Nicira, Inc.

Alan Shieh

Teemu Koponen

Pankaj Thakkar

Ronghua Zhang

Amar Padmanabhan

Igor Ganichev

Martin Casado

W Andrew Lambeth

Jeremy Stribling

Natasha Gude

Alexander Yip

A network control system that achieves high availability for forwarding state computation within a controller cluster by replicating different levels of table state between controllers of the controller cluster. To build a highly available controller cluster, the tables for storing the forwarding state are replicated across the controllers. In order to reduce network traffic between the controllers, fewer tables are replicated to slave controllers, which then recompute the forwarding state of the master controller in order to have a replicate copy of the master controller's forwarding state for possible failover. In other embodiments, more tables are replicated to minimize the recomputations and processor load on the slave controller. The network control system of some embodiments performs continuous snapshotting to minimize downtime associated with reaching a fixed point and replicating the state.

Unified replication mechanism for fault-tolerance of state

A network control system that achieves high availability for forwarding state computation within a controller cluster by replicating different levels of table state between controllers of the controller cluster. To build a highly available controller cluster, the tables for storing the forwarding state are replicated across the controllers. In order to take responsibility for a slice, the slave controller of some embodiments performs merging of replicated state on a slice-by-slice basis. The merging is performed in a manner to prevent disruptions to the network state while the slave controller is updated.

For a controller of a distributed network control system comprising several controllers for managing forwarding elements that forward data in a network, a method for managing the forwarding elements is described. The method changes a set of data tuples stored in a relational database of the first controller that stores data tuples containing data for managing a set of forwarding elements. The method sends the changed data tuples to at least one of other controllers of the network control system. The other controller receiving the changed data tuples processes the changed data tuples and sends the processed data tuples to at least one of the managed forwarding elements.

Distributed network control system

A network control system for generating physical control plane data for managing first and second managed forwarding elements that implement forwarding operations associated with a first logical datapath set is described. The system includes (1) a first controller for converting logical control plane data for the first logical datapath set to universal physical control plane (UPCP) data, (2) a second controller for converting UPCP data to customized physical control plane (CPCP) data for the first managed forwarding element but not the second managed forwarding element, and (3) a third controller for receiving UPCP data generated by the first controller instance, identifying the second controller as the controller instance responsible for generating the CPCP data for the first managed forward element, and supplying the received UPCP data to the second controller. Each controller includes a network information base (NIB) storage for exchanging data with another controller instance.

Chassis controllers for converting universal flows

Some embodiments provide a network control system for generating physical control plane data for managing first and second managed forwarding elements that implement forwarding operations associated with a first logical datapath set. The system includes a first controller instance for converting logical control plane data for the first logical datapath set to universal physical control plane (UPCP) data. The system includes a second controller instance for converting UPCP data to customized physical control plane (CPCP) data for the first managed forwarding element but not the second managed forwarding element. Each controller instance includes a network information base (NIB) storage for storing data and exchanging data with the other controller instance.

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Alan Shieh