Cavium, Inc.

Cavium Networks, Inc.

Oavium Networks, Inc.

Faisal Masood

Richard Eugene Kessler

Muhammad Raghib Hussain

Manojkumar Panicker

Vishal Murgai

Brian Folsom

Robert A Sanzone

Imran Badr

Gregg Alan Bouchard

Michael S Bertone

Thomas Frederick Hummel

Daniel A Katz

Philip H Dickinson

Ram Kumar Manapragada

Satish Kikkeri

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support a mechanism to offload all aspects of inline SSL processing of an application running on a server/host to an embedded networking device such as a Network Interface Card (NIC), which serves as a hardware accelerator for all applications running on the server that need to have a secure connection with a remote client device over a network. By utilizing a plurality of its software and hardware features, the embedded networking device is configured to process all SSL operations of the secure connection inline, i.e., the SSL operations are performed as packets are transferred between the host and the client over the network, rather than having the SSL operations offloaded to the NIC, which then returns the packets to the host (or the remote client device) before they can be transmitted to the remote client device (or to the host).

Systems and methods for offloading inline SSL processing to an embedded networking device

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support hardware-based Quality of Service (QoS) operations, which offloads metering functionalities under OpenFlow protocol to a programmable hardware unit/block/component. The hardware unit supports several hardware implemented ports and each port supports multiple configurable queues for the packet flows through a network switch/chip/system. Specifically, the hardware unit includes a plurality of descriptor queues (DQs) configured to accept requests to send a plurality of packets from one or more CPU cores, and a plurality of condition and schedule modules configured to meter, schedule, and condition the packets through a hierarchy of scheduling queues under one or more metering constraints. The hardware unit is programmable to configure the byte-based and/or packet-based rate-limit for each of the packet flows with a calculated adjustment on allowed variations without requiring complex QoS algorithms to maintain the rate-limits of the flows.

Systems and methods for hardware accelerated metering for openflow protocol

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support hot plugging and/or unplugging one or more of remote storage devices virtualized as extensible/flexible storages and NVMe namespace(s) via an NVMe controller during operation. First, the NVMe controller virtualizes and presents a set of remote storage devices to one or more VMs running on a host attached to the NVMe controller as logical volumes in the NVMe namespace(s) so that each of the VMs running on the host can access these remote storage devices to perform read/write operations as if they were local storage devices. When the one or more remote storage devices are added to or removed from the set of remote storage devices based on storage space needs of the VMs, the NVMe controller updates the logical volumes in the NVMe namespace(s) accordingly and enables these remote storage devices to be hot plugged or unplugged from the plurality of remote storage devices at runtime without requiring shutting down and restarting any of the VMs, the host, and/or the NVMe controller. The VMs may then perform read/write operations on the NVMe namespace(s) updated to reflect the changes in the configuration of the set of remote storage devices dynamically without any interruption.

Systems and methods for supporting hot plugging of remote storage devices accessed over a network via NVME controller

A new approach is proposed to support a virtual network switch, which is a software implementation of a network switch utilizing hardware to accelerate implementation of timers of the virtual network switch under OpenFlow protocol. The approach utilizes a plurality of hardware-implemented timer blocks/rings, wherein each of the rings covers a specified time period and has a plurality of timer buckets each corresponding to an interval of expiration time of timers. When a new flow table entry is programmed at an OpenFlow agent of the virtual network switch, its associated timer entries are created and inserted into the corresponding timer bucket based on the expiration time of the timers. During operation, hardware of the virtual network switch traverses the timer rings for the timer bucket which time has expired, identifies timer entries in the expired timer bucket, interrupts CPU or provides a notification to the agent with necessary contextual information.

Systems and methods for hardware accelerated timer implementation for openflow protocol

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support elastic (extensible/flexible) storage access in real time by mapping a plurality of remote storage devices that are accessible over a network fabric as logical namespace(s) via a logical storage controller using a multitude of access mechanisms and storage network protocols. The logical storage controller exports and presents the remote storage devices to one or more VMs running on a host of the logical storage controller as the logical namespace(s), wherein these remote storage devices appear virtually as one or more logical volumes of a collection of logical blocks in the logical namespace(s) to the VMs. As a result, each of the VMs running on the host can access these remote storage devices to perform read/write operations as if they were local storage devices via the logical namespace(s).

Systems and methods for enabling access to extensible remote storage over a network as local storage via a logical storage controller

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to virtualize a physical NVMe controller associated with a computing device or host so that every virtual machine running on the host can have its own dedicated virtual NVMe controller. First, a plurality of virtual NVMe controllers are created on a single physical NVMe controller, which is associated with one or more storage devices. Once created, the plurality of virtual NVMe controllers are provided to VMs running on the host in place of the single physical NVMe controller attached to the host, and each of the virtual NVMe controllers organizes the storage units to be accessed by its corresponding VM as a logical volume. As a result, each of the VMs running on the host has its own namespace(s) and can access its storage devices directly through its own virtual NVMe controller.

Systems and methods for NVMe controller virtualization to support multiple virtual machines running on a host

A new approach is proposed virtual machines (VMs) accessing remote storage devices over a network via non-volatile memory express (NVMe) controllers to migrate live from a current host to a destination host. A first virtual NVMe controller running on a first physical NVMe controller enables a first VM running on the current host to perform storage operations to logical volumes mapped to the remote storage devices over the network as if they were local storage volumes. During VM migration, the current host puts the first virtual NVMe controller into quiesce state and saves an image of its states. A second virtual NVMe controller is created on a second physical NVMe controller using the saved image, which is configured to serve a second VM on the destination host. The second virtual NVMe controller resumes the storage operations to the remote storage devices without being interrupted by the VM migration.

Systems and methods for supporting migration of virtual machines accessing remote storage devices over network via NVMe controllers

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support extensible/flexible storage access in real time by virtualizing a plurality of remote storage devices as NVMe namespace(s) via an NVMe controller using a storage network protocol. The NVMe controller exports and presents the remote storage devices to one or more VMs running on a host attached to the NVMe controller as the NVMe namespace(s), wherein these remote storage devices appear virtually as one or more logical volumes of a collection of logical blocks in the NVMe namespace(s) to the VMs. As a result, each of the VMs running on the host can access these remote storage devices to perform read/write operations as if they were local storage devices via the NVMe namespace(s).

Systems and methods for enabling access to extensible storage devices over a network as local storage via NVME controller

A network application executing on a host system provides a list of application buffers in host memory stored in a queue to a network services processor coupled to the host system. The application buffers are used for storing data transferred on a socket established between the network application and a remote network application executing in a remote host system. Using the application buffers, data received by the network services processor over the network is transferred between the network services processor and the application buffers. After the transfer, a completion notification is written to one of the two control queues in the host system. The completion notification includes the size of the data transferred and an identifier associated with the socket. The identifier identifies a thread associated with the transferred data and the location of the data in the host system.

Method and apparatus for reducing host overhead in a socket server implementation

A network transport layer accelerator accelerates processing of packets so that packets can be forwarded at wire-speed. To accelerate processing of packets, the accelerator performs pre-processing on a network transport layer header encapsulated in a packet for a connection and performs in-line network transport layer checksum insertion prior to transmitting a packet. A timer unit in the accelerator schedules processing of the received packets. The accelerator also includes a free pool allocator which manages buffers for storing the received packets and a packet order unit which synchronizes processing of received packets for a same connection.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Faisal Masood