Transactional orchestration of resource management and system topology in a cloud environment

• US 9,906,415 B2
• Filed: 05/11/2016
• Issued: 02/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Morgan, Edward T., Raphael, Roger C., Taylor, Paul S., Winter, Michael G.
• Primary Examiner(s): Chea, Philip
• Assistant Examiner(s): Khan, Hassan
• Application Number:
  US15/151,671
• Publication Number:
  US 20160380913A1
• Time in Patent Office: 657 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/781 Centralised allocation of resources
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/63 Routing a service request depending on the request content or context

Abstract

Mechanisms are provided, in a cloud computing data processing system comprising a plurality of components, hosted on one or more hardware computing devices of the cloud computing data processing system, for transactional resource and topology management. A cloud service system is instantiated that comprises component instances having allocated resources. The cloud service system comprises orchestration engine logic which generates a transactional data structure that stores objects corresponding to transactions executed in association with resources and component instance state changes. The orchestration engine logic receives transactions associated with resources or component instances of the cloud service system and records the transactions as objects in the transactional data structure in response to receiving the transactions. In response to detecting an exception during operation of the cloud service system, a recovery engine utilizes the objects in the transactional data structure to restart or recover the cloud service system.

Claims

1. A method, in a cloud computing data processing system comprising a plurality of components, hosted on one or more hardware computing devices of the cloud computing data processing system, for transactional resource and topology management, the method comprising:

instantiating, by the cloud computing data processing system, a cloud service system comprising one or more component instances, wherein the one or more component instances have allocated resources, wherein the cloud service system comprises orchestration engine logic;

generating, by the orchestration engine logic, a transactional data structure corresponding to the cloud service system, wherein the transactional data structure stores objects corresponding to transactions executed in association with resource instance state changes and component instance state changes, wherein the transactional data structure is a write-ahead-log (WAL) data structure stored in a non-volatile storage that is accessible by a plurality of the one or more hardware computing devices, wherein the objects are WAL objects comprising captured state change information describing component transitions, resource transitions, and topology transitions in a temporal domain, wherein the WAL objects are stored in the WAL data structure in a sequential manner, and wherein utilizing the objects in the transactional data structure to restart or recover the cloud service system comprises traversing the WAL objects of the WAL data structure in a sequential manner to recreate state transitions in accordance with temporal information of the WAL objects and a temporal characteristic of exception, and wherein each topology transition in the topology transitions are at least one of an application topology transition or a physical topology transition such that the application topology transition identifies a change in configuration of the interconnections between instances of components and the physical topology transition identifies a change in configuration of interconnections between instances of resources;

receiving, by the orchestration engine logic, transactions associated with resources or component instances of the cloud service system, wherein each transaction in the transactions comprises the state change information of the associated resource instance, component instance, and topology;

recording, by the orchestration engine logic, the transactions as objects in the transactional data structure in response to receiving the transactions; and

in response to detecting an exception during operation of the cloud service system, utilizing, by a recovery engine, the objects in the transactional data structure to restart or recover the cloud service system to a consistent state just prior to the exception causing the restart or recover based the state change information of the associated resource instance, component instance, and topology.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the cloud service system is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud service system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the allocated resources are virtualizations of hardware resources of the one or more hardware computing devices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein utilizing the objects in the transactional data structure to restart or recover the cloud service system comprises instantiating a new copy of the orchestration engine logic and re-creating a state of the orchestration engine logic in the new copy of the orchestration engine logic based on resource, component, and topology state change information maintained in the WAL objects of the WAL data structure.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein WAL objects in the WAL data structure store a timestamp of a state transition corresponding to the WAL object, a transaction identifier of a transaction associated with the state transition, an owner identifier indicating a source of the state transition information, and state transition detail information indicating a resource allocation/deallocation or state transition of a resource or topology component.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving, by the orchestration engine logic, transactions associated with resource instances or component instances of the cloud service system comprises receiving the transactions from agents associated with one or more resources or components of the cloud service system via one or more exported interfaces.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the recovery engine is separate and distinct from the orchestration engine logic.