US 12,348,589 B1
Zero downtime servicing of datapath services in software defined networks
Avijit Gupta, Redmond, WA (US); Rishabh Tewari, Sammamish, WA (US); Deepak Bansal, Bellevue, WA (US); Weixi Chen, Berkeley, CA (US); Venkata Satish Katta, Bellevue, WA (US); Alfonso de la Morena, Austin, TX (US); Arun Jeedigunta Venkata Satya, Seattle, WA (US); Zexuan Zhao, Kirkland, WA (US); and Kaixiang Miao, Redmond, WA (US)
Assigned to MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on Dec. 28, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/399,624.
Int. Cl. H04L 67/51 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 67/51 (2022.05) 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for providing high availability network services in a virtual computing environment comprising a plurality of network devices running in a software defined network (SDN) of the virtual computing environment, the network devices comprising a plurality of SDN appliances configured to disaggregate enforcement of policies of the SDN from hosts of the virtual computing environment, the hosts implemented on servers communicatively coupled to network interfaces of the SDN appliances, the servers hosting a plurality of virtual machines, containers, or workloads, the SDN appliance comprising a plurality of floating network interface cards (fNICs) configured to implement functionality of the SDN appliances, the method comprising:
pairing each of the fNICs with at least one other fNIC on another SDN appliance;
configuring the paired fNICs to maintain state data such that each fNIC can actively provide the high availability network services in response to a failure of a paired fNIC;
configuring the paired fNICs as a logical ring wherein only one paired fNIC is allowed to be deactivated at one time;
generating a mapping between logical and physical groupings of the paired fNICs and the high availability network services, wherein the mapping is configured to provide a service availability guarantee;
in response to a request to perform maintenance on one of the fNICs, using the mapping to determine if a threshold service availability for the high availability network services associated with the one fNIC will be exceeded, thereby violating the service availability guarantee; and
outputting a response based on the determining if the threshold service availability for the high availability network services associated with the one fNIC will be exceeded.