SYSTEM AND METHOD USING SOFTWARE DEFINED CONTINUITY (SDC) AND APPLICATION DEFINED CONTINUITY (ADC) FOR ACHIEVING BUSINESS CONTINUITY AND APPLICATION CONTINUITY ON MASSIVELY SCALABLE ENTITIES LIKE ENTIRE DATACENTERS, ENTIRE CLOUDS ETC. IN A COMPUTING SYSTEM ENVIRONMENT

• US 20150032817A1
• Filed: 07/28/2014
• Published: 01/29/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/29/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: Sanovi Technologies PVT Limited (Christian Nicholas Rosenkrantz Stadil,)
• Inventors: Garg, Devendra, Kuppuswamy, Vinodraj, Holavanhalli, Adarsh
• Granted Patent: US 9,716,746 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2035 without idle spare hardware
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2048 where the redundant components share neither address space nor persistent storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5072 Grid computing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46

Abstract

A system and method using software defined continuity (SDC) and application defined continuity (ADC) for achieving Business Continuity and Application Continuity comprising one or more resources of multiple end users or service providers logically connected to one or more cloud infrastructures wherein the said collection of resources forms a Continuity Grid or a part of Continuity Grid or sub Grid for which continuity is needed and wherein the said Continuity Grid or part of continuity grid or sub Grid are paired with the Continuity Peer Grids located in the same or different cloud infrastructures to satisfy continuity requirements of the said Continuity Grid or part of Continuity Grid or sub Grid.

Claims

1. A system using software defined continuity (SDC) and application defined continuity (ADC) for achieving Business Continuity and Application Continuity comprising one or more resources of multiple end users or service providers logically connected to one or more cloud infrastructures wherein the said collection of resources forms a Continuity Grid or a part of Continuity Grid or sub Grid for which continuity is needed and wherein the said Continuity Grid or part of continuity grid or sub Grid are paired with the Continuity Peer Grids located in the same or different cloud infrastructures to satisfy continuity requirements of the said Continuity Grid or part of Continuity Grid or sub Grid.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein Application Defined Continuity define application continuity independent of the underlying cloud infrastructure using ADC profile created by ADC API.

3. The system as claimed in claim 2 wherein ADC profile for a workload is translated into a continuity template by ADC Controller such that Software Defined Continuity (SDC) can provide continuity.

4. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein Continuity grids contain a set of resources and are linked with continuity peers that may or may not be in the same cloud, datacenter, geography or accessible location.

5. The system as claimed in claim 4 wherein every resource has a continuity strategy that is applied to the said resource and applying the strategy results in one or more Continuity Peers in the entire system.

6. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein every Continuity Grid has a tether that links all data movement from one continuity grid to its Continuity Peers and wherein all Continuity Grids including sub-grids can teleport their tether to the parent continuity grids.

7. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein continuity grids start out being a dark grid with a wireframe and comprise basic services required for functioning of grid and default or empty configuration values for Continuity Blue Print.

8. The system as claimed in claim 7 wherein continuity on any Continuity Grids is enabled using Continuity Blue Prints that are updated due to entity/resource fingerprinting during the self-aware discovery process where a UCOG discovers its members or when commands supplying specific information are released into the UCOG from external sources.

9. The system as claimed in claim 8 wherein Continuity Grids actively fingerprint everything under its control and fill out the blueprint with practical values from the installations it manages and a given continuity/ADC profile and ends up with its own Continuity Blue Print.

10. The system as claimed in claim 4 wherein the Continuity Grids scales elastically whenever resources are added to it and maintains SLAs to the highest degree possible within the ambit of the enclosing infrastructure.

11. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein Continuity Grids map entire system rendering a single Continuity Blue Print for the entire system.

12. The system as claimed in claim 7 wherein Continuity Blue Prints have Continuity Operations filled out and the values of Continuity Operations are automatically adjusted to reflect the altered continuity capabilities of the Continuity Grids when resources are added or removed to/from the Continuity Grid.

13. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein Continuity Grids are self-tuning and can change continuity strategies to adjust for load changes, emergency situations, exception handling based on datacenter policies.

14. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein each Continuity Grid comprises or has an access to Data center Acquisition Module, Virtual and Physical Resource Management Module, Fully Automated continuity Tiering (FACT) Module, Elastic Continuity Grid (ECG) Module, Continuity Optimization and Reasoning Engine (CORE) Module, Application Continuity Tethering Services (ACTS) Module, Continuity Universe (CONVERSE) Module, Cost and Accounting Module, Blue Print Management Module, Grid Execution Services Module, ADC API, ADC Controller, Information Exchange/API Layer, Communication and Access Layer, Orchestration Module, End User Interface and Service Provider Interface.

15. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein every Continuity Grid relies on a continuity meter that is a combination of a fixed values and live measurements.

16. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the Continuity meter comprises Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics dial, continuity phase shift dial, geographical proximity dial and the desired cost dial.

17. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein continuity handled by each Continuity Grid is defined as phase shift, geography and operational levels handled by all the continuity grids.

18. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein each Continuity Grid is self-aware, self-managing and can be independently monitored and drilled down to the desired level.

19. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein the Continuity Grids can be promoted from lowly continuous to highly continuous and vice versa at any time.

20. A method to provide continuity to a workload or resource using software defined continuity (SDC) and application defined continuity (ADC) for achieving business continuity and application continuity on massively scalable entities, the method comprising the steps of:

a. Starting the continuity provisioning by end user or service provider or automatically or as and when new workloads are added;

b. Fetching the resources or workloads;

c. Fetching the ADC profile of the said resources or workload as input by end customer or service provider;

d. Identifying the sub grids in the existing sub-grids by the universal continuity grids or creation of the new grids/sub-grids by the universal continuity grids;

e. Updating the blueprint of the parent grids with the knowledge of sub-grids;

f. Starting resource discovery by the sub-grids identified in step d;

g. Starting fingerprinting of the discovered resources identified in step f;

h. Updating the continuity blue prints of sub-grids with the resource information obtained at step f and step g;

i. Computing the number of continuity operations required, continuity strategy needed, Geo Placements, cost optimizations by sub grids based on resources/workload and ADC profile;

j. Updating the continuity blue prints of sub-grids with the continuity operation information obtained at step I;

k. Finding continuity peers grids that can satisfy continuity requirements of the sub grids;

l. Pairing the sub-grid and continuity peer grid obtained at step k;

m. Updating the blue print with the peer information, actions that can be performed, events, parent information etc.;

n. Adjusting the number of continuity operations available with sub grids and parent grids with number of continuity operations needed to provide continuity for given resource/workload; and

o. Managing continuity, cost management, Resource Accounting, Resource Monitoring and percolating the information upwards to parent grids and updating blue prints with changes.

21. A method to reserve resources to provide continuities for pre-defined continuity profiles, the method comprising the steps of:

a. Identifying the resources to be reserved based on policies;

b. Pooling of resources based on resource type and location;

c. Selecting one or more resource pools to create continuity reservations for pre-defined user profile;

d. Conducting a feasibility check to match the capabilities of selected resource pool with the predefined continuity profiles;

e. Selecting a resource pool if the capabilities of selected resource pool matches with the predefined continuity profiles;

f. Updating the available continuity operations of the Continuity grid with additional continuity operations of the selected resource pool;

g. Updating the available continuity operations of the Continuity Grid with additional Continuity operations; and

h. Calculating and updating the costs of usage of additional resources.