Virtual machine image lineage

• US 8,924,930 B2
• Filed: 06/28/2011
• Issued: 12/30/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Fries, Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): Chen, Xi D
• Application Number:
  US13/171,333
• Publication Number:
  US 20130007731A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,281 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Techniques are described for tracking and maintaining the lineage of virtual machines (VMs). As applications are built or compiled, information about the makeup or elements of the applications is captured. As applications are installed on VMs, that information is also captured. As the VMs are deployed to hosts, decommissioned, migrated between hosts, etc., that information is also maintained. Therefore, it is possible to trace relations between live VMs (and/or hosts they execute on) and the elements of applications installed on the VMs. For example, if an element is a source code file, it may be possible to link that source code file with particular hosts or VMs. Or, it may be possible to determine whether a given host or VM has a dependency on an application element. Given a dataset of lineage information, a wide range of previously unavailable information can be obtained.

Claims

1. A method performed by one or more computers to track virtual machine images (VMIs) deployed on hosts, respectively, the method comprising:

automatically maintaining linking information that links application elements to the hosts, the linking information comprising element linkage information indicating which of the application elements were used to build or compile which of the applications, the linking information further comprising application linkage information indicating which of the applications are installed on which of the VMIs, the linking information further comprising VMI linkage information indicating which of the VMIs reside on which of the hosts, the application elements comprising source code files not present on the VMIs, wherein the applications comprise binary executable files executable within the VMIs, and wherein the VMIs are executed as virtual machines by hypervisors on the hosts, respectively; and

responding to queries identifying respective source code files by, for a given query for a given source code file, accessing the linking information, using the element linkage information to identify any of the applications that were used to build or compile the given source code file, using the application linkage information to identify any of the VMIs having any of the identified applications installed thereon, and by using the VMI linkage information to identify any of the hosts hosting any of the identified VMIs, wherein a reply to the given query comprises indicia of the identified hosts.

2. A method according to claim 1, further comprising, maintaining the linking information by, when a VMI instance is created or deleted or migrated, updating the VMI linkage information accordingly.

3. A method according to claim 1, further comprising automatically updating the linking information when an application is installed on a VMI.

4. A method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving a request specifying a host and using the linking information to identify any of the application elements that correspond to the host.

5. A method according to claim 1, further comprising automatically updating the element linkage information when an application is used to compile or build an application.

6. A method performed by one or more computing devices, the method comprising:

executing virtual machines (VMs), comprised of virtual machine images (VMIs), respectively, on a plurality of hosts, each VMI having one or more applications installed thereon, each application having been compiled from one or more application elements comprising source code files, the applications comprising respective binary executables that can be executed by guest operating systems of the respective VMs;

as VMs are added to and removed from the hosts, maintaining queryable relation information indicating which of the application elements are related to which of the VMs currently available on the hosts; and

receiving queries identifying respective source code files, and using the queryable relation information to, for a given query for a given source code file, according to an indication of the given source code file, identify from the queryable relation information any of the hosts hosting any of the VMs hosting any of the applications that were compiled with the given source code file has been installed, wherein the identifying identifies the hosts without regard for which of the applications are installed thereon.

7. A method according to claim 6, further comprising:

as applications are installed in VMIs, automatically updating the relation information to include information about application elements of which the applications are comprised.

8. A method according to claim 6, further comprising receiving a first request identifying a VM and using the queryable relation information to identify source code files of applications installed on the identified VM.

9. A method according to claim 6, further comprising, based on a given application element, identifying all of the VMs among the plurality of hosts that have an application that corresponds to the application element.

10. A method according to claim 6, further comprising updating the relation information each time a VM is added to or removed from one of the hosts.

11. A method according to claim 6, further comprising updating the relation information when applications on the VMIs are installed or uninstalled.

12. A method according to claim 6, wherein the queryable relation information comprises information relating application elements with applications, applications with VMIs, VMIs with VMs, and hosts with VMs.

13. A method according to claim 12, wherein the information relating application elements to applications comprises information indicating:

which application elements were used to build which applications, which of the applications are installed on which of the VMIs, which of the VMs are using copies of which of the VMIs, and which of the hosts are hosting which of the VMs.

14. A method according to claim 6, further comprising automatically updating the queryable relation information when an application element is used to build or compile an application.

15. An apparatus comprising a memory storing information to enable one or more computers to perform a process, the process comprising:

compiling source code files into executable applications and maintaining corresponding application-file linkage information indicating which of the source code files were used to compile which of the applications;

building virtual machine images (VMIs) by installing the applications on the VMIs, and storing VMI-application linkage information indicating which of the applications are installed on which of the VMIs;

with the VMIs serving as templates, creating pluralities of VMs from copies of the VMIs, respectively;

in a network of hosts running the VMs, for each VM created by copying from a corresponding VMI, maintaining VMI-host linkage information by tracking which of the hosts have VMs based on which of the VMIs and updating the VMI-host linkage information accordingly; and

receiving a query for any arbitrary hosts that correspond to a source code file identified by the query, using the application-file linkage information to identify all applications in the application-file linking information that were compiled with the source code file, using the identified applications in combination with the VMI-application linkage information to identify any of the VMs having any of the identified applications thereon, and using the identified VMs in combination with the VMI-host linkage information to identify all of the hosts in the VMI-host linkage information that corresponding to the query.

16. An apparatus according to claim 15, the process further comprising:

automatically updating the VMI-application linkage information when new VMIs are built.

17. An apparatus according to claim 15, the process further comprising:

automatically updating the VMI-host linkage information as VMs are added to hosts and removed from the hosts, whereby the VMI-host linkage information reflects a current state of VMI deployment on the hosts.

18. An apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the tracking comprises inspecting a VM to determine whether specified application elements are present in the VM, and linking the VM accordingly.

19. An apparatus according to claim 15, the process further comprising automatically updating the application-file linkage information in accordance with a source code file being used to compile an application.