Determining physical connectivity of data center devices

摘要

A patch panel device has communication ports respectively associated with a unique binary number having a number of binary digits, and a plurality of computing devices are each respectively coupled to at least one of the ports. A connectivity test includes configuring the patch panel device to send a message to a first sending device in response to receiving data at a port associated with a binary number having a first value as the respective binary digit, and not to send a message to a second sending device in response to receiving data at a port associated with a binary number having a second value as the respective binary digit. Each of the computing devices is caused to transmit data for arrival at a corresponding port, an indication is received for each device regarding whether the device received a message. A connectivity map is generated.

主权项

1. A method of determining physical connectivity between devices, comprising:
performing, on a patch panel, a plurality of testing rounds equal to a minimum number of binary positions required in a binary representation that corresponds to a number of communication ports being tested, wherein each of the testing rounds corresponds to a particular position in the binary representation and comprises:
configuring the patch panel to send a message to a first sending device in response to receiving data at a patch panel communication port associated with a binary number representation having a first value at a position that corresponds to the position for the particular testing round, the received data having been sent by the first sending device;configuring the patch panel to not send a message to a second sending device in response to receiving data at a patch panel communication port associated with a binary number representation having a second value, different from the first value, at the position that corresponds to the position for the particular testing round, the received data having been sent by the second sending device;causing each device of the plurality of computing devices to transmit data over the corresponding physical communication link for arrival at a corresponding communication port of the patch panel; andreceiving an indication, for each device of the plurality of computing devices, of whether or not the respective device received a message following the transmission of the data; and generating a connectivity map according to the received indications.