VIRTUAL MACHINE IMAGE LINEAGE

• US 20130007731A1
• Filed: 06/28/2011
• Published: 01/03/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Fries, Robert
• Granted Patent: US 8,924,930 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Techniques are described for tracking and maintaining the lineage of virtual machines (VMs). As applications are built or compiled, information about the makeup or elements of the applications is captured. As applications are installed on VMs, that information is also captured. As the VMs are deployed to hosts, decommissioned, migrated between hosts, etc., that information is also maintained. Therefore, it is possible to trace relations between live VMs (and/or hosts they execute on) and the elements of applications installed on the VMs. For example, if an element is a source code file, it may be possible to link that source code file with particular hosts or VMs. Or, it may be possible to determine whether a given host or VM has a dependency on an application element. Given a dataset of lineage information, a wide range of previously unavailable information can be obtained.

Claims

1. A method performed by one or more computers to track virtual machines (VMs) deployed on hosts, respectively, the method comprising:

automatically maintaining linking information that links application elements to the VMs, the linking information indicating which application elements were used to build or compile applications installed on which of the VMs.

2. A method according to claim 1, further comprising, maintaining the linking information by, when a VM instance is created or deleted, updating the VM linkage information accordingly.

3. A method according to claim 1, wherein the VMs comprise copies of virtual machine images (VMIs), respectively, and wherein the linking information comprises application linkage information and VMI linkage information, the method further comprising:

accessing the application linkage information, the application linkage information indicating which application elements were used to compile which of the applications; and

accessing the VMI linkage information, the VMI linkage information indicating which applications are installed on which VMIs.

4. A method according to claim 3, further comprising updating the linking information when an application is installed on a VMI.

5. A method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving a request specifying an application element and using the linking information to identify corresponding VMs and/or hosts.

6. A method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving a request specifying a host and using the linking information to identify application elements that correspond to the host.

7. A method comprising:

executing virtual machines (VMs), comprised of virtual machine images (VMIs), respectively, on a plurality of hosts, each VMI having one or more applications installed thereon, each application having been compiled from one or more application elements; and

as VMs are added to and removed from the hosts, maintaining queryable relation information indicating which of the application elements are related to which of the VMs currently available on the hosts.

8. A method according to claim 7, further comprising:

as applications are installed in VMIs, automatically updating the relation information to include information about application elements of which the applications are comprised.

9. A method according to claim 7, further comprising receiving requests comprising queries directed to the relation information and in response to the queries identifying, VMs, hosts, applications, or application elements.

10. A method according to claim 7, further comprising, based on a given application element, identifying all of the VMs among the plurality of hosts that have an application that corresponds to the application element.

11. A method according to claim 7, further comprising updating the relation information each time a VM is added to or removed from one of the hosts.

12. A method according to claim 7, further comprising updating the relation information when applications on the VMIs.

13. A method according to claim 7, wherein the relation information comprises information relating application elements with applications, applications with VMIs, VMIs with VMs, and hosts with VMs.

14. A method according to claim 13, wherein the information relating application elements to applications comprises information indicating:

which application elements were used to build which applications, which of the applications are installed on which of the VMIs, which of the VMs are using copies of which of the VMIs, and which of the hosts are hosting which of the VMs.

15. One or more computer-readable storage media storing information to enable one or more computers to perform a process, the process comprising:

building virtual machine images (VMIs) by installing applications on the VMIs, and storing VMI-application linkage information indicating which of the applications are installed on which of the VMIs; and

in a network of hosts running VMs, storing VMI-host linkage information by tracking which of the hosts have VMs based on which of the VMIs.

16. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 15, the process further comprising receiving a request identifying a specific application, and in response querying the VMI-application linkage information and the VMI-host linkage information to identify which of the hosts have VMs with the application.

17. One more computer-readable storage media according to claim 16, the process further comprising:

storing application information indicating application elements that were used to compile the applications;

receiving a request identifying an application element; and

automatically identifying which of the hosts have applications compiled from the application element.

18. One more computer-readable storage media according to claim 17, the process further comprising:

automatically updating the VMI-application linkage information when new VMIs are built.

19. One more computer-readable storage media according to claim 16, the process further comprising:

automatically updating the VMI-host linkage information as VMs are added to hosts and removed from the hosts, whereby the VMI-host linkage information reflects a current state of VMI deployment on the hosts.

20. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 15, wherein the tracking comprises inspecting a VM to determine whether specified application elements are present in the VM, and linking the VM accordingly.