System for generic service management in a distributed and dynamic resource environment, providing constant service access to users

• US 20080243993A1
• Filed: 03/30/2007
• Published: 10/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: Platform Computing Corporation (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Ahmed, Khalid, Wang, Qi, Smith, Christopher Andrew Norman, Stutzmann, Leo
• Granted Patent: US 8,239,536 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5045 Making service definitions prior to deployment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5054 Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4541 Directories for service discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

A service controller for providing centralized service management, control and placement, as well as guaranteed failover, in a dynamic and distributed computing environment. The service controller works in conjunction with a computing resource supply manager, which supplies the required resources so that the service controller can run the service on the allocated resources. The number of active service instances may dynamically increase or decrease in accordance with changing availability of or demand for resources. The service controller monitors the service instances and takes appropriate action in the event of service instance failures. The service controller is provided with a service director component, which records and tracks, for each service instance which has been started on a particular resource/host, the IP address of such host, through a name location service, thus allowing end-users to locate the service regardless of where the service instances are physically running.

Claims

1. A system for management of services in a distributed computing environment, comprising:

a) a service controller, the service controller operable to receive or define a service definition that defines the required computing resources that are necessary to run a service in the distributed computing environment; and

b) a computing resource supply manager in communication with the service controller and operable to manage the supply of a plurality of computing resources in the distributed computing environment, the computing resource supply manager comprising a first interface for communication with the service controller and a second interface for communication with the plurality of computing resources;

wherein the service controller is operable to request the required computing resources through the first interface of the computing resource supply manager, and wherein the computing resource supply manager determines the availability of computing resources according to resource allocation policies and provides allocated computing resources to the service controller, thereby allowing at least one instance of the service to be run on at least one of the allocated computing resources.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the service definition defines that multiple service instances of a service are to be run concurrently, and wherein the service comprises multiple service instances.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the service controller comprises a service director component operable to record or track the location of the computing resources on which the multiple service instances are running.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the service director component is operable to record or track the location of computing resources on which the multiple service instances are running according to the computing resources'"'"' IP addresses.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the service director component publishes the location of the computing resources on which the service is running through a domain name system.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the service controller comprises a service director component operable to record or track the location of the at least one computing resource on which the at least one instance of the service is running.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the service director component is operable to record or track the location of the at least one computing resource on which the service is running according to the at least one computing resource'"'"'s IP address.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the service director component publishes the location of the computing resources on which the service is running through a domain name system.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the service controller is operable to monitor the status of the computing resources on which a service instance of the service is running, and takes action in the event of a service instance failure.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the service controller is in communication with the computing resources through a computer network.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the service controller is operable to monitor the status of the computing resources through the service controller'"'"'s communication with the resource supply manager.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the action involves restarting the service instance on the computing resource.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the action involves requesting a replacement computing resource and restarting the service instance on said replacement computing resource.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the service definition defines an acceptable range for a number of service instances of a service that may be run concurrently.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the number of active service instances dynamically fluctuate within the acceptable range, as the resource supply manager provides additional computing resources on which additional service instances may be run or demands computing resources be returned, in accordance with changes in supply of and demand for computing resources in the distributed computing environment.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the service controller manages a plurality of services, and wherein each service is designated a priority, and wherein the service controller manages the services taking into account said priorities.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the service controller manages a plurality of services, and wherein the service controller manages the services taking into account dependencies among the services.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein there are multiple service instances of the service running on the allocated computing resources and wherein the service instances of the service are adaptive for running in a heterogeneous resource environment.

19. A service controller for management of services in a distributed computing environment, the distributed computing environment having a computing resource supply manager for managing the supply of computing resources in the distributed computing environment, wherein the service controller is provided with a service definition which defines the required computing resources which are necessary to run a service and wherein the service controller requests the required computing resources through the computing resource supply manager, and wherein the computing resource supply manager determines the availability of computing resources according to resource allocation policies and provides allocated computing resources to the service controller, thereby allowing an instance of the service to be run on the allocated computing resources.

20. The service controller of claim 19, wherein the service controller comprises a service director component for recording or tracking the location of the computing resources on which an instance of the service is running.

21. A method for management of services in a distributed computing environment, comprising the steps of:

a) loading on a service controller, a service definition for a service, wherein the service definition defines the required computing resources which are necessary to run the service; and

b) requesting the required computing resources from a computing resource supply manager for managing the supply of computing resources in the distributed computing environment, wherein the computing resource manager determines the availability of the required computing resources according to resource allocation policies;

c) providing allocated computing resources to the service controller where the required computing resources are available;

d) running a service instance of the service on the allocated computing resources; and

e) recording through a service director component the location of the computing resources on which each service instance of the service is running.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the director component utilizes an IP address to record the location of computing resources on which each instance of the service is running.

23. The method of claim 21, comprising the additional steps of the service controller monitoring the status of the computing resources on which each service instance of the service is running, for instances of failure, and where there is an instance of failure, restarting the service instance on the computing resource for which the service instance has failed.

24. The method of claim 21, comprising the additional steps of the service controller monitoring the status of the computing resources on which each service instance of the service is running, for instances of failure, and where there is an instance of failure, requesting a replacement computing resource from the computing resource supply manager and restarting the service instance that has failed on the replacement computing resource and updating through the service director component the location of the replacement computing resource.

25. The method of claim 21, wherein the service definition defines an acceptable range for the number of service instances of a service that are to be run concurrently.

26. The method of claim 21, wherein the number of active service instances dynamically fluctuate within the acceptable range, as the resource supply manager provides additional computing resources on which additional service instances may be run or demands computing resources be returned, in accordance with changes in supply of and demand for computing resources in the distributed computing environment.

27. The method of claim 22 comprising the additional steps of the service controller monitoring the status of the computing resources on which each service instance of the service is running, for instances of failure, and where there is an instance of failure, restarting the service instance on the computing resource for which the service instance has failed.

28. The method of claim 22, comprising the additional steps of the service controller monitoring the status of the computing resources on which each service instance of the service is running, for instances of failure, and where there is an instance of failure, requesting a replacement computing resource from the computing resource supply manager and restarting the service instance that has failed on the replacement computing resource and updating through the service director component the location of the replacement computing resource.