METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR AN E-MAIL-BASED MANAGEMENT INTERFACE FOR VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENTS

• US 20130159428A1
• Filed: 12/19/2011
• Published: 06/20/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: SOUNDARARAJAN, Vijayaraghavan, PARIMI, Balaji, ALBRECHT-BUEHLER, Conrad Herbert, RAO DV, Raja
• Granted Patent: US 9,049,257 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45512 Command shells
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4856 resumption being on a different machine, e.g. task migration, virtual machine migration G06F9/5088 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/026 using e-messaging for transporting management information, e.g. email, instant messaging or chat
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/18 Commands or executable codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

A server system is configured to provide an e-mail based interface for executing management operations on a virtualized infrastructure which includes a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), underlying host computers, clusters, and/or data centers. Such an interface may be provided in a virtualized infrastructure to enable a system administrator to execute administrative operations remotely from a mobile device without requiring custom installation of an application on the mobile device or a secure connection to the server system. The server system receives e-mails at a pre-determined e-mail address, authenticates the sender of the e-mail, and extracts and executes commands from the e-mail. A number of techniques for validating the e-mail containing server commands may also be provided.

Claims

1. A method of processing commands for a virtual machine (VM) management module that manages a virtualized computing environment comprising a plurality of physical host computers executing one or more VMs, comprising:

receiving an e-mail message from a sender, the e-mail message comprising one or more commands for managing the virtualized computing environment in a first format;

validating the e-mail message to determine whether to process the e-mail message;

responsive to determining that the e-mail message should be processed, parsing the e-mail message to extract the one or more commands; and

translating the one or more commands in the first format to a second format that is executable by the VM management module.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said validating comprises:

determining a user identity of the sender of the e-mail message; and

confirming that the sender has proper permissions to issue commands to the VM management module.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said validating comprises:

decrypting the e-mail message to verify that the e-mail message is authentic.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said validating comprises:

retrieving a security token from the e-mail message; and

comparing the security token to a token value associated with a sender of the e-mail message to verify that the e-mail message is authentic.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said validating further comprises:

determining a source network address of the sender of the e-mail message using the e-mail message; and

determining whether the source network address is located within a trusted network domain.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

retrieving permissions associated with the sender of the e-mail message; and

determining whether the sender is authorized to execute the one or more commands extracted from the e-mail message.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

determining a second user required to approve the one or more commands by the sender;

sending an approval request to the second user, the approval request comprising an e-mail message having one or more instructions for signaling approval; and

receiving an approval response from the second user, the approval response comprising an e-mail message having an indication from the second user to approve or deny the one or more commands by the sender.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said validating comprises:

extracting an alert identifier from the e-mail message, wherein the alert identifier associates the e-mail message with an alert condition;

determining whether the e-mail message is a redundant response to the alert condition; and

responsive to determining that the e-mail message is not a redundant response, determining the e-mail message should be processed.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending, to the sender, an acknowledgment message comprising a notification of successful receipt of the e-mail message.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending, to the sender, an acknowledgment message comprising a notification that the e-mail message is being processed.

11. A method of processing commands for a virtual machine (VM) management module that manages a virtualized computing environment comprising a plurality of physical host computers executing one or more VMs, comprising:

receiving an e-mail message from a user, the e-mail message comprising one or more commands for managing the virtualized computing environment;

determining whether the e-mail message is a redundant response to an alert condition of the virtualized computing environment;

responsive to determining that the e-mail message is not a redundant response, parsing the e-mail message to extract the one or more commands; and

generating one or more instructions executable by the VM management module based on the one or more commands.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

prior to receiving the e-mail message, sending an alert message comprised of an alert identifier associated with the alert condition,

wherein the determining comprises determining the received e-mail message is responsive to the alert condition based on the alert identifier of the e-mail message.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein said determining further comprises:

determining the e-mail message is not a redundant response if the e-mail message is a first received e-mail message responsive to the alert condition.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

prior to receiving the e-mail message, receiving a polling message from the user, wherein the polling message comprises an e-mail message verifying the alert condition; and

generating a response lock that associates the alert condition with the user,

wherein the received e-mail message is determined not to be a redundant response if the e-mail message is from the user.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the alert identifier stored in one or more e-mail header fields of the alert message.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

responsive to determining that the e-mail message is not a redundant response, sending, to the user, an acknowledgment message indicating that the e-mail message is being processed.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

responsive to determining that the e-mail message is a redundant response, sending, to the user, a response message indicating that the e-mail message has been disregarded.

18. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a computer system to carry out a method of processing commands for a virtual machine (VM) management module that manages a virtualized computing environment comprising a plurality of physical host computers executing one or more VMs, said method comprising:

receiving an e-mail message from a sender, the e-mail message comprising one or more commands for managing the virtualized computing environment in a first format;

validating the e-mail message to determine whether to process the e-mail message;

responsive to determining that the e-mail message should be processed, parsing the e-mail message to extract the one or more commands; and

translating the one or more commands in the first format to a second format that is executable by the VM management module.

19. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a computer system to carry out a method of processing commands for a virtual machine (VM) management module that manages a virtualized computing environment comprising a plurality of physical host computers executing one or more VMs, said method comprising:

receiving an e-mail message from a user, the e-mail message comprising one or more commands for managing the virtualized computing environment;

determining whether the e-mail message is a redundant response to an alert condition of the virtualized computing environment;

responsive to determining that the e-mail message is not a redundant response, parsing the e-mail message to extract the one or more commands; and

generating one or more instructions executable by the VM management module based on the one or more commands.