Scaling a virtual machine instance

• US 8,825,550 B2
• Filed: 08/23/2012
• Issued: 09/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2012
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Marr, Michael David, Kowalski, Marcin P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Ravetti, Dante
• Application Number:
  US13/593,226
• Publication Number:
  US 20140058871A1
• Time in Patent Office: 740 Days
• Field of Search: 705/52, 705/16, 705/21, 705/59, 705/71, 380/44, 380/262, 380/278, 380/279
• US Class Current: 705/52
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5022 Workload threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5005 to service a request
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5022 Mechanisms to release resources
• 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 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring

Abstract

Techniques are described for scaling of computing resources. A scaling service is utilized that allocates additional computing resources (e.g., processors, memory, etc.) to a virtual machine instance (or other compute instance) and/or de-allocates computing resources from a virtual machine instance according requests and/or thresholds. In addition to the foregoing, other aspects are described in the description, figures, and claims.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for scaling a virtual machine, said method comprising:

associating, by one or more computer systems, an account with a customer;

providing, by the one or more computer systems, an application programming interface (API) to customers;

receiving, by the one or more computer systems, from at least one customer via the application programming interface (API), a request to launch an instance of a virtual machine image;

launching, by the one or more computer systems, the virtual machine image;

provisioning, by the one or more computer systems, a virtual machine instance for the at least one customer based on the launched virtual machine image, wherein the virtual machine instance is provisioned on a host computing device;

receiving, at the one or more computer systems, from the customer via the API, a customer-defined threshold associated with the virtual machine instance, wherein the customer-defined threshold is specified at the time of the provisioning of the virtual machine instance;

associating, by the one or more computer systems, one or more metrics with the virtual machine instance;

monitoring, by the one or more computer systems, the one or more metrics associated with the virtual machine instance during execution of the virtual machine instance; and

adjusting, by the one or more computer systems, allocation of one or more computing resources to the virtual machine instance based at least in part on the one or more metrics and the received customer-defined threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

determining, by the one or more computer systems, that additional computing resources cannot be allocated to the virtual machine instance; and

provisioning, by the one or more computer systems, a second virtual machine instance for the customer based on a determining that the additional computing resources cannot be allocated to the virtual machine instance.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

causing, at the one or more computer systems, an account associated with the customer to be charged a fee for running the virtual machine instance, wherein the fee is based at least in part on the adjusted computing resources allocated to the virtual machine instance.