SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING ANNOTATED SERVICE BLUEPRINTS IN AN INTELLIGENT WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• US 20110126207A1
• Filed: 10/08/2010
• Published: 05/26/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/25/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus Software, Inc. (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Wipfel, Robert, Anderson, Eric W. B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,448,170 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/31 User authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06313 Resource planning in a project environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0807 using tickets, e.g. Kerberos cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication using tickets or tokens H04L9/3213
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0815 providing single-sign-on or federations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/14 for detecting or protecting against malicious traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3213 using tickets or tokens, e.g. Kerberos network architectures or network communication protocols for entities authentication using tickets in a packet data network H04L63/0807

Abstract

The system and method described herein for providing annotated service blueprints in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may converge information for creating annotated service blueprints to provision and manage tessellated services distributed within an information technology infrastructure. For example, in response to a request to provision a service, a service blueprint describing one or more virtual machines may be created. The service blueprint may then be annotated to apply various parameters to the virtual machines, and the annotated service blueprint may then be instantiated to orchestrate the virtual machines with the one or more parameters and deploy the orchestrated virtual machines on information technology resources allocated to host the requested service, thereby provisioning the requested service.

Claims

1. A system for providing annotated service blueprints in an intelligent workload management system, wherein the system comprises one or more processors configured to:

receive a request to provision a service having one or more parameters;

create a service blueprint in response to the request, wherein the service blueprint describes one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service;

annotate the service blueprint with one or more annotations that describe the one or more parameters, wherein the one or more annotations apply the one or more parameters to the one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service; and

instantiate the annotated service blueprint to provision the requested service, wherein to instantiate the annotated service blueprint, the one or more processors are further configured to;

allocate one or more information technology resources to the requested service, wherein the one or more information technology resources allocated to the requested service host the one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service and described in the annotated service blueprint; and

orchestrate the one or more virtual machines hosted on the one or more information technology resources, wherein the orchestrated virtual machines apply the one or more parameters described in the one or more annotations.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors allocate the one or more information technology resources to the requested service and orchestrate the one or more virtual machines on-demand in response to a subsequent request to use the service.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the annotated service blueprint tessellates the one or more virtual machines and the one or more annotations in a data structure that the one or more processors instantiate.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

define one or more virtual distribution layers for the one or more virtual machines tessellated in the annotated service blueprint, wherein the one or more virtual distribution layers include pointers to locations that provide the service with storage capacity within the allocated resources, operating systems that the service uses to run one or more applications, and workload profiles that apply the one or more parameters to the virtual machines; and

define one or more physical distribution layers for the one or more virtual machines tessellated in the annotated service blueprint, wherein the one or more physical distribution layers include functional kernels, hardware drivers, hypervisors, and software packages that provide an interface from the virtual distribution layers to the allocated resources that host the one or more virtual machines.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

archive the annotated service blueprint instantiated to provision the requested service within one or more repositories; and

instantiate the archived annotated service blueprint to provision a subsequently requested service having substantially similar characteristics to the service provisioned from the archived annotated service blueprint.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein to instantiate the annotated service blueprint, the one or more processors are further configured to instantiate a management parent daemon that initializes a management infrastructure, wherein the management parent daemon spawns one or more child processes that create one or more management-level virtual machines to provide the management infrastructure, allocate the one or more information technology resources to the requested service, and orchestrate the one or more hosted virtual machines.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

monitor the one or more hosted virtual machines to determine whether the service complies with a service level agreement, wherein the one or more annotations declare the service level agreement from the one or more parameters;

manage a remediation workload in response to determining that the service does not comply with the service level agreement, wherein one or more automated entities and one or more human entities collaborate in the managed remediation workload to resolve one or more exceptions that caused the service to not comply with the service level agreement; and

generate a management report that describes an outcome from the managed remediation workload, wherein the one or more processors store the management report in one or more repositories that associate the management report with the service.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the one or more processors determine that the service does not comply with the service level agreement in response to activity that the service performs violating one or more policies declared from the one or more parameters, or in response to the activity that the service performs having actual performance criteria that fails to satisfy required performance criteria defined in the service level agreement.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the outcome from the managed remediation workload includes one or more processes that the one or more automated entities and the one or more human entities performed make the service comply with the service level agreement.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

receive a management request from one or more agents inserted within the one or more hosted virtual machines, wherein the one or more agents generate the management request in response to determining that the service does not comply with a service level agreement declared from the one or more parameters;

manage a remediation workload in response to the management request, wherein one or more automated entities and one or more human entities collaborate in the managed remediation workload to resolve one or more exceptions that caused the service to not comply with the service level agreement; and

generate a management report that describes an outcome from the managed remediation workload, wherein the one or more processors store the management report in one or more repositories that associate the management report with the service.

11. A method for providing annotated service blueprints in an intelligent workload management system, comprising:

receiving a request to provision a service having one or more parameters;

creating a service blueprint in response to the request, wherein the service blueprint describes one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service;

annotating the service blueprint with one or more annotations that describe the one or more parameters, wherein the one or more annotations apply the one or more parameters to the one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service; and

instantiating the annotated service blueprint to provision the requested service, wherein instantiating the annotated service blueprint includes;

allocating one or more information technology resources to the requested service, wherein the one or more information technology resources allocated to the requested service host the one or more virtual machines configured to provide the requested service and described in the annotated service blueprint; and

orchestrating the one or more virtual machines hosted on the one or more information technology resources, wherein the orchestrated virtual machines apply the one or more parameters described in the one or more annotations.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein one or more processors allocate the one or more information technology resources to the requested service and orchestrate the one or more virtual machines on-demand in response to a subsequent request to use the service.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the annotated service blueprint tessellates the one or more virtual machines and the one or more annotations in a data structure that the one or more processors instantiate.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

defining one or more virtual distribution layers for the one or more virtual machines tessellated in the annotated service blueprint, wherein the one or more virtual distribution layers include pointers to locations that provide the service with storage capacity within the allocated resources, operating systems that the service uses to run one or more applications, and workload profiles that apply the one or more parameters to the virtual machines; and

defining one or more physical distribution layers for the one or more virtual machines tessellated in the annotated service blueprint, wherein the one or more physical distribution layers include functional kernels, hardware drivers, hypervisors, and software packages that provide an interface from the virtual distribution layers to the allocated resources that host the one or more virtual machines.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

archiving the annotated service blueprint instantiated to provision the requested service within one or more repositories; and

instantiating the archived annotated service blueprint to provision a subsequently requested service having substantially similar characteristics to the service provisioned from the archived annotated service blueprint.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein instantiating the annotated service blueprint further includes instantiating a management parent daemon that initializes a management infrastructure, wherein the management parent daemon spawns one or more child processes that create one or more management-level virtual machines to provide the management infrastructure, allocate the one or more information technology resources to the requested service, and orchestrate the one or more hosted virtual machines.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

monitoring the one or more hosted virtual machines to determine whether the service complies with a service level agreement, wherein the one or more annotations declare the service level agreement from the one or more parameters;

managing a remediation workload in response to determining that the service does not comply with the service level agreement, wherein one or more automated entities and one or more human entities collaborate in the managed remediation workload to resolve one or more exceptions that caused the service to not comply with the service level agreement;

generating a management report that describes an outcome from the managed remediation workload, wherein one or more processors store the management report in one or more repositories that associate the management report with the service.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising determining that the service does not comply with the service level agreement in response to activity that the service performs violating one or more policies declared from the one or more parameters, or in response to the activity that the service performs having actual performance criteria that fails to satisfy required performance criteria defined in the service level agreement.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the outcome from the managed remediation workload includes one or more processes that the one or more automated entities and the one or more human entities performed make the service comply with the service level agreement.

20. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

receiving a management request from one or more agents inserted within the one or more hosted virtual machines, wherein the one or more agents generate the management request in response to determining that the service does not comply with a service level agreement declared from the one or more parameters;

managing a remediation workload in response to the management request, wherein one or more automated entities and one or more human entities collaborate in the managed remediation workload to resolve one or more exceptions that caused the service to not comply with the service level agreement; and

generating a management report that describes an outcome from the managed remediation workload, wherein one or more processors store the management report in one or more repositories that associate the management report with the service.