Patent Grant
12170693
An Application Data Sheet is filed concurrently with this specification as part of the present application. Each application that the present application claims benefit of or priority to as identified in the concurrently filed Application Data Sheet is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety and for all purposes
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material, which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
This patent document generally relates to network security. More specifically, this patent document discloses techniques for network security orchestration and management across different clouds.
Enterprises are moving their infrastructures to public clouds for reasons including: fast bootstrapping processes, reliability, geographical availability, scalability and cost factor. Some estimate that over 90% of enterprises use clouds, and over 80% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, in which an enterprise builds infrastructures on multiple cloud platforms. Reasons for a multi-cloud strategy include mitigating single cloud provider locking risks, privacy and governance compliance in different regions (e.g., an enterprise having to use a Chinese cloud provider if it wants to operate in China). Additional benefits of a multi-cloud strategy include greater agility and flexibility, and fulfillment of customer requests (e.g., customers might not want to host their data on a competitor's platform).
In the past number of years, we have witnessed many severe data breaches related to public cloud infrastructures. This problem is compounded in a multi-cloud strategy because the attack surface is bigger, and the chance for misconfiguration errors in multiple clouds is greater.
The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve only to provide examples of possible structures and operations for the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods and computer program products. These drawings in no way limit any changes in form and detail that may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosed implementations.
Examples of systems, apparatus, methods and computer program products according to the disclosed implementations are described in this section. These examples are being provided solely to add context and aid in the understanding of the disclosed implementations. It will thus be apparent to one skilled in the art that implementations may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In other instances, certain operations have not been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring implementations. Other applications are possible, such that the following examples should not be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope or setting.
In the following detailed description, references are made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specific implementations. Although these implementations are described in sufficient detail to enable one skilled in the art to practice the disclosed implementations, it is understood that these examples are not limiting, such that other implementations may be used, and changes may be made without departing from their spirit and scope. For example, the operations of methods shown and described herein are not necessarily performed in the order indicated. It should also be understood that the methods may include more or fewer operations than are indicated. In some implementations, operations described herein as separate operations may be combined. Conversely, what may be described herein as a single operation may be implemented in multiple operations.
Some implementations of the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods and computer-readable media provide network security orchestration and management across different cloud providers to facilitate transitioning of enterprise infrastructure to public clouds. For instance, a multi-cloud infrastructure can be implemented on popular public cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud. Customer data can be protected in the various public clouds of the multi-cloud infrastructure. Some implementations of disclosed network security techniques and frameworks provide fundamental security measures to protect customer data from unauthorized access. For instance, some security measures require that only entities (internal or external with respect to a network) with proper permissions and authorizations can access certain resources in the network.
In some implementations, a network security solution is provided in a multi-cloud infrastructure, even though each cloud provider provides different types of security primitives and protections. Some of the disclosed examples of network security solutions are cloud-independent; that is, the same version of a network security solution can be deployed on multiple clouds multiple times, even though the particular deployed solution on a given cloud uses that cloud's particular tools and supports. So, the same security posture is realized across the various clouds using cloud-specific security controls tailored to each cloud. Networks, infrastructures and data centers can be quickly scaled and expanded while maintaining the same security posture.
Some implementations of the disclosed network security solutions are transparent to users including application developers, service developers and engineers who write and deploy applications and services on a network. Such users do not need to know cloud-specific security controls to implement network security for their services. Some implementations of the disclosed frameworks and techniques offer a general, cloud-independent tool to users for that purpose.
Some implementations provide centralized orchestration, management, security policy versioning and security monitoring. For instance, a network security overview of data centers of interest can be generated even when those data centers are deployed on different clouds and regions. Using the disclosed techniques, network security policies can be added, removed and modified. These policies can be deployed to all or selective instances of data centers.
Once implemented, some of the disclosed network security frameworks and techniques can improve engineering productivity and reduce time delay when an enterprise is expanding to a new data center or region or adding a new cloud platform to a multi-cloud infrastructure. Engineers may not need to worry about learning a new cloud's security controls or have to deal with security orchestration for their services. Hence, engineers can focus on improving their services or building new products to boost productivity. Also, the time to bootstrap and deploy a new data center can be shorter than with conventional data center builds (e.g., a matter of days versus years).
Some of the disclosed network security frameworks and techniques can be implemented to realize a number of use cases including: bootstrapping a new data center on a cloud; adding, deleting, and modifying existing data center information such as a network layout or a policy; adding, deleting, and modifying a security group in a functional domain; adding, deleting, and modifying a service in a security group in a functional domain; and adding, deleting, and modifying a policy in a security group in a functional domain.
Additionally, systems and methods for correlating security policy inputs and outputs are disclosed. In some implementations, differences between two versions of a security policy input can be identified. For example, a first version can be an original user-submitted version, and a second version can be a modified version of the first version with one or more changes to the security policy input. Continuing with this example, in some implementations corresponding versions of cloud-specific security policy outputs can be retrieved, and differences between the versions can be identified. In some implementations, differences between the versions of the security policy inputs can be correlated to differences between the versions of the security policy outputs. For example, a difference in a security policy input to remove a particular service can be matched to a corresponding difference in the security policy output.
In some implementations, after differences in versions of security policy inputs have been matched to differences in versions of security policy outputs, a record or report can be generated that indicates the matched differences. In some implementations, the report or record can be formatted in a manner that is easily readable, thereby allowing a network or security administrator to quickly identify differences in cloud-specific security policy outputs that are a consequence of submitted changes in security policy inputs.
Moreover, in some implementations, severity characteristics of each identified difference can be identified or retrieved from a table and included in the record or report. For example, removal of a service can be indicated as having a high severity or a high impact, whereas addition of a service can be indicated as having a low or medium severity. By presenting identified differences in connection with an associated severity of the difference, the systems and methods described herein can allow a network or security administrator to quickly identify high severity changes for additional manual analysis.
By allowing cloud-specific security policy output changes to be identified in an easy to read format, manual time spent reviewing policy changes can be reduced. Moreover, by redirecting manual time spent reviewing policy changes to those deemed to be of high severity, manual time can be used more efficiently. More efficient use of manual time may improve overall network security and cloud security by reducing human errors while also allowing a larger number of policy changes to be implemented quickly.
In
In some implementations, the terms “security group” and “security zone” as used herein are interchangeable, for instance, when a security group refers to a zone where multiple online services or other computing resources like a server can be grouped together, and the grouped resources have the same security exposure to the outside, i.e., external to the zone. As further explained herein, for instance, it can be specified that a security group has specific ports which are open, like a listening port, and other ports which are blocked.
In
In some implementations, as shown in
In
In
In some implementations, policy deployer 112 uses Terraform by HashiCorp to deploy a cloud-specific policy set in the Terraform format to the relevant cloud. Terraform is one of a number of available tools or services that could be used by policy deployer 112 to deploy cloud-specific policy sets in a public cloud such as cloud 128, 132 or 136, so it should be appreciated that in some other implementations a different tool for state management and/or policy deployment is used by policy deployer 112 as an alternative or in addition to Terraform. For instance, a cloud-specific policy set could indicate a desired network structure including how many computing resources and/or how many containers are desired to be opened. Terraform can use the appropriate cloud application programming interface (API), like the AWS API, to create resources, containers, etc. Policy deployer 112 can take a generated cloud-specific policy set, call Terraform to run on a specific cloud, and then get a result back from the cloud directly or via Terraform.
In some implementations, a configuration (config) file can be sent to or retrieved by one or more components of system 100 to configure system 100. In some other implementations, the config file is omitted. In the example of
In some implementations, a rules verification component 140 in
In
In some implementations, an account is registered with each cloud 128, 132 or 136, and particular cloud-specific APIs are used by policy monitor 144 to retrieve the desired information for monitoring. Policy monitor 144 can request status of every resource that was created for the account, and Terraform can be used to read the status information using the appropriate APIs registered for the account. Status of accounts on the different public clouds can be read by policy monitor 144, and any modifications can be detected by policy monitor 144.
In
At 320 of
In the example of
In the example of
In the example of
In the example of
In
In some implementations, egress rules 432 are generally configured in similar fashion as ingress rules 428. In this example, a special rule, “allow_all” 436 specifies that all services in security group 412 can talk with any entity outside or inside of a network on any port (1-65355) with the two protocols of TCP and UDP using the specified IP subnet address ranges for a destination, in this example, 10.0.0.0/12 and 8.8.8.8/32.
In
As illustrated, tree-based data structure 470 includes a root node 472. Root node 474 includes various branches, each corresponding to a different data center instance, such as data center instances 473 and 474 as shown in
Each service instance branch, such as branch 480, can have various branches, each corresponding to a different service instance. For example, branch 480 has a branch 482, corresponding to “Service 1.” Each service instance branch can indicate a protocol type and/or one or more port numbers, as illustrated in
As illustrated, tree-based data structure 570 includes a root node 572. Root node 574 includes various branches, each corresponding to a different data center instance, such as data center instances 573 and 574 as shown in
Turning to
Input parser 602 can take, as inputs, system input 610 that includes two versions of a policy input (labeled “Policy input v1” and “Policy input v2” in
In some implementations, the two versions of the policy input can differ in various ways, for example, by adding or removing one or more services, adding or removing one or more policies, modifying one or more policies, etc. In some implementations, each version of the policy output can be generated based on a corresponding version of the policy input, using, for example, the techniques and components described above in connection with
Note that system input 610 can be in a format that associates a particular version of a security policy input with a corresponding version of a security policy output. For example, system input 610 can be in a format of: {(policy_input_1_version1, policy_output_1_version1); (policy_input_1_version2, policy_output_1_version2)}.
In some implementations, input parser 602 can have sub-components, such as policy input parser 602a and policy output parser 602b. In some such implementations, policy input parser 602a can parse one or more versions of the policy input, and policy output parser 602b can parse one or more versions of the policy output.
Policy converter 604 can take the parsed versions of the policy input and the parsed versions of the policy output and can generate internal input representations 612 and internal output representations 614. In some implementations, policy converter 604 can have sub-components, such as policy input converter 604a and policy output converter 604b. In some such implementations, policy input converter 604a can generate internal input representations 612. Similarly, policy output converter 604b can generate internal output representations 614.
In some implementations internal input representations 612 can be in a tree-based data structure, as shown in and described above in connection with
Difference generator 606 can take, as inputs, internal input representations 612 and internal output representations 614, and can generate a policy input difference 616 and a policy output difference 618 that represent differences in the policy inputs and differences in the policy outputs, respectively. In some implementations, difference generator 606 can have sub-components, such as a policy input difference generator 606a and a policy output difference generator 606b. In some such implementations, policy input difference generator 606a can generate policy input difference 616 from internal input representations 612. Similarly, policy output difference generator 606b can generate policy output difference 618 from internal input representations 614. Note that more detailed techniques for generating policy input difference 616 and policy output difference 618 are shown in and described below in connection with
Difference correlation and report generator 608 can take, as inputs, policy input difference 616 and policy output difference 618. Difference correlation and report generator 608 can then analyze and correlate differences indicated in policy input difference 616 with differences indicated in policy output difference 618 using difference analyzer 608a. The correlated differences can then be used by difference correlation reporter 608b to generate a policy input-output difference correlation report 620. As will be discussed in more detail in connection with
It should be noted that the output of the system for correlating security policy inputs and outputs (e.g., policy input-output difference correlation report 620) can be stored as a record in a database. For example, a report that indicates policy differences and/or impacts of each policy difference can be stored as a record in the database. In some implementations, a stored database record can include other relevant information, such as timestamp information indicating dates and/or times each version of a policy was submitted or generated, a username of a user that submitted or generated each policy, etc.
It should be further noted that the output of the system for correlating security policy inputs and outputs (e.g., policy input-output difference correlation report 620) can be used for many suitable purposes. For example, a generated report can be used by a network or security administrator to be able to quickly identify policy output differences that correspond to policy input differences associated with an updated version of a policy input submitted by a user. Continuing with this example, the generated report can be used by the administrator to determine whether the updated version is to be allowed or blocked by presenting the differences in an easily readable manner in connection with an impact or severity of each difference.
As another example, in some implementations, the output of the system can be used as an input to different systems. As a more particular example, a generated report can be used as an input to a system that presents the report in a manner formatted for a web portal or web dashboard. As another more particular example, a generated report can be used as an input to a system that uses machine learning to determine severity of network policy changes. In some implementations, such a machine learning system may be used to iteratively adjust assessed severity characteristics over time and may interact with the system for correlating security policy inputs and outputs.
Process 700 can begin at 702.
At 704, inputs can be parsed, for example, by input parser 602 of
At 706, the inputs can be converted, for example, by input converter 604 of
At 708, input differences and output differences can be generated, for example, by difference generator 606 of
At 710, the input differences and the output differences can be correlated, for example, by difference correlation and report generator 608 of
At 712, a report that indicates correlated input and output differences can be generated. Additionally, in some implementations, the report can include an anticipated severity of each correlated difference. Note that more detailed techniques for generating a report are shown in and described below in connection with
The process can then end at 714.
Process 800 can begin at 802.
At 804, two trees (referred to herein as “tree1” and “tree2”) corresponding to two versions of a security policy represented in a tree-based data structure can be read. Note that an example of a tree-based data structure for a security policy input is shown in and described above in connection with
At 806, a difference tree (referred to herein as “diff_tree”) can be initiated. The difference tree can be a tree-based data structure that can, at an end of process 800, include nodes and branches that correspond to differences between the two versions of the security policy read at 804.
At 808, a loop through each level l in tree1 can be initiated. As shown in
At 810, a loop through each node n in level l of tree1 can be initiated. As shown in
Note that, by looping through each node n in level l, and each level l in tree1, each node and branch of tree1 can be analyzed.
At 812, a determination of whether node n is missing in tree2 can be made.
If, at 812, it is determined that node n is missing in tree2 (“yes” at 812), node n can be marked as “removed” in diff_tree at 814.
Conversely, if, at 812, it is determined that node n is not missing in tree2 (“no” at 812), a determination of whether node n in tree1 is the same as node n in tree2 can be made at 816.
If, at 816, it is determined that node n in tree1 is the same as node n in tree2 (“yes” at 816), the process can loop back to 810 and analyze the next node in level l of tree1.
Conversely, if, at 816, it is determined that node n in tree1 is not the same as node n in tree2 (“no” at 816), the node n can be marked as modified in diff_tree at 818. The process can then loop back to 810 and can analyze the next node in level l of tree1.
After all nodes in level l of tree1 have been analyzed, process 800 can determine if there are no more levels in tree1 at 820.
If there are more levels in tree1 at 820 (“no” at 820), process 800 can go back to 808 and can loop through the nodes of the next level of tree1.
Conversely, if there are no more levels in tree1 at 820 (“yes” at 820), a loop through all levels l′ of tree2 can be initiated at 822.
At 824, a loop through all nodes n′ of each level l′ of tree2 can be initiated.
At 826, for a given node n′ in tree2, it can be determined if n′ is missing in tree1.
If, at 826, it is determined that node n′ is missing in tree1 (“yes” at 826), node n′ can be marked as added in diff_tree at 828.
Conversely, if, at 826, it is determined that node n′ is not missing in tree1 (“no” at 826), the process can return to 824 and can analyze the next node in level l′.
In response to determining that all nodes n′ in a given level l′ of tree2 have been analyzed, the process can proceed to 830 and can determine if there are no more levels in tree2.
If, at 830, it is determined that there are more levels (“no” at 830), the process can return to 822 and can analyze the next level in tree2.
Conversely, if, at 830, it is determined that there are no more levels (“yes” at 830), the difference tree (i.e., diff_tree) can be returned at 832. Note that, at 832, nodes of diff_tree indicate differences between tree1 and tree2. Accordingly, diff_tree represents differences between a second version of a security policy represented by tree2 and a first version of the security policy represented by tree1.
Process 800 can end at 834.
Turning to
Process 900 can begin at 902.
At 904, an input difference tree (referred to herein as “input_diff_tree”), an output difference tree (referred to herein as “output_diff_tree”), and a severity lookup table (referred to herein as “severity_lookup_table”) can be read. The input difference tree can be a tree-format data structure that represents differences between two versions of a security policy input. The output difference tree can be a tree-format data structure that represents differences between two versions of a security policy output. Note that the input difference tree and the output difference tree can each be created using the techniques shown in and described above in connection with
The severity lookup table can be a table that associates a severity characteristic with a type of difference in a policy output. For example, the severity lookup table can indicate that adding a service is a type of policy output difference that is of a low severity. As another example, the severity lookup table can indicate that removing a service is a type of policy output difference that is of a high severity. As yet another example, the severity lookup table can indicate that a policy change that modifies allowed ports to all ports and/or to a larger number of ports is a type of policy output difference that is of a high severity.
It should be noted that a severity lookup table can be generated in various ways. For example, in some implementations, a severity lookup table can be manually curated. As another example, in some implementations, a severity lookup table can be generated using various heuristics that associated severity characteristics to different types of policy differences. As yet another example, in some implementations, a severity lookup table can be generated using one or more machine learning algorithms trained to assign severity characteristics to different types of policy differences.
At 906, a loop through each difference node in input_diff_tree can be initiated.
At 908, for a given difference node in input_diff_tree, the difference node can be matched to a corresponding branch or node in output_diff_tree.
At 910, it can be determined whether the corresponding branch or node exists in output_diff_tree.
If, at 910, it is determined that the corresponding branch or node does not exist in output_diff_tree (“no” at 910), a policy generation problem can be added to a report at 912. For example, the policy generation problem can indicate that a policy output difference that corresponds to the policy input difference associated with the difference node being analyzed was found. The process can then proceed to 918 to determine if there are additional differences to analyze in input_diff_tree.
Conversely, if, at 910, it is determined that the corresponding branch or node does exist in output_diff_tree (“yes” at 910), a severity of the policy difference can be identified using the severity lookup table at 914. For example, the identified corresponding branch or node in output_diff_tree can be mapped to a type of policy output difference (e.g., addition of service, removal of service, addition of allowed ports, removal of allowed ports, etc.). Continuing with this example, the severity of the type of policy output difference can be identified by using the type of policy output difference as a key with respect to the severity lookup table.
Process 900 can then add the identified severity to a record or report at 916. In some implementations, the identified severity can be added in connection with an indication of the policy output difference and/or the type of policy output difference.
Process 900 can then proceed to 918 and can determine if there are additional differences in input_diff_tree to analyze.
If, at 918, it is determined that there are additional differences in input_diff_tree (“yes” at 918), process 900 can loop back to 906 and can analyze the next difference in input_diff_tree. In some implementations, process 900 can loop through blocks 906-918 until the entirety of input_diff_tree has been traversed.
Conversely, if, at 918, it is determined that there are no additional differences in input_diff_tree (“no” at 918), process 900 can return the record or report at 920. Note that, at 920, the record or report can indicate all policy output differences that have been matched to a policy input difference. Additionally, as described above in connection with block 914, the record or report can indicate a corresponding severity of each policy output difference. Furthermore, in instances in which a policy output difference could not be identified for a given policy input difference, the record or report can include an indication of such.
Note that, an example of a report is shown in and described below in connection with
Process 900 can end at 922.
At 1002 and 1004, “service11” has been removed from the “Security_Group_2” security group. In particular, at 1002, “service11” is removed from the list of service names, and, at 1004, port and protocol information associated with the “service11” instance is removed.
At 1006 and 1008, a new service, named “service14” is added to the “Security_Group_2” security group. In particular, at 1006, “service14” is added to the list of service names, and, at 1008, port and protocol information associated with “service14” is added.
At 1010, a new policy is added to the “Security_Group_2” security group. As illustrated in
Referring to system output report 1050, beginning at 1051, identified changes are shown. For example, beginning at 1052, the removal of “service11” from “Security_Group_2” is indicated. In particular, an assessed severity is shown at 1054. Additionally, details of the removed service (e.g., a description, a type of traffic associated with the removed service, a type of protocol associated with the removed service, port information, etc.) is shown at 1056.
As another example, beginning at 1058, the addition of “service14” from “Security_Group_2” is indicated. In particular, an assessed severity is shown at 1060. Additionally, details of the added service (e.g., a description, a type of traffic associated with the added service, a type of protocol associated with the added service, port information, etc.) is shown at 1062.
Continuing further, system output report 1050 shows changes associated with the policy added to “Security_Group_2” beginning at 1064. An assessed severity is shown at 1066. At 1068 and 1070, changes to the designated subnet ranges are indicated as a result of the added policy.
It should be noted that a system output report, such as that shown in
A user system 12 may be implemented as any computing device(s) or other data processing apparatus such as a machine or system used by a user to access a database system 16. For example, any of user systems 12 can be a handheld and/or portable computing device such as a mobile phone, a smartphone, a laptop computer, or a tablet. Other examples of a user system include computing devices such as a workstation and/or a network of computing devices. As illustrated in
An on-demand database service, implemented using system 16 by way of example, is a service that is made available to users who do not need to necessarily be concerned with building and/or maintaining the database system. Instead, the database system may be available for their use when the users need the database system, i.e., on the demand of the users. Some on-demand database services may store information from one or more tenants into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenant database system (MTS). A database image may include one or more database objects. A relational database management system (RDBMS) or the equivalent may execute storage and retrieval of information against the database object(s). Application platform 18 may be a framework that allows the applications of system 16 to run, such as the hardware and/or software, e.g., the operating system. In some implementations, application platform 18 enables creation, managing and executing one or more applications developed by the provider of the on-demand database service, users accessing the on-demand database service via user systems 12, or third party application developers accessing the on-demand database service via user systems 12.
The users of user systems 12 may differ in their respective capacities, and the capacity of a particular user system 12 might be entirely determined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. For example, when a salesperson is using a particular user system 12 to interact with system 16, the user system has the capacities allotted to that salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that user system to interact with system 16, that user system has the capacities allotted to that administrator. In systems with a hierarchical role model, users at one permission level may have access to applications, data, and database information accessible by a lower permission level user, but may not have access to certain applications, database information, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level. Thus, different users will have different capabilities with regard to accessing and modifying application and database information, depending on a user's security or permission level, also called authorization.
Network 14 is any network or combination of networks of devices that communicate with one another. For example, network 14 can be any one or any combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network), telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, star network, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriate configuration. Network 14 can include a TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) network, such as the global internetwork of networks often referred to as the Internet. The Internet will be used in many of the examples herein. However, it should be understood that the networks that the present implementations might use are not so limited.
User systems 12 might communicate with system 16 using TCP/IP and, at a higher network level, use other common Internet protocols to communicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTP is used, user system 12 might include an HTTP client commonly referred to as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP signals to and from an HTTP server at system 16. Such an HTTP server might be implemented as the sole network interface 20 between system 16 and network 14, but other techniques might be used as well or instead. In some implementations, the network interface 20 between system 16 and network 14 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP request distributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requests evenly over a plurality of servers. At least for users accessing system 16, each of the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data; however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.
In one implementation, system 16, shown in
One arrangement for elements of system 16 is shown in
Several elements in the system shown in
According to one implementation, each user system 12 and all of its components are operator configurable using applications, such as a browser, including computer code run using a central processing unit such as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, system 16 (and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) and all of its components might be operator configurable using application(s) including computer code to run using processor system 17, which may be implemented to include a central processing unit, which may include an Intel Pentium® processor or the like, and/or multiple processor units. Non-transitory computer-readable media can have instructions stored thereon/in, that can be executed by or used to program a computing device to perform any of the methods of the implementations described herein. Computer program code 26 implementing instructions for operating and configuring system 16 to intercommunicate and to process web pages, applications and other data and media content as described herein is preferably downloadable and stored on a hard disk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, may also be stored in any other volatile or non-volatile memory medium or device as is well known, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any media capable of storing program code, such as any type of rotating media including floppy disks, optical discs, digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk (CD), microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any other type of computer-readable medium or device suitable for storing instructions and/or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof, may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over a transmission medium, e.g., over the Internet, or from another server, as is well known, or transmitted over any other conventional network connection as is well known (e.g., extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using any communication medium and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, etc.) as are well known. It will also be appreciated that computer code for the disclosed implementations can be realized in any programming language that can be executed on a client system and/or server or server system such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any other markup language, Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, any other scripting language, such as VBScript, and many other programming languages as are well known may be used. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).
According to some implementations, each system 16 is configured to provide web pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user (client) systems 12 to support the access by user systems 12 as tenants of system 16. As such, system 16 provides security mechanisms to keep each tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than one MTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another (e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or they may be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one or more servers located in city A and one or more servers located in city B). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically and/or physically connected servers distributed locally or across one or more geographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to refer to one type of computing device such as a system including processing hardware and process space(s), an associated storage medium such as a memory device or database, and, in some instances, a database application (e.g., OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. It should also be understood that “server system” and “server” are often used interchangeably herein. Similarly, the database objects described herein can be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, a collection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online or offline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include a distributed database or storage network and associated processing intelligence.
User system 12, network 14, system 16, tenant data storage 22, and system data storage 24 were discussed above in
Application platform 18 includes an application setup mechanism 38 that supports application developers' creation and management of applications, which may be saved as metadata into tenant data storage 22 by save routines 36 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenant process spaces 54 managed by tenant management process 60 for example. Invocations to such applications may be coded using PL/SOQL 34 that provides a programming language style interface extension to API 32. A detailed description of some PL/SOQL language implementations is discussed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA A MULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, issued on Jun. 1, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by one or more system processes, which manage retrieving application metadata 66 for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata as an application in a virtual machine.
Each application server 50 may be communicably coupled to database systems, e.g., having access to system data 25 and tenant data 23, via a different network connection. For example, one application server 501 might be coupled via the network 14 (e.g., the Internet), another application server 50N-1 might be coupled via a direct network link, and another application server 50N might be coupled by yet a different network connection. Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating between application servers 50 and the database system. However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that other transport protocols may be used to optimize the system depending on the network interconnect used.
In certain implementations, each application server 50 is configured to handle requests for any user associated with any organization that is a tenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove application servers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there is preferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to a specific application server 50. In one implementation, therefore, an interface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5 Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the application servers 50 and the user systems 12 to distribute requests to the application servers 50. In one implementation, the load balancer uses a least connections algorithm to route user requests to the application servers 50. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as round robin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, in certain implementations, three consecutive requests from the same user could hit three different application servers 50, and three requests from different users could hit the same application server 50. In this manner, by way of example, system 16 is multi-tenant, wherein system 16 handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data and applications across disparate users and organizations.
As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs a sales force where each salesperson uses system 16 to manage their sales process. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data, customer follow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., all applicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in tenant data storage 22). In an example of an MTS arrangement, since all of the data and the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit, calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system having nothing more than network access, the user can manage his or her sales efforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example, if a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internet access in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates as to that customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.
While each user's data might be separate from other users' data regardless of the employers of each user, some data might be organization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users or all of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, there might be some data structures managed by system 16 that are allocated at the tenant level while other data structures might be managed at the user level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants including possible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keep data, applications, and application use separate. Also, because many tenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their own system, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions that may be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data and tenant-specific data, system 16 might also maintain system level data usable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data might include industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharable among tenants.
In certain implementations, user systems 12 (which may be client systems) communicate with application servers 50 to request and update system-level and tenant-level data from system 16 that may involve sending one or more queries to tenant data storage 22 and/or system data storage 24. System 16 (e.g., an application server 50 in system 16) automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g., one or more SQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. System data storage 24 may generate query plans to access the requested data from the database.
Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, such as a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefined categories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may be used herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and custom objects according to some implementations. It should be understood that “table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each table generally contains one or more data categories logically arranged as columns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a table contains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields. For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes a customer with fields for basic contact information such as name, address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe a purchase order, including fields for information such as customer, product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems, standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRM database applications, such standard entities might include tables for case, account, contact, lead, and opportunity data objects, each containing pre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word “entity” may also be used interchangeably herein with “object” and “table”.
In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to create and store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standard entities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standard objects, including custom index fields. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,039, titled CUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASE SYSTEM, by Weissman et al., issued on Aug. 17, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes, teaches systems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizing standard objects in a multi-tenant database system. In certain implementations, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored in a single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logical tables per organization. It is transparent to customers that their multiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that their data may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.
As shown in
Moreover, one or more of the devices in the on-demand database service environment 1200 may be implemented on the same physical device or on different hardware. Some devices may be implemented using hardware or a combination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “data processing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used herein are not limited to a single hardware device, but rather include any hardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.
The cloud 1204 is intended to refer to a data network or combination of data networks, often including the Internet. Client machines located in the cloud 1204 may communicate with the on-demand database service environment to access services provided by the on-demand database service environment. For example, client machines may access the on-demand database service environment to retrieve, store, edit, and/or process information.
In some implementations, the edge routers 1208 and 1212 route packets between the cloud 1204 and other components of the on-demand database service environment 1200. The edge routers 1208 and 1212 may employ the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol of the Internet. The edge routers 1208 and 1212 may maintain a table of IP networks or ‘prefixes’, which designate network reachability among autonomous systems on the Internet.
In one or more implementations, the firewall 1216 may protect the inner components of the on-demand database service environment 1200 from Internet traffic. The firewall 1216 may block, permit, or deny access to the inner components of the on-demand database service environment 1200 based upon a set of rules and other criteria. The firewall 1216 may act as one or more of a packet filter, an application gateway, a stateful filter, a proxy server, or any other type of firewall.
In some implementations, the core switches 1220 and 1224 are high-capacity switches that transfer packets within the on-demand database service environment 1200. The core switches 1220 and 1224 may be configured as network bridges that quickly route data between different components within the on-demand database service environment. In some implementations, the use of two or more core switches 1220 and 1224 may provide redundancy and/or reduced latency.
In some implementations, the pods 1240 and 1244 may perform the core data processing and service functions provided by the on-demand database service environment. Each pod may include various types of hardware and/or software computing resources. An example of the pod architecture is discussed in greater detail with reference to
In some implementations, communication between the pods 1240 and 1244 may be conducted via the pod switches 1232 and 1236. The pod switches 1232 and 1236 may facilitate communication between the pods 1240 and 1244 and client machines located in the cloud 1204, for example via core switches 1220 and 1224. Also, the pod switches 1232 and 1236 may facilitate communication between the pods 1240 and 1244 and the database storage 1256.
In some implementations, the load balancer 1228 may distribute workload between the pods 1240 and 1244. Balancing the on-demand service requests between the pods may assist in improving the use of resources, increasing throughput, reducing response times, and/or reducing overhead. The load balancer 1228 may include multilayer switches to analyze and forward traffic.
In some implementations, access to the database storage 1256 may be guarded by a database firewall 1248. The database firewall 1248 may act as a computer application firewall operating at the database application layer of a protocol stack. The database firewall 1248 may protect the database storage 1256 from application attacks such as structure query language (SQL) injection, database rootkits, and unauthorized information disclosure.
In some implementations, the database firewall 1248 may include a host using one or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy traffic before passing it to a gateway router. The database firewall 1248 may inspect the contents of database traffic and block certain content or database requests. The database firewall 1248 may work on the SQL application level atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications' connection to the database or SQL management interfaces as well as intercepting and enforcing packets traveling to or from a database network or application interface.
In some implementations, communication with the database storage 1256 may be conducted via the database switch 1252. The multi-tenant database storage 1256 may include more than one hardware and/or software components for handling database queries. Accordingly, the database switch 1252 may direct database queries transmitted by other components of the on-demand database service environment (e.g., the pods 1240 and 1244) to the correct components within the database storage 1256.
In some implementations, the database storage 1256 is an on-demand database system shared by many different organizations. The on-demand database service may employ a multi-tenant approach, a virtualized approach, or any other type of database approach. On-demand database services are discussed in greater detail with reference to
The content batch servers 1264 may handle requests internal to the pod. These requests may be long-running and/or not tied to a particular customer. For example, the content batch servers 1264 may handle requests related to log mining, cleanup work, and maintenance tasks.
The content search servers 1268 may provide query and indexer functions. For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 1268 may allow users to search through content stored in the on-demand database service environment.
The file servers 1286 may manage requests for information stored in the file storage 1298. The file storage 1298 may store information such as documents, images, and basic large objects (BLOBs). By managing requests for information using the file servers 1286, the image footprint on the database may be reduced.
The query servers 1282 may be used to retrieve information from one or more file systems. For example, the query system 1282 may receive requests for information from the app servers 1288 and then transmit information queries to the NFS 1296 located outside the pod.
The pod 1244 may share a database instance 1290 configured as a multi-tenant environment in which different organizations share access to the same database. Additionally, services rendered by the pod 1244 may call upon various hardware and/or software resources. In some implementations, the ACS servers 1280 may control access to data, hardware resources, or software resources.
In some implementations, the batch servers 1284 may process batch jobs, which are used to run tasks at specified times. Thus, the batch servers 1284 may transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers 1288, to trigger the batch jobs.
In some implementations, the QFS 1292 may be an open source file system available from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara, California. The QFS may serve as a rapid-access file system for storing and accessing information available within the pod 1244. The QFS 1292 may support some volume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be grouped together into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on a separate set of disks, which may be useful for streaming applications where long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system may communicate with one or more content search servers 1268 and/or indexers 1294 to identify, retrieve, move, and/or update data stored in the network file systems 1296 and/or other storage systems.
In some implementations, one or more query servers 1282 may communicate with the NFS 1296 to retrieve and/or update information stored outside of the pod 1244. The NFS 1296 may allow servers located in the pod 1244 to access information to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed.
In some implementations, queries from the query servers 1222 may be transmitted to the NFS 1296 via the load balancer 1228, which may distribute resource requests over various resources available in the on-demand database service environment. The NFS 1296 may also communicate with the QFS 1292 to update the information stored on the NFS 1296 and/or to provide information to the QFS 1292 for use by servers located within the pod 1244.
In some implementations, the pod may include one or more database instances 1290. The database instance 1290 may transmit information to the QFS 1292. When information is transmitted to the QFS, it may be available for use by servers within the pod 1244 without using an additional database call.
In some implementations, database information may be transmitted to the indexer 1294. Indexer 1294 may provide an index of information available in the database 1290 and/or QFS 1292. The index information may be provided to file servers 1286 and/or the QFS 1292.
In some implementations, one or more application servers or other servers described above with reference to
While some of the disclosed implementations may be described with reference to a system having an application server providing a front end for an on-demand database service capable of supporting multiple tenants, the disclosed implementations are not limited to multi-tenant databases nor deployment on application servers. Some implementations may be practiced using various database architectures such as ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scope of the implementations claimed.
It should be understood that some of the disclosed implementations can be embodied in the form of control logic using hardware and/or computer software in a modular or integrated manner. Other ways and/or methods are possible using hardware and a combination of hardware and software.
Any of the disclosed implementations may be embodied in various types of hardware, software, firmware, and combinations thereof. For example, some techniques disclosed herein may be implemented, at least in part, by computer-readable media that include program instructions, state information, etc., for performing various services and operations described herein. Examples of program instructions include both machine code, such as produced by a compiler, and files containing higher-level code that may be executed by a computing device such as a server or other data processing apparatus using an interpreter. Examples of computer-readable media include, but are not limited to: magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media such as flash memory, compact disk (CD) or digital versatile disk (DVD); magneto-optical media; and hardware devices specially configured to store program instructions, such as read-only memory (ROM) devices and random access memory (RAM) devices. A computer-readable medium may be any combination of such storage devices.
Any of the operations and techniques described in this application may be implemented as software code to be executed by a processor using any suitable computer language such as, for example, Java, C++ or Perl using, for example, object-oriented techniques. The software code may be stored as a series of instructions or commands on a computer-readable medium. Computer-readable media encoded with the software/program code may be packaged with a compatible device or provided separately from other devices (e.g., via Internet download). Any such computer-readable medium may reside on or within a single computing device or an entire computer system, and may be among other computer-readable media within a system or network. A computer system or computing device may include a monitor, printer, or other suitable display for providing any of the results mentioned herein to a user.
While various implementations have been described herein, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not limitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present application should not be limited by any of the implementations described herein, but should be defined only in accordance with the following and later-submitted claims and their equivalents.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
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| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 16948399 | Sep 2020 | US |
| Child | 17248347 | US |
