04L 43/045
Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation: for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
H04L 43/0876
Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters: network utilisation, e.g. volume of…

Family

Application61/876,045Us provisional application · filed 10 Sep 2013
Application14/222,370Parent of this continuation-in-part · filed 21 Mar 2014
US 2015/0074264 A1Pre-grant publication · published 12 Mar 2015
US 2015/0071072 A1Published application
US 9,426,072 B2Related patent
US 9,753,942 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.