Provisioning manager for optimizing selection of available resources

• US 20060047813A1
• Filed: 08/26/2004
• Published: 03/02/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/26/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ramachandran, Puthukode G., Aggarwal, Vijay Kumar, Ullmann, Lorin Evan, Whitfield, John Patrick, Lawton, Craig M., Peters, Christopher Andrew, Bachmann, David Werner, Hardoon, Uzi, Pekowski, Raymond P.
• Granted Patent: US 7,281,045 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/226
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer

Abstract

A method and software for fulfilling a resource request in a data processing network includes specifying characteristics of the requested resource responsive to detecting the resource request. A set of attributes is then derived from the specified characteristics. The specified characteristics indicate broad or general properties of the needed resource while the derived attributes preferably indicate the hardware and software components of a resource ideally suited to fulfill the resource request. Attribute information associated an available resource is then evaluated against the attributes derived from the specified characteristics. An available resource is then selected, based on the evaluation, to satisfy the resource request. The attributes of the selected resource best match the attributes derived from the specified characteristics. The requested resource may be a server resource and specifying the characteristics of the requested resource may includes specifying a server type from a constrained set of server types.

Claims

1. A computer program product for fulfilling a resource request in a data processing network, comprising:

computer code means, responsive to detecting the resource request, for specifying characteristics of the requested resource;

computer code means for deriving a set of attributes from the specified characteristics, wherein the derived attributes are indicative of the components of a resource suited to fulfill the resource request;

computer code means for evaluating attribute information associated an available resource against the attributes derived from the specified characteristics;

computer code means for using a result of said evaluating to select an available resource to satisfy the resource request, wherein the attributes of the selected resource closely match the attributes derived from the specified characteristics.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the requested resource is a server resource and wherein the code means for specifying the characteristics of the requested resource includes codes means for specifying a server type.

3. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein a graphical user interface GUI constraints a user to select from among a set of server types, wherein the server types include a web server type, a database server type, and an application server type.

4. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the code means for deriving the attributes from the specified characteristics includes accessing a profile corresponding to the selected server type, wherein the profile indicates attributes associated with the corresponding server type.

5. The computer program product of claim 4, wherein the profile information further includes prioritization information and wherein the code means for evaluating the attributes of the available resources includes code means for ordering two or more available resources according to the prioritization information.

6. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the code means for specifying the characteristics of the requested resource includes code means for specifying a priority for the requested resource indicating the time in which the resource needs to be provisioned and code means for specifying a response criteria indicating an acceptable response time for the requested resource.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising, code means for testing the performance of the selected resource prior to provisioning the selected resource.

8. The computer program product of claim 7, wherein the code means for testing the performance includes code means for installing different software configurations on a selected resource and testing the performance of each software configuration to determine a most efficient configuration.

9. The computer program product of claim 7, wherein the code means for testing the performance includes code means for testing the performance of two or more candidate resources and selecting the resource with the best performance.

10. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the code means for evaluating the attribute information includes code means for accessing attribute files associated with each available resource.

11. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising code means enabling an administrator to specify the attributes of the desired resources qualitatively and code means for making match assessment between an avaiable resource and the qualitatively specified desired resource.

12. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the code means for making the match assessment includes code means for mapping each of the qualitatively specified attributes to a hardware or software attribute and comparing a set of hardware and software attributes resulting from said mapping to hardware and software attributes of the available resource.

13. A service for enabling a network to perform optimized provisioning of resources, comprising:

enabling the provisioning manager to detect a request to provision a server cluster with a resource from a pool of available resources;

enabling a provisioning manager to identify characteristics of each of the available resources;

enabling the provisioning manager to use the identified characteristics to evaluate each of the available resources for its appropriateness for the detected need; and

enabling the provisioning manager to select, based on the evaluations, an available resource to satisfy the detected need.

14. The service of claim 13, wherein enabling the provisioning manager to identify characteristics includes:

providing code to scan each available resource for its characteristics; and

providing code to record the scanned characteristics of each available resource in a corresponding document.

15. The service of claim 14, wherein the documents in which scanned characteristics are recorded comprises an XML document.

16. The service of claim 13, wherein enabling the provisioning manager to detect the need to provision a cluster includes enabling the provisioning manager to receive a provisioning request from a user.

17. The service of claim 16, wherein the provisioning request from the user indicates the provisioning need using a first set of parameters and wherein the scanned characteristics identify the system according to a second set of parameters.

18. The service of claim 13, wherein enabling the provisioning manager to evaluate each of the available resources includes enabling the provisioning manager to compare the performance of two or more resources executing one or more applications.

19. The service of claim 13, further comprising, gathering performance data associated with the selected resource and storing the gathered data in a database for use in guiding subsequent evaluations by the performance manager.

20. A data processing environment, comprising:

a set of server resources to process transactions;

a load balancer to receive requests and to distribute received requests to the set of server resources;

a pool of available server resources;

a provisioning manager to receive resource requests and to select a resource from the pool of available resources, the provisioning manger including;

means, responsive to detecting the resource request, for mapping characteristics of the requested resource to a set of attributes, wherein the set of attributes are indicative of the components of a resource ideally suited to fulfill the resource request;

means for evaluating attribute information associated an available resource against the attributes derived from the specified characteristics; and

means for selecting, responsive to the evaluation, an available resource to satisfy the resource request.

21. The network of claim 20, wherein the characteristics of the requested resource indicate a server type, a priority, and a responsiveness for the requested resource, wherein the priority is indicative of the amount of time available to implement the resource.

22. The network of claim 20, further comprising a test and validation engine accessible to the provisioning manager, wherein the provisioning manger is enabled to invoke the test and validation engine to gather performance data of a selected resource prior to provisioning the resource.