METHOD FOR DYNAMIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE PROVISIONING

• US 20070294736A1
• Filed: 06/19/2006
• Published: 12/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Brady, John F., DeGilio, Frank J., Swehla, Sean M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,000,260 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/97
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

Provisioning and management resources are drawn from an overall pool of resources. Management and managed resources are then dynamically associated on the network to securely perform requested on-demand management functions. Since the managing system controls the networking between the devices that are managed or provisioned, the linkage of resources incurs a minimal amount of network overhead. Since provisioning resources are themselves dynamically built and automatically associated with the resources being managed, a dramatically reduced management overhead is achieved.

Claims

1. A method of providing on-demand data processing services, said method comprising:

providing a central management resource which receives on-demand provisioning requests for data processing system configurations;

providing a plurality of provisionable data processing system resources arranged in groups;

providing at least one provisioning server which is responsive to said central management resource and which is capable of dynamically allocating said provisionable data processing system resources to multiple on-demand requests either individually or in said groups.

2. The method of claim 1 in which said a plurality of provisionable data processing system resources includes management servers.

3. The method of claim 1 in which said on-demand service is provided through a network service protocol.

4. The method of claim 3 in which said protocol is the Simple Object Access Protocol.

5. The method of claim 1 in which said on-demand service includes an advanced reservation capability.

6. The method of claim 1 in which said on-demand service includes an advanced scheduling capability.

7. The method of claim 1 in which additional resources are defined via a network service protocol.

8. The method of claim 1 in which there are a plurality of provisioning servers.

9. The method of claim 8 in which said provisioning servers are also available as resources for on-demand requests.

10. The method of claim 1 in which said provisionable data processing system resources are identified as being in maintenance mode.

11. The method of claim 1 in which said provisionable data processing system resources are used as either provisioning, management, or managed resources.

12. The method of claim 1 in which said on-demand service includes a capability for remote booting.

13. A data processing system providing for providing on-demand services, said system comprising:

a central management resource which receives on-demand provisioning requests for data processing system configurations;

a plurality of raw resources;

at least one management resource including a provisioning resource and another management resource; and

a plurality of managed resources;

said central management resource being capable of dynamically allocating said raw resources to said managed resources, to said management resource and to said another management resource.