Cloud service information overlay

• US 8,843,618 B2
• Filed: 11/24/2010
• Issued: 09/23/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/24/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Li, Hong
• Primary Examiner(s): LEE, BRYAN Y
• Application Number:
  US12/954,366
• Publication Number:
  US 20120130781A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,399 Days
• Field of Search: 709/224
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements

Abstract

In some embodiments, the invention involves collecting service health information from a plurality of cloud service provider associated with a customer. Once the service health information is collected, aggregating information from multiple providers, when necessary, and providing a service health report to the customer. The customer has agreements with both the service providers and information collector to receive a level of service health information regarding services provided. The information collector may have agreements with the service providers to retrieve or receive the requested service health information for the customers via a pre-agreed upon protocol. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method, comprising:

receiving a service health information collection request from at least one customer;

authenticating the customer and the collection request;

checking a policy and an agreement corresponding to the collection request, and setting parameters for the collection request based at least in part on said policy corresponding to said collection request, said agreement corresponding to said collection request, or a combination thereof;

retrieving service health information corresponding to a plurality of service providers, wherein each of the plurality of service providers provides a computing service to the at least one customer over a network;

aggregating service health information retrieved from the plurality of service providers into aggregated service health information;

analyzing, according to said parameters, the aggregated service health information to produce an analysis result; and

providing a service health report including the aggregated service health information and the analysis result to the at least one customer;

wherein one or both of the receiving a collection request and authenticating the customer are inherent in a policy derived from a service level agreement with the customer; and

wherein varying levels of service health information are retrieved for a customer based on a pre-determined policy.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

providing a recommendation to the customer regarding at least one of a modification of a computing service or a change of providers for a computing service, wherein the recommendation is based on said result of said analyzing said aggregated service health information.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the customer request defines at least one of a collection and analysis period, a collection start time, a collection end time, and an indicator of types of service health information to be included in the service health report.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the service health report includes an advertisement for at least one of a computing service and a service provider.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein retrieving service health information further comprises:

requesting the service health information from each of the plurality of service providers; and

receiving the requested the service health information from each of the plurality of service providers.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, wherein receiving the requested service health information further comprises at least one of (a) receiving transmission of the requested information, and (b) retrieving the requested information from a data store also accessible to the service provider.

7. A computer implemented system for collecting and aggregating service health information, comprising:

a customer request component configured to;

receive a collection request from at least one customer based at least in part on a policy derived from a service level agreement with said at least one customer and authenticate said collection request based in part on said policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

check a policy and an agreement corresponding to the collection request;

set parameters for the collection request based at least in part on said policy corresponding to the collection request, said agreement corresponding to the collection request, or a combination thereof;

a service health information collector configured to;

retrieve service health information associated with at least one of a plurality of service providers the at least one service provider providing one or more computing services to the at least one customer;

a service health analysis and correlation engine configured to aggregate service health information retrieved from said at least one of said plurality of service providers into aggregated service health information, and to analyze the aggregated service health information in accordance with said parameters to produce an analysis result; and

a service information router configured to provide report containing said aggregated service health information and said analysis result to said at least one customer;

wherein said aggregated service health information comprises varying levels of service health information that are retrieved for said customer based on a pre-determined policy.

8. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the service health analysis and correlation engine is further configured to provide recommendations to a customer for at least one of a modification of computing services and a change of service provider, the recommendation based in part on an analysis of the retrieved service health information associated with the customer.

9. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the customer request component is configured to accept requests for any of:

continuous collection, ad-hoc collection, collection on and off requests, historical data within a specified time period, and requests for a subset of available metrics.

10. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the service information router is configured to provide an advertisement for at least one of a computing service and a service provider, to at least one customer.

11. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the service health information collector is configured to retrieve service health information by sending a request to at least one of the plurality of service providers for service health information associated with a customer, and then receive the requested service health information from the at least one of the plurality of service providers.

12. The system as recited in claim 11, wherein receiving the requested service health information further comprises at least one of (a) receiving transmission of the requested information, and (b) retrieving the requested information from a data store also accessible to the service provider.

13. A computer implemented system for providing service health data to customers, by a cloud service provider, comprising:

means for providing a cloud service to a plurality of customers, over a network;

means for receiving and authenticating a service health information collection request from one customer of said plurality of customers based at least in part on a policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

means for checking a policy and an agreement corresponding to the service health data collection request received from said customer and setting one or more parameters for collecting service health data associated with said collection request;

means for collecting service health data corresponding to at least one cloud service provided to at least one customer in accordance with said one or more parameters; and

means for providing the collected service health data to a cloud service health sensor unit, wherein the collected service health data includes varying levels of service health information that are retrieved for the customer based on a pre-determined policy, and is in a format capable of being accessed over the network by an authorized cloud health information provider for analysis and aggregation with other service health data corresponding to the customer in accordance with said parameters, but also corresponding to other cloud services used by the customer.

14. The system as recited in claim 13, wherein the cloud service provider and the cloud health information provider are the same entity, for the customer.

15. The system as recited in claim 14, wherein the cloud service provider and the cloud health information provider are different entities, for another customer of the plurality of customers.

16. The system as recited in claim 13, wherein the service health data provided for the customer varies in periodicity of collection, granularity, robustness, and completeness based on at least one of:

a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the customer, the collection request;

a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the cloud health information provider, and a local service health information policy.

17. The system as recited in claim 16, wherein the provided service health data includes an advertisement for possible services available to the customer.

18. The system as recited in claim 13, further comprising:

the cloud service health sensor unit coupled to a storage device for storing collected service health data.

19. The system as recited in claim 18, wherein the storage device is accessible to at least one authorized cloud health information provider.

20. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the storage device is accessible for storing service health data collected by a second cloud service provider.

21. A computer implemented method, comprising:

receiving a service health data collection request from a customer based at least in part on a policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

authenticating the service health information collection request based at least in part on the policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer

checking a policy and an agreement corresponding to the collection request, and setting parameters for the collection request based at least in part on said policy corresponding to the collection request, said agreement corresponding to the collection request, or a combination thereof;

collecting, with a cloud service provider providing at least one cloud service the customer over a network, service health data corresponding to the at least one cloud service in accordance with said parameters;

providing collected service health data to a cloud service health sensor unit, wherein the collected service health data includes varying levels of service health information that are retrieved for the customer based on a pre-determined policy, and is in a format capable of being accessed over the network by an authorized cloud health information provider for analysis and aggregation in accordance with said parameters, with other service health data corresponding to the customer, but also corresponding to other cloud services used by the customer.

22. The method as recited in claim 21, wherein service health data provided for the customer varies in periodicity of collection, granularity, robustness, and completeness based on at least one of:

a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the customer, a customer'"'"'s request for data;

a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the cloud health information provider, and a local service health information policy.

23. The method as recited in claim 21, further comprising:

receiving an information request corresponding to the customer; and

modifying a level of the provided service health data based on the information request.

24. A non-transitory tangible computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions when executed on a machine cause the machine to:

receive a service health information collection request from a customer based at least in part on a policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

authenticate the customer and the collection request based at least in part on the policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

check a policy and an agreement corresponding to the collection request, and set parameters for the collection request based at least in part on said policy corresponding to the collection request, said agreement corresponding to the collection request, or a combination thereof;

retrieve service health information corresponding to a plurality of service providers, wherein each of the plurality of service providers provides a computing service to the customer over a network;

aggregate service health information retrieved from the plurality of service providers into aggregated service health information;

analyze, according to said parameters, the aggregated health service information;

to generate an analysis result and

provide a service health report including the aggregated service health information and said analysis result to a customer

wherein said aggregated service health information comprises varying levels of service health information that are retrieved for said customer based on a pre-determined policy.

25. The medium as recited in claim 24, wherein the collection request defines at least one of a collection and analysis period, a collection start time, a collection end time, and an indicator of types of service health information to be included in the service health report.

26. The medium as recited in claim 24, wherein retrieving service health information further comprises instructions to:

request the service health information from each of the plurality of service providers; and

receive the requested the service health information from each of the plurality of service providers.

27. A non-transitory tangible computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions when executed on a machine cause the machine to:

receive a service health collection request from a customer based at least in part on a policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer;

authenticate the customer and the service health collection request based at least in part on the policy derived from a service level agreement with said customer

check at least one of a policy and an agreement corresponding to the collection request, and set parameters for the collection request based at least in part on said policy corresponding to the collection request, said agreement corresponding to the collection request, or a combination thereof;

collect, with a cloud service provided providing at least one cloud service to the customer over a network, service health data corresponding to the at least one cloud service in accordance with said parameters;

provide collected service health data to a cloud service health sensor unit, wherein the collected service health data includes varying levels of service health information that are retrieved for the customer based on a pre-determined policy, and is in a format capable of being accessed over the network by an authorized cloud health information provider for analysis and aggregation in accordance with said parameters, with other service health data corresponding to the customer, but also corresponding to other cloud services used by the customer.

28. The medium as recited in claim 27, wherein said service health data provided for the customer varies in periodicity of collection, granularity, robustness, and completeness based on at least one of:

a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the customer, the customer'"'"'s request for data, a service level agreement between the cloud service provider and the cloud health information provider, and a local service health information policy.

29. The medium as recited in claim 27, further comprising instructions to:

receive an information request corresponding to the customer; and

modify a level of the provided service health data based on the information request.