Fujitsu Laboratories Develops Technology that Streamlines Network Operations by Rapidly Pinpointing Trouble Spots
29 January 2015 - 3:51PM
JCN Newswire (English)
Even non-experts can identify the scope of problems within ten
seconds
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced that it has developed
a technology that, in the event of a cloud network failure, enables
even non-experts to identify the impact of that failure on virtual
systems - within 10 seconds. Up until now, when there were network
failures, networking experts worked with server administrators as
they needed to investigate the relationship between virtual systems
and physical networks. This process could take over three hours in
the case of a large-scale cloud environment.
Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that identifies
in seconds the impact a network failure has on a virtual system. It
does this by automatically generating data from communications
pathways between physical servers as well as combined data from
virtual servers produced by communications, and then analyzing the
relationship between the virtual system and physical network
communications pathways based on relationships, such as whether
each virtual server resides in a respective physical server. As a
result, cloud administrators will no longer need to survey
relationships, but can identify the impact of a network failure and
swiftly report to virtual system users. In addition, even those
with no technical network expertise can easily identify failure
impact on virtual systems, making possible more efficient
operations.
Fujitsu Laboratories will move forward by assessing this technology
in a variety of environments, and aims to include it in Fujitsu
products within fiscal 2015.
Background
With the spread of cloud computing, many systems today are built in
the cloud. Moreover, servers and networks are becoming virtualized
in cloud environments and multiple systems, being built into the
same physical infrastructure, are increasing in complexity. This
leads to a heavier operational workload.
Issues
In cloud system operations, when there are failures in the physical
infrastructure, providers will typically identify the impact on
virtual systems, and report to that system's users the status of
failure and outlook for recovery. Mitigating operational burden in
this way is a significant challenge.
Ordinarily, with cloud environments, there are network
administrators who manage networks and server administrators who
manage physical servers, with each managing the virtual systems and
physical infrastructure within the scope of the equipment that they
are respectively in charge of. Even with conventional operations
management technology, the identification of the impact of failure
on virtual systems can been performed relatively quickly, but
identifying the scope of the impact more precisely has required a
network operations specialist to coordinate with a server
administrator to match up all the physical links that
communications between physical servers will traverse based on
network equipment configuration. This process of identifying the
affected scope could take several hours in large-scale cloud
environments.
About the Technology
Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology that can quickly
identify communications between virtual servers impacted by network
failure. Specifically, this technology automatically matches
communications data pathways of virtual systems and physical
networks.
Key features of the technology are as follows.
1. Automatically matches virtual systems to physical
infrastructure
To identify where communications between which virtual servers are
being affected by network failures requires that communications
pathways between virtual servers be matched with those of physical
networks, but because that information is split among different
administrators, it has been difficult to match the virtual systems
with the physical infrastructure.
With this new technology, Fujitsu Laboratories has consolidated
management information for virtual systems and physical
infrastructure. The technology generates data on the communications
pathways between virtual servers and the communications pathways
between physical servers, data that previously had not been
managed, as well as data on the communications pathways between
virtual servers. By analyzing based on relationships, namely does
each virtual server reside in its respective physical server, the
technology can automate the communications pathway matching between
virtual servers and physical networks.
2. Identifies scope of impact while accounting for redundant
network pathways
When redundancy is used for physical networks to improve
reliability, in addition to the network communications pathway data
of physical networks, the technology is able to manage data on the
conditions of the active pathways normally used as well as reserve
pathways. In this way, a determination of impact is limited to only
when network failures are affecting active communications pathways
when a failure occurs, and identified only with real impact on
communications between servers.
Results
By using this technology, when network failures occur, cloud
administrators do not need to spend hours to survey relationships,
as they had done in the past, and it is possible to identify the
impact of failures with communications between virtual servers in
less than 10 seconds. Moreover, even operations managers lacking
technical knowledge can identify the communications between the
virtual servers impacted by failures, enabling them to respond more
efficiently.
Future Plans
Fujitsu Laboratories is conducting evaluation testing under a
variety of conditions, with the goal of incorporating this
technology into Fujitsu products during fiscal 2015.
About Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication
technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology
products, solutions and services. Approximately 170,000 Fujitsu
people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our
experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with
our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated
revenues of 4.4 trillion yen (US$47 billion) for the fiscal year
ended March 31, 2013 For more information, please see
www.fujitsu.com.
Source: Fujitsu Limited
Contact:
Fujitsu Limited
Public and Investor Relations
www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/
+81-3-3215-5259
Copyright 2015 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.japancorp.net
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