System and method of a hardware shadow for a network element

摘要

A method and apparatus of a device that uses a hardware shadow for a central processing unit failover is described. In an exemplary embodiment, a device receives a signal that the active central processing unit has failed, where the active central processing unit controls the processing functions of the network element and the network element includes a hardware forwarding engine and a hardware shadow. The hardware shadow additionally includes multiple shadow tables. For each shadow table, the device copies data from that shadow table to a corresponding table in the hardware forwarding engine, where the hardware shadow is a copy of the data stored in hardware tables for the hardware forwarding engine. In response to the copying, the device further switches control of the network element processing functions from the active central processing unit to a standby central processing unit.

主权项

1. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having executable instructions to cause one or more processing units to perform a method to switch control of processing functions of a network element from an active central processing unit to a standby central processing unit, the method comprising:
receiving a signal that the active central processing unit has failed, wherein the active central processing unit controls the processing functions of the network element and the network element includes a hardware forwarding engine; for each shadow table in a plurality of shadow tables in a hardware shadow,
copying data from that shadow table to a corresponding one of a plurality of hardware tables for the hardware forwarding engine, wherein a hardware shadow stores a copy of the data stored in the plurality of hardware tables in a different structure and in a different order than in the plurality of hardware tables for the hardware forwarding engine; and in response to the copying, switching control of processing functions of the network element from the active central processing unit to a standby central processing unit.