Application processing allocation in a computing system

• US 9,842,006 B2
• Filed: 12/01/2009
• Issued: 12/12/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/01/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kaplinger, Todd Eric, Shook, Aaron Kyle
• Primary Examiner(s): Mejia, Anthony
• Application Number:
  US12/628,326
• Publication Number:
  US 20110131329A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,933 Days
• Field of Search: 709226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system

Abstract

A method for allocating processing of an application performed by a computing system made up of a plurality of interconnected physical computing devices includes executing an application on a first application server associated with the computing system, the application having a number of modular software components; while executing the application, measuring processing resources consumed by one of the modular software components; and in response to one of the modular software components consuming an amount of processing resources defined by a criterion, deploying the one of the modular software components to a second application server associated with the computing system.

Claims

1. A method for allocating processing of an application performed by a computing system comprising a plurality of interconnected physical computing devices, the method comprising:

executing, during an execution period, an application on a first application server associated with said computing system, said application comprising a plurality of modular software components, with the plurality of modular software components including a first modular software component and a second modular software component;

measuring a first set of performance metric value(s) for the first modular software component with respect to the execution period;

measuring a second set of performance metric value(s) for the second modular software component with respect to the execution period;

determining that the first set of performance metric value(s) indicates less favorable performance than the second set of performance metric value(s); and

responsive to the determination that the first set of performance metric values(s) indicates less favorable performance, re-deploying said first modular software component from the first application server to a second application server associated with said computing system using a remote request dispatcher (RRD);

wherein the re-deployment of the first modular software component includes building an RRD request object on the first application server, and

sending, by the first application server, the RRD request object to the second application server to transfer processing of the first modular software component to the second application server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein a measured performance metric is latency.

3. The method of claim 1, in which said deploying said first modular software component to said second application server comprises activating a context sharing mechanism.

4. The method of claim 1, in which said computing system comprises an enterprise cloud computing system.

5. The method of claim 1, in which said second application server is one of a plurality of application servers, and one of said modular software components being deployed to said second application server responsive to said second application server consuming a smaller amount of its own processing resources than any other application server in said plurality of application servers.

6. The method of claim 1, in which at least one of said first application server and said second application server executes said application through a virtual machine.

7. The method of claim 1, in which said modular software components comprise at least one of:

Java servlets, hypertext preprocessor (PHP) software components, and .NET software components.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a response to the RRD request from the second application server; and

presenting contents of the response including a description of the available contents, response output, and response state of the second application server to be made available to the resource of the first application server.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising transferring the first modular software component from the first application server to the second application server using the RRD.

20. The method of claim 2, further comprising using a tolerance for expected latency in determining whether to deploy the first application server to the second application server.

8. A computing system comprising:

a first application server; and

a network interface for the first application server to provide communication with a second application server communicatively coupled to said first application server;

in which a processor associated with said first application server is configured to;

execute an application, said application comprising a plurality of modular software components, with the plurality of modular software components including a first modular software component and a second modular software component;

during an execution period of said application, measure a first set of performance metric value(s) for the first modular software component with respect to the execution period;

measure a second set of performance metric value(s) for the second modular software component with respect to the execution period;

determine that the first set of performance metric value(s) indicates less favorable performance than the second set of performance metric value(s); and

responsive to the determination that the first set of performance metric values(s) indicates less favorable performance, transfer said first modular software component to said second application server to be processed by a processer associated with said second application server;

wherein transferring said first modular software component to be processed by said second application server is conducted by a remote request dispatcher (RRD).

9. The system of claim 8, wherein a measured performance metric is latency.

10. The system of claim 8, in which said transferring said one of said modular software components to said second application server comprises activating a context sharing mechanism.

11. The system of claim 8, in which said computing system comprises an enterprise cloud computing system.

12. The system of claim 8, in which said second application server is one of a plurality of application servers, said one of said modular software components being deployed to said second application server responsive to said second application server consuming a smaller amount of its own processing resources than any other application server in said plurality of application servers.

13. The system of claim 8, in which a virtual machine associated with at least one of said first application server and said second application server is used to process said application.

14. A computer program product for allocating processing of an application performed by a computing system comprising a plurality of physical computing devices, said computer program product comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer readable code embodied therewith, said computer readable program code comprising;

computer readable program code configured to execute an application on a first application server associated with said computing system, said application comprising a plurality of modular software components, with the plurality of modular software components including a first modular software component and a second modular software component;

computer readable program code configured to measure a first set of performance metric value(s) for the first modular software component during execution of said application;

computer readable program code configured to measure a second set of performance metric value(s) for the second modular software component with respect to the execution period;

computer readable program code configured to determine when the first set of performance metric value(s) indicates less favorable performance than the second set of performance metric value(s) by a predetermined threshold; and

computer readable program code configured to re-deploy said first of said modular software components from the first application server to a second application server associated with said computing system in response to a determination that the first set of performance metric values(s) indicates less favorable performance by said predetermined threshold, said code comprising a remote request dispatcher (RRD); and

wherein re-deploying said one of said modular software components to a second application server comprises;

identifying a remote resource on a remote module on the second application server based on a reference associated with a resource on the first application server;

creating an RRD request object;

sending the RRD request object to the second application server;

receiving a response to the RRD request from the second application server; and

presenting contents of the response including a description of the available contents, response output, and response state of the second application server to be made available to the resource of the first application server.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein a measured performance metric is latency.

16. The computer program product of claim 14, in which said deploying said one of said modular software components to said second application server comprises activating a context sharing mechanism.

17. The computer program product of claim 14, in which said second application server is one of a plurality of application servers, said one of said modular software components being deployed to said second application server responsive to said second application server consuming a smaller amount of its own processing resources than any other application server in said plurality of application servers.