International Business Machines Corporation

Aritra Sen

Akshat Verma

Anindya Neogi

Dipyaman Banerjee

Tapan Kumar Nayak

Deepak Kumar Jeswani

Kamal Kumar Bhattacharya

Priti P Patil

Rahul Balani

Ankit Garg

Applications in a data center can be consolidated by identifying different combinations of software executing on hardware. The software can include a set of applications that execute upon a set of servers. The different combinations can have different arrangements of applications running on different ones of the servers. For each of the different combinations, a licensing cost, an operating cost, and a total cost can be calculated. The total cost of operation for each of the configurations can be calculated by summing the licensing costs, the operating costs adjusted for the cost savings for complementary workload patterns, and migration costs for adjusting a current configuration of the applications and servers to arrive at the configuration. The total cost results per configuration can be reported to a user for at least a set of the configurations.

Application placement among a set of consolidation servers utilizing license cost and application workload profiles as factors

Methods and systems for image migration. There are received, at an image reader, files of at least one image of at least one virtual machine from a first environment. Points of variability are identified within the files, with respect to preparation for functioning in a second environment. Each point of variability is associated with corresponding metadata, and each point of variability is stored with its corresponding metadata. The at least one image is reconfigured to function in the second environment, such reconfiguring comprising adjusting the points of variability via using the metadata. The reconfigured image is deployed to the second environment.

Virtual machine image migration

A virtual machine placement framework is described to enable a data center operator to develop a placement scheme to satisfy its particular constraints while simultaneously optimizing resource utilization. To generate a placement solution, the virtual machine placement problem is first characterized as a 'bin packing' problem. The framework provides simple interface tools and processing modules, and a pluggable architecture for receiving placement algorithms. To generate a solution, an administrator creates an XML representation that abstracts physical entities (e.g., data center, subnet, rack, physical server, and the like) into a hierarchical tree of bins. The administrator also defines a set of 'rules' that govern (direct) the placement of the virtual machines by placing constraints on the placement scheme. Using the hierarchical tree and the rules, the framework is executed to generate a placement as a solution to a bin packing problem, preferably on a layer-by-layer basis.

Automated virtual machine placement planning using different placement solutions at different hierarchical tree levels

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Aritra Sen