Elastic Management of Compute Resources Between a Web Server and an On-Demand Compute Environment

• US 20110258248A1
• Filed: 05/02/2011
• Published: 10/20/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: III Holdings 12, LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Adaptive Computing Enterprises, Inc. (Ala Services LLC)
• Inventors: Jackson, David B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,782,120 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/202
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30

Abstract

Disclosed are systems, methods and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for managing resources between a web server and an on-demand compute environment. A system configured to practice the method receives, at the on-demand compute environment, an indication that web traffic directed to a web server should at least be partially served via the on-demand compute environment, provisions compute resources within the on-demand compute environment to respond to web traffic for the web server based on the indication to yield a provisioned on-demand compute environment. The system serves web traffic at the provisioned on-demand compute environment based on an established routing of the web traffic from the web server to the provisioned on-demand compute environment such that the use of the provisioned on-demand compute environment for the web traffic is transparent. After serving the web traffic via the provisioned resources, the system can release the provisioned compute resources for other uses.

Claims

1. A method of redirecting web traffic to an on-demand compute environment, the method comprising:

receiving, at the on-demand compute environment, an indication that projected web traffic addressed to a web server should at least be partially served via the on-demand compute environment;

assigning an agent to handle a portion of the projected web traffic to be served via the on-demand compute environment;

provisioning compute resources within the on-demand compute environment to enable the on-demand compute environment to respond to the portion of the projected web traffic to yield provisioned compute resources;

intercepting, via the agent, the portion of the projected web traffic received from a user; and

redirecting, via the agent, the portion of the projected web traffic to be served by the provisioned compute resources such that redirecting is transparent to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein redirecting the portion of the web traffic further comprises mapping a uniform resource locator to an IP address associated with at least one node in the provisioned compute resources.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the agent comprises a plurality of entities.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication is based on an event.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the event is a threshold being met and wherein provisioning the compute resources within the on-demand compute environment is performed automatically after the threshold is met.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the event is external to the web server.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising, after the provisioned compute resources serve the web traffic request, releasing the provisioned compute resources for uses other than serving the web traffic request.

8. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions to manage web traffic directed to a web server, the instructions comprising:

receiving, at the on-demand compute environment, an indication that projected web traffic addressed to a web server should at least be partially served via the on-demand compute environment;

assigning an agent to handle a portion of the projected web traffic to be served via the on-demand compute environment;

provisioning compute resources within the on-demand compute environment to enable the on-demand compute environment to respond to the portion of the projected web traffic to yield provisioned compute resources;

intercepting, via the agent, the portion of the projected web traffic received from a user; and

redirecting, via the agent, the portion of the projected web traffic to be served by the provisioned compute resources such that redirecting is transparent to the user.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein redirecting the portion of the web traffic further comprises mapping a uniform resource locator to an IP address associated with at least one node in the provisioned compute resources.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the agent comprises a plurality of entities.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the indication is based on an event.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the event is a threshold being met and wherein provisioning the compute resources within the on-demand compute environment is performed automatically after the threshold is met.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein the event is external to the web server.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, the instructions further comprising releasing the provisioned compute resources for uses other than serving the web traffic request after serving the web traffic request at the provisioned compute resources.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein provisioning the compute resources within the on-demand compute environment further comprises elastically provisioning multiple compute nodes simultaneously in the on-demand compute environment that represent instances of the web server.

16. A system for redirecting web traffic to an on-demand compute environment, the system comprising:

a processor;

a first module configured to control the processor to receive, at the on-demand compute environment, an indication that projected web traffic addressed to a web server should at least be partially served via the on-demand compute environment;

a second module configured to control the processor to assign an agent to handle a portion of the projected web traffic to be served via the on-demand compute environment; and

a third module configured to control the processor to provision compute resources within the on-demand compute environment to enable the on-demand compute environment to respond to the portion of the projected web traffic to yield provisioned compute resources,

wherein the agent intercepts the portion of the projected web traffic received from a user and redirects the portion of the projected web traffic to be served by the provisioned compute resources such that redirecting is transparent to the user.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the agent further maps a uniform resource locator to an IP address associated with at least one node in the provisioned compute resources.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the agent comprises a plurality of entities.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the indication is based on an event.

20. The system of claim 16, further comprising:

a fourth module configured to control the processor to release the provisioned compute resources for uses other than serving the web traffic after serving the web traffic request by the provisioned compute resources.