The present invention relates generally to application service appliances. More particularly, this invention relates to application service appliances having centralized TCP termination for multi-service chaining.
The ability to connect information technology infrastructure reliably, cost-effectively and securely is of high importance for today's global enterprises. To communicate with customers, clients, business partners, employees, etc., the Internet has proven to be more appropriate compared to private communication networks. However, communication via the Internet, which typically uses TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), also increases the requirements for data security. Network firewalls are one of the many examples of solutions for network security.
Enterprise Web Application Services build an important foundation for such client, customer, and employee communication. A very common configuration for hosting such enterprise web Application Services is shown in
A client 1003 may connect via a Local Area Network (LAN) through the enterprise's intranet 1013. Another client 1004 may connect through a Wireless LAN (WLAN) to the intranet 1013. Yet another client 1005 may be located inside the enterprise's campus network 1015, which connects to the enterprise's intranet 1013. An enterprise may have zero or more campuses 1014 and 1015. Yet another client 1001 may connect through the Internet 1000, or a client 1002 may have a mobile connection to the Internet 1000. In any case to prevent illegitimate access to the enterprise's web Application Services, the “inside” of the enterprise's network, the intranet 1013, is protected by having a network perimeter 1010, which may comprise firewalls, associated network interconnect, and additional resources “within” the perimeter network configured so as to be broadly accessible to users on the “outside” of the enterprise.
Behind the perimeter 1010, access is granted to legitimate client requests only, while illegitimate access is rejected. The fundamentals in determining whether an access request is legitimate or not are based on the network reference model from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This ISO network reference model classifies Network Services into seven layers.
Traditional security products generally assume the existence of a trusted intranet—locations where enterprises control their own LANs, switches and routers—which can be organized into or placed within some type of security perimeter, to protect its resources from the un-trusted Internet. However, in today's business environment, enterprises no longer enjoy the same level of trust and control of their intranets, as enterprises increasingly rely on contractors, partners, consultants, vendors, and visitors on-site for daily operation. As a result, enterprises are exposing internal resources to this wide set of clients whose roles are also frequently changing. Thus, the network trust boundary, delineating inside and outside clients, is disappearing—a phenomenon referred to as “de-perimeterization”. In such an environment, protection of an enterprise's resources—such as its intellectual property, as well as mission-critical and operational systems—becomes of critical importance. Also, most security exploits easily traverse perimeter security, as enterprises typically let through email, web and any encrypted network traffic, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) with Transport Layer Security (TLS), and authenticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) traffic, for example via IP Security (IPSec). Traditional perimeter security approaches, for example firewalls, intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems have little or no benefit at the perimeter in providing access control functions to the resources. They have become more attack mitigation mechanisms than access control mechanisms. Enterprises are coming to terms with the fact that a hardened perimeter strategy is un-sustainable.
Traditional firewall or router access control lists cannot protect application resources from unauthorized access because network parameters such as Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and IP port numbers no longer deterministically identify resources, nor identify users, clients, or applications accessing these resources. Network firewall technology was invented when enterprises had a limited set of applications such as Telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Email, and its primary functions were to limit access to specific applications from the outside and to limit access by systems within the enterprise to specific applications outside the firewall. Network layer parameters such as source, destination IP address and TCP or UDP port numbers were sufficient to identify the client and the operations the clients intended to perform on a particular resource. However, with the proliferation of mobile devices and tunneled applications, the network layer parameters are no longer useful to identify the client, the resource accessed, and the operation. Firewalls have evolved over the time, embracing functions such as deep packet inspection and intrusion detection/prevention, to handle application-level attacks, but the core access control function remains the same.
In effect, de-perimeterization demands that access control functions are positioned close to application resources and that a micro-perimeter is established in the heart of the data center by placing an identity-based policy enforcement point in front of any application resource. Enterprise business drivers for such an enforcement point are the need for rich and uniform protection of resources, business agility via attribute-based, policy-driven provisioning, and regulatory compliance. Traditional server-centric authorization solutions providing role-based authorization often require custom code development, extensive cross-vendor testing whenever there is a version change (of the underlying operating system, agent or application), and are costly and difficult to maintain because of their proprietary nature. Also, traditional server-based network appliances—primarily focused on low-bandwidth ISO Layer-4 to ISO Layer-7 perimeter services—are unsuitable for data center deployment, both in functional richness and in ISO Layer-7 performance.
Providing multiple ISO Layer-4 to ISO Layer-7 services (such as SSL acceleration, application acceleration, or application firewall, etc.) degrades the performance to a large extent because, in today's approaches, multiple transport protocol terminations happen at each of the cascaded Network Service points. These multiple TCP or multiple SSL terminations, for example, add-up to the overall latency and make the entire setup hard to administer. This problem exists regardless of whether multiple server-based network appliances are chained (each providing a different ISO Layer-4 to ISO Layer-7 service), or whether a single network appliance using a packet based switch architecture with multiple modules (one for each different ISO Layer-4 to ISO Layer-7 service) is used.
A network element having centralized TCP termination with multi-service chaining is described herein. According to one embodiment, a network element includes a switch fabric, a first service module coupled to the switch fabric, and a second and a third service modules coupled to the first service module over the switch fabric. In response to packets of a network transaction received from a client over a first network for access a server of a data center having multiple servers over a second network, the first service module is configured to terminate a TCP connection of the packets. The TCP terminated packets are transmitted to the second and third service modules over the switch fabric. The second and third service modules are configured to perform different application network services on the TCP terminated packets without having to perform a TCP process again.
Other features of the present invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description which follows.
The present invention is illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements.
In the following description, numerous details are set forth to provide a more thorough explanation of embodiments of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art, that embodiments of the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form, rather than in detail, in order to avoid obscuring embodiments of the present invention.
Reference in the specification to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the invention. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification do not necessarily all refer to the same embodiment.
One aspect of the invention is the use of a Lossless Data Transport Fabric for Layer-7 Networking, comprising an ISO Layer-7 networking system, which performs network operations in multiple separate processing domains, which are interconnected via the Lossless Data Transport Fabric (LDTF). This LDTF may be an RDMA-capable fabric, such as InfiniBand or iWARP.
One aspect of the invention is a system and method for Highly-Scalable Layer-7 Networking, comprising an ISO Layer-7 networking system with multiple processing elements connected via a Lossless Data Transport Fabric where the processing necessary to perform the network operation(s) are distributed over the processing elements. In some configurations, at least one of the processing elements is dedicated to operations for ISO Layer-7 processing. In some configurations, at least one of the processing elements is dedicated to operations for ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-5 processing.
The approach described herein applies combinations of parallel, multi-processor computing technology with lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth network fabric technology (also known as Lossless Data Transport Fabric, or LDTF) to form novel methods and systems for high performance, high-reliability, high availability, and secure network applications. The various embodiments of the inventions described herein enable the implementation of highly reliable, highly scalable solutions for enterprise networking such as, for example, the APS 2000 from
Multiple network Services are efficiently provided by terminating transport protocols centrally. As can be seen, any transport protocol can be terminated centrally, each PDU's payload can be collected and converted into a data stream and, vice versa, a data stream can be converted into PDUs for any transport protocol and be transported via the given transport protocol. A simple concatenation of the PDU payload into a byte-stream is not sufficient. Key to the conversion is that state information must be maintained about the meta-data of each connection. Such meta-data includes the session information, for example via a unique connection identification number, the transaction information, as well as the information regarding segments and packets. Finite state machines can be used to track the meta-data.
Transport protocols are protocols which are used to transport information via networks. These include, obviously, the ISO Layer-3 protocols such as IPv4, IPv6, IPSec, the ISO Layer-4 protocols such as TCP, UDP, SCTP, the various ISO Layer-5 protocols such as FTP, HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, GTP, L2TP, PPTP, SOAP, SDP, RTSP, RTP, RTCP, RPC, SSH, TLS, DTLS, SSL, IPSec, and VPN protocols. However, other protocols and approaches are contemplated within the scope of the inventions, which serve as transport mechanisms for transmitting information and application data and can also be terminated in a centralized fashion by a protocol proxy and the corresponding PDUs can be transformed into a data stream for application layer processing. Examples of such are, CSIv2, CORBA, IIOP, DCOM and other Object Request Brokers (ORB), MPEG-TS or RTP as a transport for multi-media information, RTSP or SIP as another transport for multi-media information, peer-to-peer transport mechanisms, transport mechanisms based on J2EE such as Java RMI, streaming media protocols such as VoIP, IPTV, etc.
For the sake of simplicity we will use the term Centralized Transport Protocol Termination throughout the rest of the description, however, this is for exemplary purposes only and is not intended to be limiting. Centralized Transport Protocol Termination can be performed by dedicated processing units, and different ISO Layer-7 services can be performed in other dedicated processing units. The use of a lossless low-latency high-bandwidth fabric for inter-process communication between such dedicated processing units makes it possible to simultaneously support Centralized Transport Protocol Termination for multiple services. For example, TCP can be terminated once, transformed into a data stream and this data stream is transported from one dedicated processing unit to another using the lossless low-latency high-bandwidth fabric. The low-latency nature of the fabric helps to reduce the overall latency in client-to-server transactions.
In one embodiment, the Application Protection System (APS) 2000 is a network appliance that can act as a proxy between the client 2001 and the application server 2005, and can determine whether a client 2001 shall be granted access to certain applications 2005. In one example, the client 2001 is one or more of the clients 1001, 1002, 1003, 1004, or 1005 of
The APS 2000 may use a Triangulated Authorization method which, for example, is based on multiple aspects of a client (such as the client 2001), the requested application (such as application 2005) and certain network characteristics: Who—a client (a user or a machine) and its associated attributes such as department, role, project association, seniority, citizenship, etc; Where—network and environment attributes such as access methods (wire-line/wireless/VPN), location (e.g., USA, Switzerland, China) and time; What—on-the-wire session attributes, including protocol and content/resource attributes. The outcome of this Triangulated Authorization method can be used to determine whether access to an application is granted or rejected. Optionally, a Single-Sign-On (SSO) server such as server 2004 may be involved that allows the client 2001 to obtain authorization for accessing multiple applications at once.
One embodiment of the invention acts as a proxy between one or more clients and one or more application servers to control the access of the one or more clients to the one or more applications. This is described, for example, in
One embodiment of the invention is a network appliance which terminates multiple transport protocols in one central point to overcome the many drawbacks of multiple transport protocol termination, such as increased latency and lack of scalability. Therefore, the network appliance may need to perform a set of functions similar to those typical of application servers such as network proxy, deep packet inspection, cryptography, data compression, regular expression parsing, etc. Network services that may need Centralized Transport Protocol Termination include but are not limited to application authentication and authorization, application firewalls, application data routing, in-line intrusion-detection and intrusion prevention, SSL offloading/acceleration, server load balancing, XML offloading/acceleration, and application front-end engine services (also called application acceleration).
ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-5 processing typically involves packets, segments and records processing, whereas ISO Layer-7 processing typically involves application data processing. Full ISO Layer-7 inspection goes beyond application headers and typically involves reassembling application layer data. A general rule used in the art is that a 1 GHz processor is needed for processing ISO Layer-3 or ISO Layer-4 PDUs at 1 Gbps, whereas a 10 GHz processor is needed for application data processing at 1 Gbps (for example for SSL VPN URL mangling operation). Therefore, the computational complexity required for scaling the proxy functionality is quite different from the computational complexity required for scaling ISO Layer-7 processing.
To solve the computational complexity in an efficient way, one embodiment of the invention splits the overall ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-7 stack into (at least) two independent processing domains. One domain, which is called Network Service processing for ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-5 processing (i.e., up to TCP/SSL processing) provides proxy functions, and a second domain which is called Application Service processing for ISO Layer-7 processing. Splitting the stack requires a reliable, lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth connection between those two (or more) processing domains in order for the Network Service processing to forward the data stream to the Application Service processing for further processing. As a solution, this approach uses a LDTF such as RDMA-capable fabric technology to provide this reliable lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect between processing domains.
Using this novel approach, both processing domains can be scaled independent of each other and a well-balanced system can be achieved at reasonable costs.
A LDTF, such as the LDTF 2102 can be used for the inter-process communication between those domains. In one embodiment of the invention, the LDTF is implemented using the IB point-to-point switch fabric architecture. Incoming connections from the client are terminated in the NSM and are transformed into a data stream. This data stream can, for example, without limitation, be transported via the IB fabric. In one other embodiment of the invention, the LDTF is implemented using an RDMA-capable interconnect fabric. In further embodiments of the invention, it is contemplated that other LDTFs may be used as interconnect fabrics, for example, without limitation, iWARP and other interconnect fabrics such as are known or may become known to one of ordinary skill in the art.
This can be done by PDU processing and reassembling the payload of the PDUs into their corresponding data stream. This data stream is transported via IB fabric to the ASM for further ISO Layer-7 processing. The result of ISO Layer-7 processing done by ASM is then transported back—still as a data stream—again via the IB fabric to the NSM. The NSM then transforms the data stream into PDUs and sends the PDUs to the application server using the appropriate transport protocol. Connections which originate from the application server can be handled similarly.
One benefit of the present approach is the overall reduction of latency in the communication link between clients and application servers. Yet another benefit is that the approach can be scaled with various, specialized, dedicated processing modules.
One key aspect of the invention described herein is the approach to keep the communication in separate planes: For example, a Network Service plane, an Application Service plane and a Management Service plane. The fact that the Network Service plane is separate from the Application Service plane is also reflected by splitting the network protocol processing into two or more domains, for example into Network Service processing and Application Service processing. This offers additional options for optimizing the performance of this approach and to make it scale better to networking and availability demands.
One option is that at the Network Service plane a processing unit for packet order work processing can be deployed. Then the packets of a particular connection can be handled by any processing element of a multi-processing architecture without the need for software locks. The packets can then be processed in multiple stages, which provide a higher degree of concurrency. Similarly, at the Application Service plane a processing unit for transaction order work processing can be deployed and, for example, implemented in software. Then the transactions of a particular connection can be handled by any processing element of a multi-processing architecture without the need for software locks. Therefore, each transaction can then be processed in a pipelined fashion which serializes the application data processing and increases the level of concurrency for ISO Layer-7 processing, which again further increases the compute efficiency of this approach.
At the Network Service plane various possibilities for network flow control schemes now become possible.
In a practical enterprise network application another performance optimization is important. Typically, one NSM can keep several ASMs busy. Therefore it makes sense not only to load balance traffic in the Network Service plane but also in the Application Service plane. Various possibilities for such optimizations exist as disclosed herein. In one embodiment of the invention, the ANA 2140 of
Many combinations of scaling by connecting one or more NSMs and one or more ASMs are possible, all interconnected via lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth LDTF. For example, in yet another embodiment of the invention which is illustrated in
A NSM processes the lower network layers, ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-5. In one embodiment of the invention, such a NSM can be constructed as shown in
For better scalability, in one embodiment of the invention, a NSM can be a multi-processor architecture, as shown in
An ASM performs the ISO Layer-7 services, including application data processing on the data stream, which is the data stream of the transport protocol's PDU payload transformed by one or more NSMs.
For those tasks a high compute power is needed, typically more than for plain ISO Layer-2 to ISO Layer-5 processing. Therefore, a single-processor architecture using existing micro-processors may require hardware assist to provide sufficient compute power for high-bandwidth client-to-server connections. Alternatively, it may be advantageous to implement an ASM either as a homogeneous multi-processor system of generic ISO Layer-7 processing units, or as a heterogeneous multi-processing system using a sea of different, specialized ISO Layer-7 processing units.
For building the multi-processor architecture of the ASM several options exist: A multi-core processor technology can be used, which can be a System-on-a-Chip with on-chip hardware accelerators; or one can use multi-core processors with external co-processors, for example, a co-processor for cryptographic operations, a co-processor for regular expression analysis, a co-processor for data compression and decompression, etc. A parallel-mode compute architecture can be deployed which will require a flow dispatcher to distribute incoming traffic across the multiple processors. A pipelined-mode compute architecture can be used, where one processing element acts as a pre-processor for a subsequent processing element. Or, a hybrid approach can be used combining parallel mode with pipelined compute architectures. Further, any other architecture contemplated by one of skill in the art may be used.
LDTF to Connect L2-L5 Unit with L7 Units
In any case, the compute architecture requires a lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth fabric for any-to-any inter-process communication links between the one or more NSMs (which each may comprise one or more NSPs) and the one or more ASMs (which each may comprise one or more ASPs).
Many options exist for implementing the LDTF 3442: In one embodiment of the invention the LDTF can be IB. In another embodiment of the invention the LDTF can be Data Center Ethernet with RDMA support. In yet another embodiment of the invention, the LDTF can be iWARP which supports RDMA over TCP. Besides being a lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect means RDMA enables the performance of RDMA one-sided read-based load monitoring and can be used to map connection level flow control using RDMA queue-pair flow control.
Various embodiments of some of the inventions for scalability have been described in this disclosure, for example, the embodiment of the invention can not only be used for high-availability but also to scale an ANA for higher bandwidth and network processing demands. When two or more NSMs or two or more ASMs are connected via LDTF within one ANA, the inter-process communication between NSMs and ASMs then operates via so-called intra-chassis communication. Alternatively, when two or more ANAs are connected via LDTF, the inter-process communication then operates via so-called inter-chassis communication. Or, when both approaches are combined, both intra-chassis and inter-chassis communication goes over the LDTF.
Some portions of the preceding detailed descriptions have been presented in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions and representations are the ways used by those skilled in the data processing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of operations leading to a desired result. The operations are those requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like.
It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unless specifically stated otherwise as apparent from the above discussion, it is appreciated that throughout the description, discussions utilizing terms such as “processing” or “computing” or “calculating” or “determining” or “displaying” or the like, refer to the action and processes of a computer system, or similar electronic computing device, that manipulates and transforms data represented as physical (electronic) quantities within the computer system's registers and memories into other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the computer system memories or registers or other such information storage, transmission or display devices.
Embodiments of the present invention also relate to an apparatus for performing the operations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, or it may comprise a general-purpose computer selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a computer readable storage medium, such as, but is not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, and magnetic-optical disks, read-only memories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), erasable programmable ROMs (EPROMs), electrically erasable programmable ROMs (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, or any type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, and each coupled to a computer system bus.
The algorithms and displays presented herein are not inherently related to any particular computer or other apparatus. Various general-purpose systems may be used with programs in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct more specialized apparatus to perform the required method operations. The required structure for a variety of these systems will appear from the description below. In addition, embodiments of the present invention are not described with reference to any particular programming language. It will be appreciated that a variety of programming languages may be used to implement the teachings of embodiments of the invention as described herein.
A machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer). For example, a machine-readable medium includes read only memory (“ROM”); random access memory (“RAM”); magnetic disk storage media; optical storage media; flash memory devices; electrical, optical, acoustical or other form of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.); etc.
In the foregoing specification, embodiments of the invention have been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will be evident that various modifications may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the following claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than a restrictive sense.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/966,649, filed Aug. 28, 2007, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60966649 | Aug 2007 | US |