Generating Super Templates to Obtain User-Requested Templates

• US 20130326496A1
• Filed: 08/16/2012
• Published: 12/05/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: De, Pradipta, Gupta, Manish, Jeswani, Deepak K.
• Granted Patent: US 9,128,744 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/63 Image based installation; Cloning; Build to order
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Techniques for creating a virtual machine super template to create a user-requested virtual machine template. A method includes identifying at least one virtual machine super template to be created via analyzing at least one existing template in a repository and/or a user-defined combination of software, creating the super template by installing software requested by the user to be within the super template, and creating a user-requested virtual machine template by un-installing software from the super template that is not required in the user-requested template and/or adding software to the super template required in the user-requested template that is not present in the super template.

Claims

1. A method for creating a virtual machine super template to create a user-requested virtual machine template, the method comprising:

identifying at least one virtual machine super template to be created via analyzing at least one existing template in a repository and/or a user-defined combination of software;

creating the super template by installing software requested by the user to be within the super template; and

to creating a user-requested virtual machine template by un-installing software from the super template that is not required in the user-requested template and/or adding software to the super template required in the user-requested template that is not present in the super template;

wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a computer device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein use of the at least one super template decreases network flow.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising creating a patch between the super template and the user-requested template, wherein the patch includes a set of instructions to transform a base template to a target template.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the set of instructions includes instructions to remove software and/or add software.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the patch captures at least one difference between the base template and the target template.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the at least one difference includes at least one of a virtual hardware property and a software stack.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising caching the super template.

8. The method of claim 7, comprising using a cached super template and corresponding patch to generate a user-requested template upon receipt of a request for provisioning of the user-requested template.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said analyzing includes analyzing a request log of user-requested templates and sizes of software installed within the user-requested templates to determine what software is to be within each super template.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein said identifying comprises solving an optimization problem that includes constraints on capacity on a cache and/or size of an expected size of the super template.

11. A method for generating a user-requested template, the method comprising:

creating a super template based on user-defined criteria identifying software to be included in the super template;

generating a user-requested template by un-installing software from the super template that is not required in the user-requested template and/or adding software to the super template required in the user-requested template that is not present in the super template;

creating a patch corresponding to the super template and the user-requested template that includes a set of instructions to generate the user-requested template from the super template; and

caching the super template, the user-requested template and the corresponding patch in a repository.