Patent Application
20180145892
Various embodiments described herein relate to methods, devices, and computer program products and more particularly to methods, devices, and computer program products for a multi-tenancy environment.
Network monitoring applications are important in computer networks to provide functionality such as fault monitoring, identification of slow or failing components, and/or intrusion detection. Metrics such as response time, availability, uptime, etc. of various devices in a network may be measured by network monitoring applications. A network may include a plurality of user devices that are each associated with a tenant. Each tenant may be associated with a plurality of user devices. Each tenant may include a tenant edge device that communicates with a service provider through a service provider edge device.
The service provider may wish to perform network monitoring of the various user devices in the network. However, two user devices associated with two different tenants may have the same IP address, i.e. overlapping IP addresses. Therefore, presently, a single instance of a network monitoring application may have difficulty distinguishing between various user devices that are associated with different tenants but having the same IP address.
Embodiments described herein include methods, electronic devices, and computer program products that may be configured and/or operable to perform operations in a multi-tenancy environment. In some embodiments, the method includes identifying a destination tenant that is associated with a destination user device to which a monitoring request is to be sent by a single instance of a network monitoring application running in a service provider network in a multi-tenancy environment. The destination user device includes a first user device that is associated with a first tenant or a second user device that is associated with a second tenant in the multi-tenancy environment. The method includes associating a source IP address with the monitoring request. The source IP address identifies the destination tenant. The method includes selectively routing, by the service provider network, the monitoring request to the destination user device through a network that is associated with the destination tenant based on the source IP address of the monitoring request.
In some embodiments, the method includes receiving, from the destination user device, a monitoring response including a destination IP address that is the source IP address of the monitoring request that was sent to the destination user device. The monitoring response may be received responsive to selectively routing the monitoring request to the destination user device.
In some embodiments, the method includes selectively determining that the monitoring response is from the first user device that is associated with the first tenant, based on the destination IP address of the monitoring response. The destination IP address of the monitoring response may include a first destination IP address if the monitoring response is from the first user device. The destination IP address of the monitoring response may include a second destination IP address that is different from the first destination IP address if the monitoring response is from the second user device. An IP address that is associated with the first user device may be the same IP address as an IP address that is associated with the second user device.
In some embodiments, the source IP address may include a first source IP address. The network associated with the first tenant may include a first network. Selectively routing the monitoring request to the destination user device includes applying policy based routing to the monitoring request based on a plurality of policy rules that are associated with the service provider network. The plurality of policies may include a first policy that includes a first rule with a first source IP address that maps to the first network, and/or a second policy that includes a second rule with a second source IP address that maps to a second network that are associated with the second tenant.
In some embodiments, identifying the destination tenant that is associated with the destination user device includes determining a tenant identifier of the destination tenant that is associated with the destination user device and selecting the source IP address for the monitoring request based on the tenant identifier. Selecting the source IP address may include selecting a first source IP address if the tenant identifier is associated with the first tenant, and/or selecting a second source IP address if the tenant identifier is associated with the second tenant, where the first source IP address is different from the second source IP address.
In some embodiments, associating the source IP address with the monitoring request includes selectively associating, by the network monitoring application, the first source IP address with the monitoring request based on determining that the monitoring request is to be sent to the first user device that is associated with the first tenant. Selectively routing the monitoring request to the destination user device may include routing the monitoring request by a service provider edge device that is associated with the service provider network. Identifying the destination tenant that is associated with the destination user device may be based on information stored in the service provider network.
Some embodiments are directed to an electronic device that includes a processor and a memory coupled to the processor and storing computer readable program code that when executed by the processor causes the processor to perform operations including identifying a destination tenant that is associated with a destination user device to which a monitoring request is to be sent by a single instance of a network monitoring application running in a service provider network in a multi-tenancy environment, wherein the destination user device includes a first user device that is associated with a first tenant or a second user device that is associated with a second tenant in the multi-tenancy environment, associating a source IP address with the monitoring request, where the source IP address identifies the destination tenant, selectively routing, by the service provider network, the monitoring request to the destination user device through a network that is associated with the destination tenant based on the source IP address of the monitoring request, and/or receiving, from the destination user device, a monitoring response including a destination IP address that is the source IP address of the monitoring request that was sent to the destination user device.
In some embodiments, the monitoring response is received responsive to the selectively routing the monitoring request to the destination user device. The processor may perform further operations including selectively determining that the monitoring response is from the first user device that is associated with the first tenant, based on the destination IP address of the monitoring response. The destination IP address of the monitoring response may include a first destination IP address if the monitoring response is from the first user device. The destination IP address of the monitoring response may include a second destination IP address that is different from the first destination IP address if the monitoring response is from the second user device. An IP address that is associated with the first user device may be the same IP address as an IP address that is associated with the second user device.
In some embodiments, the source IP address includes a first source IP address. The network associated with the first tenant may include a first network. Selectively routing the monitoring request to the destination user device may cause the processor to perform operations further including applying policy based routing to the monitoring request based on a plurality of policy rules that are associated with the service provider network. The plurality of policies may include a first policy that includes a first rule with a first source IP address that maps to the first network, and a second policy that includes a second rule with a second source IP address that maps to a second network that are associated with the second tenant.
In some embodiments, identifying the destination tenant that is associated with the destination user device may cause the processor to perform operations further including determining a tenant identifier of the destination tenant that is associated with the destination user device, and selecting the source IP address for the monitoring request based on the tenant identifier.
Some embodiments of the present inventive concept include a computer program product including a tangible computer readable storage medium. The computer readable program code embodied in the medium that when executed by a processor of an edge device of a service provider network causes the processor to perform operations including identifying a destination tenant that is associated with a destination user device to which a monitoring request is to be sent by a single instance of a network monitoring application running in a service provider network in a multi-tenancy environment. The destination user device includes a first user device that is associated with a first tenant or a second user device that is associated with a second tenant in the multi-tenancy environment. The operations include associating a source IP address with the monitoring request, where the source IP address identifies the destination tenant and selectively routing, by the service provider network, the monitoring request to the destination user device through a network that is associated with the destination tenant based on the source IP address of the monitoring request.
It is noted that aspects of the disclosure described with respect to one embodiment, may be incorporated in a different embodiment although not specifically described relative thereto. That is, all embodiments and/or features of any embodiment can be combined in any way and/or combination. These and other objects and/or aspects of the present invention are explained in detail in the specification set forth below.
Aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated by way of example and are not limited by the accompanying figures with like references indicating like elements.
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present disclosure may be illustrated and described herein in any of a number of patentable classes or context including any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. Accordingly, aspects of the present disclosure may be implemented entirely hardware, entirely software (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or combining software and hardware implementation that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module,” “component,” or “system.” Furthermore, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable media having computer readable program code embodied thereon.
Any combination of one or more computer readable media may be utilized. The computer readable media may be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium would include the following: a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an appropriate optical fiber with a repeater, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storage medium may be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium may be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. Program code embodied on a computer readable signal medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing.
Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of the present disclosure may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Scala, Smalltalk, Eiffel, JADE, Emerald, C++, C#, VB.NET, Python or the like, conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language, Visual Basic, Fortran 2003, Perl, COBOL 2002, PHP, ABAP, dynamic programming languages such as Python, Ruby and Groovy, or other programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider) or in a cloud computing environment or offered as a service such as a Software as a Service (SaaS).
Aspects of the present disclosure are described herein with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatuses (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the disclosure. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable instruction execution apparatus, create a mechanism for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer readable medium that when executed can direct a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions when stored in the computer readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instructions which when executed, cause a computer to implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable instruction execution apparatus, or other devices to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatuses or other devices to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
Various embodiments described herein may arise from a recognition that the network monitoring application may need to distinguish between user devices belonging to different tenants that may have the same the IP address. The network monitoring application would need a mechanism for distinguishing user devices with the same IP addresses and/or overlapping IP addresses, without altering software in the tenant edge devices and/or in the user devices.
Various embodiments described herein can overcome this potential problem of distinguishing between user devices that have the same IP address in different tenants by providing different source IP addresses from the service provider edge for data packets directed to the different user devices. Network data packets from the various user devices will be received by the network monitoring application with different destination IP addresses, thereby identifying the tenant from which the packet was received. Using different source IP addresses provides the advantage of no changes to tenant software or user device software to accommodate the strategy described herein. Furthermore, legacy systems may use multiple instances of the network monitoring application, such as one instance per tenant. As described herein, using different source IP addresses to distinguish different user devices with the same IP address would reduce and/or eliminate the need to for multiple instances of the network monitoring software, providing savings in processing power, savings in memory, reducing maintenance, and/or improving latency.
Once the proper source IP address is set by the monitoring application 100 for the monitoring request, the service provider network 110, by way of a service provider edge device D0, may selectively route the monitoring request to the destination user device through a network that is associated with the destination tenant based on the source IP address of the monitoring request. In the ongoing example, the source IP address for the monitoring request is 3.3.3.2 and the destination IP address is 1.1.1.2. The service provider edge device D0 may recognize that the source IP address 3.3.3.2 is associated with the second tenant 130. Thus, the monitoring request that has a source IP address of 3.3.3.2 would be routed by service provider edge device D0 to the second tenant's edge device D2, which, in turn, would forward the monitoring request to user device D6, which has an IP address of 1.1.1.2.
Responsive to receiving the monitoring request, user device D6 may send a monitoring response to the monitoring application 100. The destination IP address of the monitoring response from the user device D6 may be the source IP address of the monitoring request that was previously sent to the user device D6, i.e. the destination IP address of the monitoring response is 3.3.3.2. The source IP address of the monitoring response would be the IP address of user device D6, i.e. 1.1.1.2. The second tenant edge device D2 that is associated with the user device D6 may have learned the routing to the service provider edge based on the previously received monitoring request. As such, based on the destination IP address of the monitoring response, the second tenant edge device D2 may route the monitoring response to the service provider edge device D0, which forwards it to the monitoring application 100. According to the example embodiment of
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The processor 930 may include one or more data processing circuits, such as a general purpose and/or special purpose processor (e.g., microprocessor and/or digital signal processor) that may be collocated or distributed across one or more networks. The processor 930 is configured to execute computer program code 912 in the memory 910, described as a non-transitory computer readable medium, to perform at least some of the operations described herein as being performed by an electronic device. The computer program code 912 when executed by the processor 930 causes the processor 930 to perform operations in accordance with one or more embodiments disclosed herein for the electronic device 900. The electronic device 900 may further include a user input interface 920 (e.g., touch screen, keyboard, keypad, etc.) and a display device 922.
As described herein, a combination of tenant discriminators based on source IP addresses, IP aliasing, and policy based routing may be used to address the issue of overlapping addresses across multiple tenants in a multi-tenancy network to facilitate using a single network monitoring instance. The inventive concepts described herein provide an advantage over legacy systems that either use multiple monitoring agents or use additional software installed in the tenant network. As described herein, information available in the service provider network is used to distinguish user devices with overlapping IP addresses. The monitoring application described herein may use less overhead and may offer easier ways to detect outages in the network.
The flowchart and block diagrams in the figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various aspects of the present disclosure. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular aspects only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. Like reference numbers signify like elements throughout the description of the figures.
The corresponding structures, materials, acts, and equivalents of any means or step plus function elements in the claims below are intended to include any disclosed structure, material, or act for performing the function in combination with other claimed elements as specifically claimed. The description of the present disclosure has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the disclosure in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the disclosure. The aspects of the disclosure herein were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the disclosure and the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the disclosure with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated.
