Fortinet, Inc.

Extreme Networks, Inc.

Cisco Technology, Inc.

Anna Berenberg

Abraham Rabindranath Matthews

Michael Yip

Yeeping Chen Zhong

James Wanderer

Qi Cao

Mike Yip

Gordon MacKean

Edward Soloko

Methods and systems for managing a service provider switch are provided. According to one embodiment, a method is provided for provisioning a switch with a network-based managed Internet Protocol (IP) service. A network operating system (NOS) is provided on each processor element (PE) of the switch. The NOS includes an object manager (OM) responsible for managing global software object groups, managing software object configurations, managing local software objects and groups and routing control information between address spaces based on locations of software objects. The OM performs management plane communications among software objects by way of system calls. The OM performs data plane communications among software objects by way of object-to-object channels. The switch is provisioned with a network-based managed IP service for a particular customer by pushing discrete and customized software objects representing the network-based managed IP service onto an object-to-object channel established between two of the software objects.

Switch management system and method

Methods and systems for managing a service provider switch are provided. According to one embodiment, a network operating system (NOS) is provided on each processor element (PE) of the switch. The NOS includes an object manager (OM) responsible for managing global software object groups, managing software object configurations, managing local software objects and groups and routing control information between address spaces based on locations of software objects. The OM performs management plane communications among software objects by way of system calls. The OM performs data plane communications among software objects by way of object-to-object channels. The switch is provisioned with a network-based managed IP service for a particular customer of the service provider by pushing the service onto an object-to-object channel that has been established between a first software object and a second software object of the software objects.

A system and method of managing a switch includes installing a switch having a plurality of processor elements, installing an operating system on each processor element, creating a system virtual router and configuring the processor elements from the system virtual router.

A method is provided to dynamically manage the configuration of a network device. An application supporting a protocol, network interface or other component of the configuration operates in conjunction with a master agent and subagent to send and receive configuration management information. The application further operates in conjunction with a configuration manager interface and configuration manager to access and update the configuration in accordance with a priority of the application, and without taking the network device out of service.

Method and apparatus for dynamic configuration management

Systems and methods are provided for maintaining redundant master control blade management information in switch. According to one embodiment, a network operating system (NOS) is executed on processor elements of a switch. A distributed messaging layer channel is created among a dynamic set of control blades intercommunicating within the switch. Master control blade management information is maintained on a master control blade. Redundant master control blade management information is maintained on one or more standby control blades by performing bulk updates and flash updates to the redundant master control blade management information and the standby control blades periodically performing a consistency check against the redundant information. The bulk updates are triggered by dynamic events. The flash updates are triggered by individual changes to a global database. If the consistency check fails, then the standby control blade requests a bulk update from the master control blade.

Network operating system for maintaining redundant master control blade management information

A computing system receives a compressed archive file that includes a one or more new executable software modules, and a installation file specifying instructions for installing such modules on the computing system. The modules and the installation file are extracted from the compressed archive file, and the modules installed in accordance with the instructions. Instances of executing software modules that correspond to the installed modules are notified about their impending termination. The instances are then terminated before launching corresponding instances of the installed modules.

Method and apparatus for modifying software

A method and system is provided to control and check run-time process dependencies. When a process manager receives a request to start a new process, the process manager accesses a configuration file to check if the new process depends on any other processes to be running and what versions of these prerequisite processes are required. If an exact version is specified in the configuration file, the prerequisite process version must match the exact version specified to be compatible with the new process. If a range of acceptable versions is specified in the configuration file, the prerequisite process version must fall within the range of acceptable versions to be compatible with the new process. If a minimum acceptable version is specified in the configuration file, then the prerequisite process version must be greater than or equal to the minimum acceptable version specified. If a maximum acceptable version is specified in the configuration file, then the prerequisite process version must be less than or equal to the maximum acceptable version specified. If the prerequisite processes are not running or the versions of the running prerequisite processes are not compatible with the new process, then the new process is not started. If the new process does not depend on any processes or all the prerequisite are running with compatible versions, then the new process may be started.

Method and apparatus for controlling process dependencies

A method and system is provided for monitoring the health of processes running on a router. A behavior of a process is monitored and the process is killed if the behavior is abnormal. The behavior may be abnormal if the process is non-responsive, cannot start, or repeatedly crashes. The system may include a timer to measure a predetermined time interval for the process to perform a desired action, a counter to count a number of times the process fails to perform the desired action before the timer expires, and a controller to kill the process when the counter exceeds a maximum number of failures. Alternatively, the timer could measure an amount of uptime, the counter could count the number of times the process crashes, and the controller could kill the process when a crash rate calculated from the number of times the process crashes per the amount of uptime exceeds a maximum crash rate.

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Anna Berenberg