SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING A VIRTUAL APPLIANCE LIFECYCLE

• US 20090300151A1
• Filed: 06/01/2009
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SUSE, LLC (EQT AB)
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Bornkessel, Daniel, LeSage, Garrett, Schumacher, Cornelius, Friedman, Nathaniel
• Granted Patent: US 8,868,608 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/222
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3664 Environments for testing or debugging software

Abstract

A system and method for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle is provided. In particular, a hosted web service may provide a collaborative environment for and unified environment for developing, configuring, personalizing, building, testing, deploying, and otherwise managing a lifecycle for one or more virtual appliances, wherein the collaborative and unified environment may provide various features for-creating virtual appliances, monitoring upstream changes and modifications to the virtual appliances, and providing real-time analysis and feedback during various phases of the virtual appliance lifecycle, among other things.

Claims

1. A system for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle, comprising:

a development environment configured to;

create a new appliance in response to one or more appliance creation requests;

implement one or more changes for the appliance in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests, wherein the one or more changes include adding one or more software components to the appliance and identifying one or more source repositories containing the software components added to the appliance; and

create an image description for the appliance, wherein the image description created for the appliance identifies the software components added to the appliance and the source repositories containing the added software components;

a build engine configured to;

load a first virtual machine contained in a virtual machine pool in response to receiving a build request containing the image description for the appliance, wherein the first virtual machine provides a contained environment for building the image; and

build an image for the appliance within the contained build environment,

wherein the image is built from the image description;

a runtime environment configured to load a second virtual machine contained in the virtual machine pool to provide a contained environment for executing the image, wherein runtime activity in the contained execution environment results in one or more changes to the image; and

a virtualization environment configured to deploy the image over a network, wherein the image deployed over the network includes the changes resulting from the runtime activity.

2. A system for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle, comprising:

a build engine configured to build an image for an appliance in response to a build request, wherein the build engine is further configured to;

identify an image description for the appliance, wherein the build request contains the image description;

load a first virtual machine contained in a virtual machine pool, wherein the first virtual machine provides a contained environment for building the image; and

build the image within the contained build environment, wherein the image comprises an operating system image built from the image description;

a runtime environment configured to load a second virtual machine contained in the virtual machine pool to provide a contained environment for executing the image, wherein runtime activity in the contained execution environment results in one or more changes to the image; and

a virtualization environment configured to deploy the image over a network, wherein the image deployed over the network includes the changes resulting from the runtime activity.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the first virtual machine has a pre-configured state corresponding to an initialized state of the build engine, and the second virtual machine has a pre-configured state corresponding to an initialized state of the runtime environment.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the operating system image is configured to execute one or more software components identified in the image description.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the build engine is further configured to:

create a file system layout for the image, wherein the file system layout includes a directory structure for the software components identified in the image description;

retrieve one or more files corresponding to the software components identified in the image description, wherein the files are retrieved from one or more source repositories identified in the image description;

copy the files retrieved from the source repositories to the file system layout for the image, wherein the files are copied to the file system layout in accordance with the directory structure for the software components identified in the image description; and

format the image built for the appliance, wherein the image is formatted in accordance with an image format identified-in the build request.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising a development environment configured to create the image description for the appliance in response to one or more appliance creation requests.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the development environment is further configured to:

provide a plurality of public appliances, wherein the plurality of public appliances include a plurality of appliance templates having “

just enough operating system”

(JeOS) components and a plurality of appliances published in an appliance marketplace;

clone one of the plurality of public appliances to create a base appliance derived from the cloned appliance, wherein the public appliance is cloned in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests;

implement one or more changes for the derived appliance in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests; and

create the image description for the appliance, wherein the image description created for the appliance modifies an image description for the cloned appliance to include the one or more changes implemented for the derived appliance.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the development environment is further configured to:

construct an appliance family tree having a parent node and a child node arranged in a hierarchy, wherein a branch connecting the parent node to the child node represents a relationship between the cloned appliance and the derived appliance; and

represent the one or more changes implemented for the derived appliance along the branch connecting the parent node to the child node.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the development environment is further configured to publish the derived appliance in the appliance marketplace to add the derived appliance to the plurality of public appliances.

10. The system of claim 6, wherein the development environment is further configured to create the image description from an imported configuration file in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests.

11. The system of claim 6, wherein the development environment is further configured to:

manage the software components and the source repositories identified in the image description in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests; and

display information describing one or more of the managed software components or the managed source repositories, wherein the displayed information includes one or more popularity metrics, trust metrics, automatically completed search strings, or pop-up windows.

12. The system of claim 6, wherein the development environment is further configured to:

add one or more software components to the image description in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests;

ban one or more software components from the image description in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests; and

display information describing an impact on the appliance caused by the added software components and the banned software components.

13. The system of claim 6, wherein the development environment is further configured to apply one or more options to the image description in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests, wherein the options configure one or more of the software components in the image description, add custom files to the image description, and establish custom graphics for one or more of the software components in the image description.

14. The system of claim 6, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to provide one or more application program interfaces to communicate with one or more third-party applications that extend or modify functionality or behavior for one or more of the build engine, the runtime environment, the virtualization environment, or the development environment.

15. The system of claim 5, wherein the format identified in the build request includes at least one of a disk image format for deploying the image to physical media for execution, or a virtual disk image format for deploying the image to a virtual machine for execution.

16. The system of claim 2, wherein the build engine is further configured to:

monitor one or more processes executed to the build the image for the appliance; and

generate one or more build logs describing the monitored processes.

17. The system of claim 2, wherein the runtime environment is further configured to capture a plurality of snapshots corresponding to a plurality of different states for the image during execution of the image in the contained execution environment.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the runtime environment is further configured to restore the image to a state corresponding to one or more of the plurality of snapshots.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to identify one or more changes between a first one and a second one of the snapshots, wherein the changes provide feedback relating to the runtime activity between when the first snapshot was captured and when the second snapshot was captured.

20. The system of claim 2, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to deploy the image over the network to a client device, wherein the image is downloaded to the client device over the network.

21. The system of claim 2, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to deploy the image over the network to a client device, wherein the image includes a Preboot execution Environment configured to bootstrap the client device and load the image in a runtime environment at the client device.

22. The system of claim 2, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to deploy the image over the network to a runtime environment hosted on a web server.

23. The system of claim 2, wherein the virtualization environment is further configured to deploy the image over the network to a virtual server in a cloud computing environment.

24. A method for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle, comprising:

invoking a build engine in response to a build request, wherein the build request contains an image description for the appliance;

loading a first virtual machine contained in a virtual machine pool, wherein the first virtual machine provides a contained environment for the build engine;

building the image within the contained build environment, wherein the image comprises an operating system image built from the image description;

loading a second virtual machine contained in the virtual machine pool to provide a contained environment for executing the image, wherein runtime activity in the contained execution environment results in one or more changes to the image; and

deploying the image over a network, wherein the image deployed over the network includes the changes resulting from the runtime activity.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the operating system image is configured to execute one or more software components identified in the image description.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein building the image further includes:

creating a file system layout for the image, wherein the file system layout includes a directory structure for one or more software components identified in the image description;

retrieving one or more files corresponding to the software components identified in the image description from one or more source repositories identified in the image description;

copying the files retrieved from the source repositories to the file system layout for the image, wherein the files are copied to the file system layout in accordance with the directory structure for the software components identified in the image description; and

formatting the image built for the appliance, wherein the image is formatted in accordance with an image format identified in the build request.

27. The method of claim 24, further comprising creating the image description for the appliance in response to one or more appliance creation requests, wherein creating the image description includes:

providing a plurality of public appliances, wherein the plurality of public appliances include a plurality of appliance templates having “

just enough operating system”

(JeOS) components and a plurality of appliances published in an appliance marketplace;

cloning one of the plurality of public appliances to create a base appliance derived from the cloned appliance, wherein the public appliance is cloned in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests;

implementing one or more changes for the derived appliance in response to one or more of the appliance creation requests; and

creating the image description for the appliance, wherein the image description created for the appliance modifies an image description for the cloned appliance to include the one or more changes implemented for the derived appliance.

28. The method of claim 27, further comprising:

constructing an appliance family tree having a parent node and a child node arranged in a hierarchy, wherein a branch connecting the parent node to the child node represents a relationship between the cloned appliance and the derived appliance; and

representing the one or more changes implemented for the derived appliance along the branch connecting the parent node to the child node.

29. The method of claim 24, further comprising capturing a plurality of snapshots corresponding to a plurality of different states for the image during execution of the image in the contained execution environment.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising:

restoring the image to a state corresponding to one or more of the plurality of snapshots; and

identifying one or more changes between a first one and a second one of the snapshots, wherein the changes provide feedback relating to the runtime activity between when the first snapshot was captured and when the second snapshot was captured.

31. The method of claim 24, wherein the image is deployed over the network to at least one of a client device, a runtime environment hosted on a web server, or a virtual server in a cloud computing environment.