Abstract:
A system and method is disclosed for seamless network management monitoring when a device or Virtual Machine migrates. As part of a network management monitoring system and method, a separate distinct identifier is designated to each port and each device or VM being monitored. When a device is located a specific port a correlation between the distinct identifier of that port and the distinct identifier of the device is stored in a correlation table and monitored. Once this correlation changes, the network management monitoring system recognizes a migration has occurred and updates the correlation table to correlate the new port&#39;s distinct identifier with the device&#39;s distinct identifier. Parameters that were set up to be monitored for the device can then continue to be monitored at the new location.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    1. Field of the Invention 
         [0002]    The invention relates to network device management and more particularly to smart migration of monitoring parameters for performance network device management. 
         [0003]    2. Description of the Related Art 
         [0004]    Network management software provides network administrators a way of tracking the bandwidth and memory utilization of ports on a network. In general, network administrators choose the parameters that are desired to be monitored and set up specific flows to ensure those parameters are monitored and statistics about them are displayed. Generally, the parameters are selected for each port and as such the flow of parameters is tied to a switch port. 
         [0005]    Most large networks and data centers include servers executing a series of virtual machines (VMs) where each virtual machine acts as a single purpose server. This virtual machine model allows much better use of the server hardware resources than a single use server model. The virtual machines may be managed using a virtual machine manager and monitored by the network management software. One side of effect of having a series of VMs is that the VMs may need to be moved or migrated from a current location to other locations. When a migration occurs, the parameters set up to be monitored for the particular VM or device may no longer be accessible to be monitored. Thus, new flows may need to be designated and set up by the network administrator each time a VM migrates. This is time consuming and inefficient. Therefore a method and system to improve the monitoring of VM parameters is desired that takes into account the possibility of migration. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0006]    A system and method is disclosed for seamless network management monitoring when a device or Virtual Machine migrates. As part of a network management monitoring system and method, a separate distinct identifier is designated to each port and each device or VM being monitored. When a device is located at a specific port a correlation between the distinct identifier of that port and the distinct identifier of the device is stored in a correlation table and monitored. Once this correlation changes, the network management monitoring system recognizes a migration has occurred and updates the correlation table to correlate the new port&#39;s distinct identifier with the device&#39;s distinct identifier. Parameters that were set up to be monitored for the device can then continue to be monitored at the new location. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES 
         [0007]    The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate an implementation of apparatus and methods consistent with the present invention and, together with the detailed description, serve to explain advantages and principles consistent with the invention. 
           [0008]      FIG. 1  is a diagram illustrating a local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) as may be incorporated together with one embodiment of the present invention. 
           [0009]      FIG. 2  is a diagram illustrating a Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) fabric in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. 
           [0010]      FIG. 3  is a diagram of an FC SAN to illustrate operation in accordance with one embodiment the present invention. 
           [0011]      FIG. 4  is a flowchart of the operation of a network management system according to one embodiment of the present invention. 
           [0012]      FIG. 5  is a block diagram of a management station for operating in accordance with the present invention. 
           [0013]      FIG. 6  is a diagram of a Fibre Channel Switch that may be incorporated together with the present invention. 
           [0014]      FIG. 7  is a block diagram of an Ethernet switch that may be incorporated together with the present invention. 
           [0015]      FIG. 8  is a block diagram of a software defined networking controller may be incorporated together with the present invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
       [0016]    Referring to  FIG. 1 , an Ethernet network  100  is shown wherein a LAN  102  is interconnected to a remote campus  130  via WAN  104 . The campus core  106  includes a plurality of interconnected core switches  108 . The core switches  108  are connected to a data center (not shown). A router  110  is connected to the core switches and the WAN  104 . The core switches  108  are connected to switches  114  and  116  of an aggregation campus  112 . The aggregation campus switches  114  and  116  are connected to switches  120  of large network  118  and provide data communication services to the large network&#39;s telephone  122 , computer  124 , and wireless access  126  devices. The aggregation network switches  114  and  116  may also be connected to additional campuses (not shown) in order to provide additional data communication services. The LAN  102  is connected to the WAN  104  via router  110 . The WAN  104  is comprised of a plurality of interconnected Ethernet switches  128  and other networking devices (not shown). WAN  104  is connected to remote campus  130  via a router  132 . Router  132  provides data communication services to computers  134  and telephone devices  136 . Each of the switches in the Ethernet network  100  may have one or more virtual machines (VMs) (not shown). Each switch may also be a large modular chassis Ethernet switch or an Ethernet switch-stack, such as an L2/L3 fixed chassis router-switch stack. It is understood that this is an exemplary network and numerous other network topologies can be monitored according to the present invention. 
         [0017]    In an embodiment of the present invention, a management station  138  is connected to router  110  of the campus core  106 . As will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art, the management station  138  allows a network administrator to monitor the data traffic, port utilization, and various other networking characteristics of each switching device or VM in the Ethernet network  100 . The management station  138  may include a VM manager for managing the VMs. The VM manager may be able to access hypervisors in each server and thus control the VMs. 
         [0018]      FIG. 2  illustrates a network  200  utilizing the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. As shown, an FC fabric  202  comprised of a plurality of FC switches  204 - 212 . It should be noted that the network  200  can include one or more additional fabrics that may be interconnected via a WAN, and may also include Ethernet fabrics. The fabric  202  is connected to two storage devices  214  and  216  and connects these storage devices to servers  218  and  220 . Each of the servers includes multiple VMs. As shown server  218  includes VMs  222  and  224  and server  220  includes VMs  226  and  228 . As above, this is an exemplary network architecture and numerous other FC architectures can be managed according to the present invention. 
         [0019]    In one embodiment of the present invention, a management station  230  is connected to fabric  202 . Through the fabric  202 , the management station  230  can provide network management for the switches  204 - 212  and monitor the VMs located in each of the servers  218  and  220 . As will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art, the management station  314  allows a network administrator to monitor the data traffic, port utilization, and various other networking characteristics using network management software, such that any data congestion may be alleviated. 
         [0020]      FIG. 3  illustrates a simplified network  300  to illustrate the functions provided by one embodiment of the present invention. As shown, a switch  304 , having three ports  306 ,  307  and  308 , is connected through an FC fabric  302  to two hosts  310  and  312 . Host  310  includes three VMs  314 ,  316  and  318  and host  312  includes two VMs  320  and  322 . Host  310  is connected to port  308  of the switch  304  through HBA  324 , and host  312  is connected to port  306  of the switch  304  through the HBA  326 . A storage device  311  is connected to port  307  of the switch  304 . A management station  328  is also connected to the FC fabric  302  to provide network management for the switch  304 . As above, this is an exemplary network architecture and numerous other FC architectures can be managed according to the present invention. 
         [0021]    In general, network management systems monitor the various constructs and parameters, particularly flow parameters, by tracking each port. Thus, the management station  328  monitors traffic flow through the switch  302  by tracking each port  308 ,  307  and  306 . In such a system, if a VM or device connected to a port being tracked moves to a different switch port, those parameters would no longer be properly monitored for that device. Thus, for example if VM  314  was to move from host  310  to host  312 , the VM would no longer be properly monitored. In the preferred embodiment each VM, or its virtual HBA, has a worldwide name (WWN). Depending on the embodiment, an FC address is associated with that WWN. In one embodiment, the WWN is associated with the HBA FC address, as only one address has been obtained for the HBA. In another embodiment the WWN is associated with an address based on the HBA address by way of NPIV operations. When the VM is moved to a different server, its WWN preferably remains the same but its associated FC address will change because it is working with a different HBA. As parameter monitoring, particularly flow monitoring, is done based on the address, when the VM moves to a different server the measured values will change greatly. If the address is that of the VM itself, not just the HBA, then the values will actually go to zero as the address is no longer present. If the address is associated with the HBA itself, then the values will change as the VM&#39;s component is no longer present. In either case proper parameters are no longer being obtained. 
         [0022]    In today&#39;s network environments, devices and VMs are often migrated to improve efficiency. Because each time a device migrates, parameters relating to that device could no longer be monitored, in prior art network management systems, a network administer would need to identify the switch port to which the device migrated and set up desired parameters to be monitored at the new port. Given the number of migrations in a large network, particularly if the migrations occur automatically with administrator input, this is a time consuming and inefficient task particularly since network administrators have to spend a considerable amount of time on setting the parameters they desired to monitor for each device. 
         [0023]    To resolve this issue, a network management system according to the present invention, in one embodiment, is disclosed that periodically compares the WWNs it monitors with the FC address map from a switch. In this manner, when a WWN does not match with the FC address map, the management system identifies the VM as having moved and analyzes the FC address map to locate the VM. Thus when the device moves to a new port, the management system can identify the new location and continue monitoring the same parameters. 
         [0024]    In order to provide seamless monitoring of devices during their migration, the system also analyzes currently developed flows to determine which specific traffic routes and parameters between specific hosts and targets are currently being monitored and intelligently map those flows onto the new location, once a migration occurs. 
         [0025]      FIG. 4  is a flowchart of the operation of the network management system or software, in one embodiment for continuous monitoring of constructs and data when a device moves in the network. The network management system determines a unique identifier, such as a WWN for an FC device or MAC for an Ethernet device, for each of the various switch ports that need to be monitored at step  400 . The management system then determines the address of the VM, such as by querying the switch name server in step  402 . The management system then correlates the VM to the port, such as switch  304  port  308  in step  404 . The management system then monitors specific constructs and parameters set up by an administrator for the desired devices through the HBAs and ports to which they are connected, at step  406 . However, in addition to monitoring constructs and parameters for specific devices, the management system also periodically monitors the WWN associated with the VM and compares to the current FC address map from a switch to see if the VM still has the same address or if there has been a change, at step  408 . If a change is identified at step  410 , then the management system analyzes the FC address map to locate the VM and identify the new switch port through which the device is connected to the switch, at step  412 , and then correlates the new switch port with the VM, at step  414 . For example, if the VM  314  has moved to server  312 , the VM  314  is now correlated with switch  304  port  306 , rather than port  308 . In this manner, once a device migrates to a new location, the system automatically detects the new switch port to which it migrated. In step  416  the management system removes the monitoring from the prior port to free up monitoring resources. In step  418  the management system places the new VM address and associated switch port values into the parameters and applies those parameters to the new port. Thus the desired parameters are now being measured at the switch port to which the VM is now connected in step  406 . 
         [0026]    It is understood that this direct attached example is very simple and involves only minimal monitoring locations. In a more common example the monitoring would be set at each switch port through which a given flow from the VM to the storage device passes. Therefore monitoring could be removed from numerous switches, just altered at various switches to accommodate the new VM address, or added to entirely new switches, depending on change of the flow routing. 
         [0027]    Similar methods may be used in an Ethernet network to identify when a device or VM has migrated, determine the new location and make sure the same parameters are monitored at the new location. In an Ethernet network, a VM may be monitored through its MAC address which may also be associated with the MAC address of the port through which it connects to the network. To determine changes, the network management system may periodically poll all switches to find out where a MAC is connected or can have the switches and routers monitor for pings when the VM is activated at the destination and forward that information. In an IP environment, once the MAC has been determined to be moved, the connecting switch&#39;s ARP table can be reviewed. This is different from the method used in an FC environment, where because the name server contains the desired information and is distributed, monitoring any one switch may be enough. The polling is done, in one embodiment, through the use of CLI commands known in the art. Other methods for determining attachment location of a given MAC address are also well known for use with Ethernet switches and polling is just a simple example. 
         [0028]      FIG. 5  illustrates a block diagram of a management station  500 , similar to management stations  138 ,  230  and  338 , that may be utilized in accordance with the present invention. As shown, the management station  500  is comprised of a central processing unit (CPU)  502 , random access memory (RAM)  504 , network interface card (NIC)  506 , system interconnect  508 , storage component  510 , input component  512 , and output component  518  which are all interconnected via the system interconnect  508 . The input component  512  may be connected to an input device such as a keyboard  514  and mouse  516 . The output component  518  is connected to a display device  520 , such as an LCD monitor. Storage component  510  stores software  522 , which typically includes an operating system  524  and network management software  526 . The NIC  506  allows the management station  500  to communicate with a network. As understood by those skilled in the art, network management software is typically designed to allow a network administrator to quickly and efficiently monitor and manage a large network via a user interface, often a graphical user interface (GUI). The network management software  526  could be, for example, Brocade Network Advisor by Brocade Communication Systems, Inc. Once booted, the management station  500  loads the operating system  524  from the storage  510  into the RAM  504 . From the operating system  524  a user may run the network management software  526 , which is then also loaded into the RAM  504 . The interface of the network management software  526  is then displayed on the display  520  via the output component  518 . The network management software  526  allows a user to monitor numerous parameters or network characteristics, such as the number events on the network, number of unused ports of network devices, memory utilization of network devices, bandwidth utilization of network devices, and CPU utilization of network devices. It is understood that this is an exemplary computer system architecture and numerous other computer architectures can be used according to the present invention. 
         [0029]      FIG. 6  illustrates a block diagram of a FC switch  600  that may be utilized in accordance with the SAN network  300 . A control processor  602  is connected to a switch ASIC  604 . The switch ASIC  604  is connected to media interfaces  606  which are connected to ports  608 . Generally the control processor  602  configures the switch ASIC  604  and handles higher level switch operations, such as the name server, the redirection requests, and the like. The switch ASIC  604  handles the general high speed inline or in-band operations, such as switching, routing and frame translation. The control processor  602  is connected to flash memory  610  to hold the software, to RAM  612  for working memory and to an Ethernet PHY  614  used for management connection and serial interface  616  for out-of-band management. 
         [0030]    The switch ASIC  602  has four basic modules, port groups  618 , a frame data storage system  620 , a control subsystem  622  and a system interface  624 . The port groups  618  perform the lowest level of packet transmission and reception, and include a statistical counter module  626  to allow management software to access the various statistical counters of the switch  600 , such as receive and transmit rate counters for each port. Generally, frames are received from a media interface  606  and provided to the frame data storage system  620 . Further, frames are received from the frame data storage system  620  and provided to the media interface  606  for transmission out a port  608 . 
         [0031]    While the present embodiment discusses communication networks using the Ethernet and FC protocols, with switches, routers and the like, the present invention can be applied to any type of data communication network. 
         [0032]      FIG. 7  illustrates an exemplary switch  700  may be utilized in accordance with the LAN  102 . The switch hardware  702  includes a series of packet processors  706  which provide the switch ports  707 . Each packet processor  706  includes a policy routing table  730  for routing packets and a packet analysis module  732 , which analyzes packet headers and the like for desired information. The packet processors  706  are connected to a switch fabric  708  to allow packet switching. A switch CPU  710  is connected to the switch fabric  708  to allow packets to be forwarded from the packet processors  706  to the switch CPU  710  for further analysis and handling. A memory  711  is connected to the CPU  710  and holds program instructions executed by the CPU  710  to perform the various operations. This is an exemplary switch architecture and many variations and further details are well known to those skilled in the art. Given the above description one skilled in the art can modify those variations to provide similar functionality to that described herein. In some of the variations certain operations described as being done by the CPU To may be done in hardware, such as developing the response tracepath packets, if the hardware is sufficiently advanced to provide hardware modules to perform the operations. 
         [0033]      FIG. 8  is an alternate embodiment for use in a software defined networking (SDN) environment.  FIG. 8  is a block diagram of a network  800  based around the OpenDaylight™ controller  802  of the OpenDaylight Project, Inc. The controller  802  performs most of the management and routing functions normally performed in a switch or router but allows both more sophisticated or flexible management and customized routing and also allows the integration of various network services as applications. A base network service functions module  804  includes a topology manager module  806 , a statistics manager module  808 , a switch manager module  810 , a forwarding manager module  812 , a host racking module  814 , and an ARP handler module  816 . The host tracker module  814  is of most interest as its function is to track the attachment point (switch, port, VLAN) of IP hosts in the network. When the host tracker module  816  learns a host for the first time it adds the host information (Host&#39;s IP address, MAC address, switch ID, port, and VLAN) to the local database and notifies interested applications of its appearance. Similarly, the host tracker module  816  notifies them when an existing host is removed from the network either due to switch/port down event or due to ARP Aging. The host tracker module  816  frequently refreshes the hosts&#39; information in the database. E.g. when a host has been moved from one location (switch, port, MAC, or VLAN) to another, the host tracker module  816  replaces the existing host and its previous location parameters with new information, and notifies the applications listening to host move. 
         [0034]    The controller platform  802  further includes an affinity service module  818  used to allow controller and higher-level applications to create and share an abstract, topology and implementation independent description of the infrastructure needs, preferences and behaviors of workloads that use the network to “talk” to one another. A Locator ID Separation Protocol (LISP) service module  820  provides a flexible map-and-encap framework that can be used for overlay network applications, such as data center network virtualization, and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). An Open vSwitch Data Base OVSDB) Protocol module  822  implement the Open vSwitch Database management protocol, allowing southbound configuration of vSwitches. A virtual tenant network (VTN) manager module  824  provides multi-tenant virtual network. An open DOVE management console module  826  cooperates with open DOVE components in the network to manage the open DOVE environment. Open DOVE is an overlay network virtualization platform for the data center. An OpenStack service module  828  cooperates in an OpenStack environment to manage the networking portion of the OpenStack environment. OpenStack is a free and open-source software cloud computing software platform. 
         [0035]    The final portion of the controller  802  is the service abstraction layer (SAL)  830 . The SAL  830  allows support of multiple protocols and plugins on the southbound interface and provides consistent services for modules and network applications. Those protocols and plugins include an OpenFlow plugin  832 , a Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) plugin  834 , an OVSDB plugin  836 , an Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) module  838 , a border gateway protocol (BGP) module  840 , a Path Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP) module  842 , and a LISP module  844 . A series of northbound application programming interfaces (APIs)  846  conform to Representational state transfer (REST) and are used to provide the interface to the applications  854  operating with the controller  802 . One application is a management GUI/CLI application  848  to allow management of the controller  802  and the various modules. Another typical application would be an OpenStack application  850  to provide OpenStack capability to the network. 
         [0036]    Of interest according to the present invention is a migration manger module  852  to perform the functions previously described for the management station. The migration manager module  852  is preferably a module in a more comprehensive host performance monitor application  851 . The host performance monitor application  851  provides the performance monitoring tasks and reporting previously performed in the management workstation. The migration manager module  852  is coupled to the host tracker module  814  to monitor for movement of VMs and to the statistics manager module  808  to control the monitoring of network parameters. By operating the migration management functions according to the present invention as a module in an application on the OpenDaylight controller  802  or similar SDN controller, particularly when the performance monitoring is done as an application in the controller. 
         [0037]    A series of data plane elements  856  are coupled to the southbound interfaces and plugins. These elements  856  include OpenFlow enabled devices  858 , Open vSwitches  860  and other virtual and physical devices  862 . 
         [0038]    The above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. For example, the above-described embodiments may be used in combination with each other. Many other embodiments will be apparent to those of skill in the art upon reviewing the above description. The scope of the invention should, therefore, be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the frill scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled. In the appended claims, the terms “including” and “in which” are used as the plain-English equivalents of the respective terms “comprising” and “wherein.”