METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR UPGRADING VIRTUAL RESOURCES

• US 20090106748A1
• Filed: 10/18/2007
• Published: 04/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Hanson, James Edwin, White, Steve Richard, Yin, Jian, Pacifici, Giovanni, Shaikh, Hidayatullah Habeebullah, Dias, Daniel Manuel, Chess, David Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,434,077 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/168
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines

Abstract

A system for upgrading a multi-tiered application. In response to receiving a request to upgrade a multi-tiered application, wherein components of the multi-tiered application are deployed across a plurality of virtual machines, an appropriate integrated patch is selected for the upgrade. The selected integrated patch includes an integrated set of patches for the components of the multi-tiered application, state update data, and order constraints. The components of the multi-tiered application specified in the selected integrated patch are upgraded by using the integrated set of patches and order constraints. In addition, the state of the components of the multi-tiered application are updated by using the state update data. Then, the updated state of the multi-tiered application is saved to storage.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for upgrading a multi-tiered application, the computer implemented method comprising:

responsive to receiving a request to upgrade a multi-tiered application, wherein components of the multi-tiered application are deployed across a plurality of virtual machines, selecting an appropriate integrated patch for the upgrade to form a selected integrated patch, wherein the selected integrated patch includes an integrated set of patches for the components of the multi-tiered application, state update data, and order constraints;

upgrading the components of the multi-tiered application that are specified in the selected integrated patch by using the integrated set of patches and the order constraints;

updating a state of the components of the multi-tiered application that were upgraded to form an updated state of the multi-tiered application by using the state update data; and

saving the updated state of the multi-tiered application to storage.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining patch dependency among the components of the multi-tiered application to form a determined patch dependency by using a dependency graph;

constructing an integrated patch based on the determined patch dependency; and

storing the integrated patch in storage.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the integrated set of patches includes a plurality of patches needed to upgrade the components of the multi-tiered application to meet certain requirements.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein a component of the multi-tiered application is at least one of an operating system, a middleware system, or an application program.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein a component of the multi-tiered application is a stack of software components deployed in one of a physical machine or a virtual machine.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the components of the multi-tiered application have a hierarchical structure, and wherein each of the components include several other components.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of virtual machines are hosted by a plurality of physical machines.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of virtual machines are hosted by one physical machine.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the dependency graph represents direct dependency, and wherein each node in the dependency graph represents a patch for a component of the multi-tiered application, and wherein each arrow in the dependency graph represents a dependency among different patches.

10. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein a component of the multi-tiered application is shared by a plurality of multi-tiered applications, and wherein a patch for the component is included in a plurality of dependency graphs.

11. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the dependency graph is traversed to determine a set of components that one or more of the components depend upon.

12. The computer implemented method of claim 10, wherein the plurality of dependency graphs are traversed to determine a set of components that one or more of the components depend upon.

13. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein patch dependency data and other information is extracted by at least one of a manual process, an automatic process, or a semi-automatic process, and wherein the patch dependency data and the other information is used to construct the integrated patch.

14. The computer implemented method of claim 13, wherein the other information is extracted by analyzing one of configuration data associated with software component deployment or configuration data generated during the software component deployment.

15. The computer implemented method of claim 13, wherein the other information is extracted by analyzing software component code.

16. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the order constraints specify a particular sequence to the upgrading step and the updating step.

17. The computer implemented method of claim 16, wherein the order constraints include partial order constraints that specify that the components are upgraded and the state of the components are updated in a partial order and optimized during run time of the upgrade based on run time data.

18. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein run time optimization includes at least one of minimizing time needed for the upgrade, minimizing service interrupt time, or a combination of minimizing the time needed for the upgrade and minimizing the service interrupt time.

19. A data processing system for upgrading a multi-tiered application, comprising:

a bus system;

a storage device connected to the bus system, wherein the storage device includes a set of instructions; and

a processing unit connected to the bus system, wherein the processing unit executes the set of instructions to select an appropriate integrated patch for an upgrade of a multi-tiered application to form a selected integrated patch in response to receiving a request to upgrade the multi-tiered application, wherein the selected integrated patch includes an integrated set of patches for components of the multi-tiered application, state update data, and order constraints, and wherein components of the multi-tiered application are deployed across a plurality of virtual machines;

upgrade the components of the multi-tiered application that are specified in the selected integrated patch by using the integrated set of patches and the order constraints;

update a state of the components of the multi-tiered application to form an updated state of the multi-tiered application by using the state update data; and

save the updated state of the multi-tiered application to storage.

20. A computer program product for upgrading a multi-tiered application, the computer program product comprising:

a computer usable medium having computer usable program code embodied therein, the computer usable medium comprising;

computer usable program code configured to select an appropriate integrated patch for an upgrade of a multi-tiered application to form a selected integrated patch in response to receiving a request to upgrade the multi-tiered application, wherein the selected integrated patch includes an integrated set of patches for components of the multi-tiered application, state update data, and order constraints, and wherein components of the multi-tiered application are deployed across a plurality of virtual machines;

computer usable program code configured to upgrade the components of the multi-tiered application that are specified in the selected integrated patch by using the integrated set of patches and the order constraints;

computer usable program code configured to update a state of the components of the multi-tiered application to form an updated state of the multi-tiered application by using the state update data; and

computer usable program code configured to save the updated state of the multi-tiered application to storage.