FLOW TO PORT AFFINITY MANAGEMENT FOR LINK AGGREGATION IN A FABRIC SWITCH

摘要

Implementations of the present disclosure involve an apparatus, device, component, and/or method for a hardware efficient flow to port affinity management table for link aggregation for a network fabric switch with Ethernet Gateway functionality. Rather than maintaining a state per traffic flow list, the present disclosure utilizes a handle or hash value derived from the traffic flow and associates an output port state to the hash value. The output port state for the hash value is further associated with a portlist that is based on at least a traffic flow policy of the server or group of servers associated with the traffic flow. In addition, the management table may be adjusted based on state changes to one or more of the output ports such that, if a port becomes unavailable, the management table may be adjusted to account for the unavailability of the port.

主权项

1. A method for operating a switch fabric of a network, the method comprising:
maintaining a traffic flow table in a switch that provides an indication of Ethernet traffic flows for Ethernet traffic of the switch, the traffic flow table comprising:
a plurality of first index values each corresponding to a port list of a plurality of link aggregation policies, each port list comprising a plurality of available output ports of the switch for Ethernet traffic;a plurality of second index values each corresponding to a hash value, each hash value derived from a source indicator in a header of a communication packet received at the switch from the source; anda plurality of output port indicators locatable in the traffic flow table through the plurality of first index values and the plurality of second index values, each output port indicator corresponding to one of the plurality of available output ports of the switch for Ethernet traffic; receiving a first communication packet from a source device connected to the switch; and obtaining at least one of the plurality of output port indicators from the traffic flow table based at least on an identifier of the source device and a header of the first communication packet.