Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Health Analytics For Easier Health Monitoring Of Logical Forwarding Elements”, for Approval (USPTO 20240039824): Patent Application

2024 FEB 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventors Agarwal, Minjal (Santa Clara, CA, US); Panse, Tejas Sanjeev (San Jose, CA, US); Podduturi, Vinith (Fremont, CA, US); Sinha, Sonam (San Jose, CA, US), filed on July 27, 2022, was made available online on February 1, 2024.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “It is important for users to have full visibility into the health of components in order to proactively monitor and take actions in advance to avoid costly outages. Health of composite components depends upon various factors and each of these factors are currently monitored independently. However, users have to manually monitor all of these factors and co-relate them in order to determine the overall health of the composite component, which is time consuming and requires strong expertise in the component’s architecture and how it impacts networking, performance, and latency, in general, to accurately detect a health issue. New methods and systems are needed to automatically quantify the health of composite components, control planes and data planes of networks, distributed network elements, and logical networks.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “Some embodiments provide a novel method of assessing health of a software managed network (SMN) that includes multiple forwarding elements that exchange data messages with each other. A health analytics manager collects performance metrics from control-plane components of the SMN that configure the forwarding elements of the SMN to forward data messages. The health analytics manager also collects performance metrics from data-plane components including the forwarding elements of the SMN. Then, the health analytics manager generates one health score from the collected performance metrics of the control-plane and data-plane components to express an overall health of the SMN.

“In some embodiments, the forwarding elements of the SMN included in the data-plane components are physical forwarding elements (PFEs) of the SMN that are configured to implement a set of one or more logical forwarding elements (LFEs) that exchange data messages with each other. In other embodiments, the forwarding elements of the SMN included in the data-plane components are the LFEs implemented by PFEs.

“The control-plane components of some embodiments includes (1) a central control plane (CCP) that includes a set of controllers executing on a host computer in the SMN, and (2) a set of local control-plane (LCP) modules each executing on another host computer in the SMN. In such embodiments, the CCP and the set of LCP modules implement a control plane through which PFEs are configured to implement LFEs and exchange data messages with each other. In some embodiments, the PFEs implement a data plane through which they exchange data messages with each other.

“In some embodiments, the performance metrics from the control-plane components include (1) metrics associated with the CCP, (2) metrics associated with the host computer on which the CCP operates, (3) metrics associated with each of the LCP modules, and (4) metrics associated with each host computer on which the LCP modules operate. The performance metrics of the data-plane components in some embodiments includes metrics associated with the data messages exchanged between the forwarding elements of the SMN, i.e., LFEs, PFEs, or both.

“In some embodiments, the health analytics manager also collects performance metrics from management-plane components of the SMN that manage the control-plane components. In such embodiments, the health analytics manager generates the health score from the collected performance metrics of the control-plane components, the data-plane components, and the management-plane components to express the overall health of the SMN. The management-plane components may include (1) a set of management servers operating on a host computer in the SMN, and (2) local management-plane (LMP) modules each operating on other host computers in the SMN. The performance metrics of the management-plane components, hence, may include metrics associated with the set of management servers and the LMP modules. The management servers manage the control-plane components of the SMN by receiving data from users/administrators for the SMN, and providing the data to the control-plane components. In some embodiments, the management servers process the data before providing it to the control-plane components. In other embodiments, the management servers provide the data to the control-plane components as it is given to the management servers. The management servers also in some embodiments receive data from PFEs and/or LFEs of the SMN, such as topology data, and the management servers use this data to configure the control-plane components.

“The health score generated to express the overall health of the SMN is in some embodiments a final health score computed based on secondary health scores. To generate the aggregated health score, the health analytics manager computes a first health score from the collected performance metrics of the control-plane components to express a health of the control-plane components. The health analytics manager also computes a second health score from the collected performance metrics of the data-plane components to express a health of the data-plane components. Then, the health analytics manager uses the first and second health scores and weight values assigned to the control-plane components and the data-plane components to generate the final health score to express the overall health of the SMN.

“In some embodiments, control-plane components are as a group assigned one weight and the data-plane components are as a group assigned one weight, such that the health analytics manager computes the first health score for the control-plane components and the second health score for the data-plane components, and uses the assigned weights to combine the two health scores. In other embodiments, the metrics of the control-plane components and the data-plane components are each assigned their own weight. In such embodiments, a normalized metric value is computed for each metric, and the normalized metric values are used along with individual weights assigned to the metrics to compute the final health score. In both of these two methods of generating the final health score, the weights may be assigned by an administrator or a user.

“As discussed previously, the health analytics manager in some embodiments generates one health score using the performance metrics of the control-plane, data-plane, and management-plane components (if the management-plane components metrics are collected) to express the overall health of the SMN. In other embodiments, the health analytics manager generates a health score for each component type. For instance, the health analytics manager generates a first health score from the collected performance metrics of the control-plane components to express an overall health of the control plane of the SMN, and generates a second health score from the collected performance metrics of the data-plane components to express an overall health of the data plane of the SMN. If performance metrics from management-plane components are collected, the health analytics manager may also generate a third health score from the collected performance metrics of the management-plane components to express an overall health of the management plane of the SMN. In such embodiments, the three health scores are computed in order to monitor the health of the control, data, and management planes individually to understand which plane, if any, is causing a poor health of the SMN.

“Some embodiments provide a novel method for monitoring the health of LFEs of a logical network. For an LFE implemented by multiple PFEs, a health analytics manager identifies a set of one or more metrics associated with each PFE implementing the LFE. The health analytics manager uses the set of metrics to compute a health score for the LFE. Then, the health analytics manager provides the health score in a report to provide an indication regarding the monitored health of the LFE. The set of metrics used to compute the health score for the LFE includes, in some embodiments, at least one metric for each PFE implementing the LFE.

“In some embodiments, to compute the health score using the set of metrics, the health analytics manager computes a normalized metric value for each metric in the metric set. the normalized metric values may be computed by dividing the collected metric value by the metric’s maximum value. The normalized metric values may instead be computed based on rules and/or thresholds defined by an administrator or user. For example, for a storage usage metric for a particular network element, a rule may be defined such that when the storage usage reaches 60%, the normalized metric value for the metric is a value of 50 (in embodiments where normalized metric values are valued on a 1 to 100 scale). Another rule may be defined for this metric such that when the storage usage reaches 90%, the normalized metric value drops to a value of 10. Any suitable threshold or rule may be defined for any metric.

“Once the normalized metric values for each metric are computed, the health analytics manager computes the health score based on the normalized metric values for each of the metrics and based on weights assigned to the metrics. The weights assigned to each metric of some embodiments, when added together, sum to 100% (when the weights are values within a range of 0% to 100%). The weights in other embodiments, when added together, sum to 1 (when the weights are values within a range of 0 to 1). For example, a first metric may have a normalized metric value of 80 and have an assigned weight of 40%, so the weighted normalized metric value for the first metric is 32 (i.e., 40% of 80). A second metric may have a normalized metric value of and have an assigned weight of 60%, so the weighted normalized metric value for the second metric is 36 (i.e., 60% of 60). Once weighted normalized metric values are computed, the health analytics manager computes a sum of the weighted normalized metric values to compute the health score. Using the example above, the health analytics manager would sum the weighted normalized metric values of the first and second metrics (i.e., 32 and 36), resulting in a health score of 68.”

There is additional summary information. Please visit full patent to read further.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for monitoring health of logical forwarding elements (LFEs) of a logical network, the method comprising: for an LFE implemented by a plurality of physical forwarding elements (PFEs): identifying a set of one or more metrics associated with each PFE in the plurality of PFEs, wherein the set of metrics comprises at least one metric for each PFE in the plurality of PFEs; using the set of metrics to compute a health score for the LFE, wherein using the set of metrics comprises: computing a normalized metric value for each metric in the set of metrics; and computing the health score based on the normalized metric values for each metric in the set of metrics and weights assigned to each metric; and providing the health score in a report to provide an indication regarding the monitored health of the LFE.

“2. (canceled)

“3. The method of claim 2, wherein the normalized metric values for each metric are computed based on rules and thresholds defined by an administrator.

“4. The method of claim 2, wherein using the set of metrics further comprises: computing at least one secondary health score based on normalized metric values for each metric in a subset of the set of metrics and weights assigned to each metric in the subset; and computing the health score based on the secondary health score, normalized metric values for each metric not in the subset of metrics, and weights assigned to the secondary health score and the metrics not in the subset of metrics.

“5. The method of claim 4, wherein the report comprises a score tree that includes (i) a mapping of the normalized metric values for each metric in the set of metrics, the secondary health score, and the health score, and (ii) the weights.

“6. The method of claim 5, wherein the report further comprises, for the health score, information regarding at least one of (i) a potential problem associated with the health score, (ii) a potential impact the potential problem may have on the LFE, and (iii) a recommended action to improve the health score.

“7. The method of claim 6, wherein the report is provided through at least one of (i) a text message, (ii) an email, and (iii) a user interface (UI).

“8. The method of claim 6, wherein the report is provided to a program through an application programming interface (API).

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the program sends an API request requesting the report before being provided the report through an API response.

“10. The method of claim 8, wherein the program receives an API response providing the report without sending an API request requesting the report.

“11. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the set of metrics comprises retrieving the set of metrics from a database.

“12. A method for monitoring health of logical forwarding elements (LFEs) of a logical network, the method comprising: for an LFE implemented by a plurality of physical forwarding elements (PFEs): identifying a set of one or more metrics associated with each PFE in the plurality of PFEs, wherein identifying the set of metrics comprises retrieving the set of metrics from a database that stores health scores previously computed for the LFE; using the set of metrics to compute a health score for the LFE; and providing the health score in a report to provide an indication regarding the monitored health of the LFE; and storing the health score in the database along with the previously computed health scores.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein each health score computed for the LFE is computed at a particular time interval.

“14. A method for monitoring health of logical forwarding elements (LFEs) of a logical network, the method comprising: for an LFE implemented by a plurality of physical forwarding elements (PFEs): identifying a set of one or more metrics associated with each PFE in the plurality of PFEs; using the set of metrics to compute a health score for the LFE; and providing the health score in a report to provide an indication regarding the monitored health of the LFE, wherein the health score comprises a value within a range of 1 to 100.

“15. The method of claim 14, wherein a low value for the health score indicates the LFE is unhealthy, and a high value for the health score indicates the LFE is healthy.

“16. The method of claim 15 further comprising, when the health score falls below a particular minimum threshold, sending a notification to an administrator that the health score for the LFE is below the particular minimum threshold.

“17. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program for execution by at least one processing unit for monitoring health of logical forwarding elements (LFEs) of a logical network, the program comprising sets of instructions: for an LFE implemented by a plurality of physical forwarding elements (PFEs): identifying a set of one or more metrics associated with each PFE in the plurality of PFEs, wherein the set of metrics comprises at least one metric for each PFE in the plurality of PFEs; using the set of metrics to compute a health score for the LFE by computing a normalized metric value for each metric in the set of metrics, and computing the health score based on the normalized metric values for each metric in the set of metrics and weights assigned to each metric; and providing the health score in a report to provide an indication regarding the monitored health of the LFE.

“18. (canceled)

“19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17, wherein the sets of instructions for using the set of metrics further comprises sets of instructions for: computing at least one secondary health score based on normalized metric values for each metric in a subset of the set of metrics and weights assigned to each metric in the subset; and computing the health score based on the secondary health score, normalized metric values for each metric not in the subset of metrics, and weights assigned to the secondary health score and the metrics not in the subset of metrics.

“20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 19, wherein the report comprises a score tree that includes (i) a mapping of the normalized metric values for each metric in the set of metrics, the secondary health score, and the health score, and (ii) the weights.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Agarwal, Minjal; Panse, Tejas Sanjeev; Podduturi, Vinith; Sinha, Sonam. Health Analytics For Easier Health Monitoring Of Logical Forwarding Elements. U.S. Patent Application Number 20240039824, filed July 27, 2022 and posted February 1, 2024. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20240039824)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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