Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Benjamin M Schultz

Hari R Pulapaka

Frederick Justus Smith

Giridhar Viswanathan

Margarit Simeonov Chenchev

Amber Tianqi Guo

Mehmet Iyigun

Balaji Balasubramanyan

Poornananda R Gaddehosur

John Andrew Starks

Ankit Srivastava

David G Thaler

Michael Bishop Ebersol

Tushar Suresh Sugandhi

Deepak Bansal

Dmitry A Anipko

Ivan Dimitrov Pashov

Harish Srinivasan

Jonathan David Wiswall

Rajesh Sundaram

Matthew David Kurjanowicz

Lars Reuther

Gerardo Diaz Cuellar

Charles Glenn Jeffries

Yevgeniy Bak

Ling Tony Chen

Nir Nice

Sandeep Kishan Singhal

John Carroll Gordon

James Christopher Gray

Javier Nisim Flores Assad

Mohit Kumar Garg

Ravinder S Thind

Sandeep Singhal

Pankaj Garg

Scott Daniel Anderson

Gerardo Diaz-Cuellar

Jonathan D Schwartz

David Bradley Probert, Jr

David John Linsley

Kevin Michael Broas

Daniel Vasquez Lopez

Kinshumann Kinshumann

Narasimhan Agrahara Venkataramaiah

Paresh J Maisuria

John Joseph Richardson

Jean Khawand

Abhishek Tiwari

Madhan Sivakumar

Nishad Mulye

James C Gray

Ahmed Saruhan Karademir

Richard O Wolcott

Deepu Chandy Thomas

Navin Narayan Pai

Axel Rietschin

Chase Thomas

Abhijat Singh

Gupta Shubham

Morakinyo Korede Olugbade

Carlos Ernesto Peza Ramirez

Jonathan De Marco

Frederick J Smith, Iv

Maxwell Christopher Renke

Paul Bozzay

Narasimhan Ramasubramanian

Jyotirmaya Tripathi

Rayman Faruk Aeron

Graham Wong

Masato Maeda

Matthew James Wilson

Aman Arneja

Kyle Thomas Brady

Michael Trevor Pashniak

Timothy Daniel Barber

Sudeep Kumar Ghosh

David Guy Weston

Julia Margaret Binger

Shanmugha Priya Satheesh

Ali Hajy

Jong Gyu Lee

Aaron J Schrader

Nived Kalappuraikal Sivadas

Raphael Gianotti Serrano Dos Santo

Taylor James Stark

Stephen E Bensley

Abhinav Mishra

Yanan Zhang

Kinshumann

Bryan R Born

Ranjit Puri

Ian James McCarty

JianMing M Zhou

Alvin K Tan

Prakhar Srivastava

Dhiraj Gupta

Gopikrishna Kannan

Vikram Mangalore Rao

Chris C Gray

David Powell

Environment type validation can provide a tamper-resistant validation of the computing environment within which the environment type validation is being performed. Such information can then be utilized to perform policy management, which can include omitting verifications in order to facilitate the sharing of policy, such as application licenses, from a host computing environment into a container virtual computing environment. The environment type validation can perform multiple checks, including verification of the encryption infrastructure of the computing environment, verification of code integrity mechanisms of that computing environment, checks for the presence of functionality evidencing a hypervisor, checks for the presence or absence of predetermined system drivers, or other like operating system components or functionality, checks for the activation or deactivation of resource management stacks, and checks for the presence or absence of predetermined values in firmware.

Virtual environment type validation for policy enforcement

Distribution and management of services in virtual environments is described herein. In one or more implementations, a service distribution and management model is implemented in which system services and applications are seamlessly distributed across multiple containers which each implement a different runtime environment. In one or more implementations, a system for distributing access to services in a host operating system of a computing device includes a host operating system configured to implement a host runtime environment, and one or more services implemented by the host operating system. The system further includes a service control manager configured to enable communication between a client stub of a service implemented in a client runtime environment and a service provider of the service that is implemented in a service runtime environment that is separate from the first client runtime environment.

Distribution and management of services in virtual environments

A fine-grain selectable partially privileged container virtual computing environment provides a vehicle by which processes that are directed to modifying specific aspects of a host computing environment can be delivered to, and executed upon, the host computing environment while simultaneously maintaining the advantageous and desirable protections and isolations between the remaining aspects of the host computing environment and the partially privileged container computing environment. Such partial privilege is provided based upon directly or indirectly delineated actions that are allowed to be undertaken on the host computing environment by processes executing within the partially privileged container virtual computing environment and actions which are not allowed. Aspects of the host computing environment operating system, such as the kernel, are extended to interface with container-centric mechanisms to receive information upon which actions can be allowed or denied by the kernel even if the process attempting such actions would otherwise have sufficient privilege.

Partially privileged lightweight virtualization environments

Template-driven locally calculated policy updates for virtualized machines in a datacenter environment are described. A central control and monitoring node calculates and pushes down policy templates to local control and monitoring nodes. The templates provide boundaries and/or a pool of networking resources, from which the local control and monitoring node is enabled to calculate policy updates for locally instantiated virtual machines and containers.

Scalable tenant networks

A layered composite boot device, and a corresponding layered composite file system, can be implemented by a boot manager. Requests directed to the layered composite boot device and file system, can be serviced from a primary device and file system that are encapsulated by the layered composite boot device and file system. The primary device and file system can correspond to a virtualized file system within a container environment, thereby enabling changes within the container environment to affect early stages of operating system booting in the container environment. Should such requests not be serviceable from the primary layers, the composite device and file system can comprise secondary layers that can correspond to a container host connection and the host file system, providing fallback to existing data if changes within the container environment were not made, thereby enabling booting to proceed in a traditional manner.

Layered composite boot device and file system for operating system booting in file system virtualization environments

Computing systems, devices, and methods of dynamic image composition for container deployment are disclosed herein. One example technique includes receiving a request for accessing a file from a container process. In response to receiving the request, the technique includes querying a mapping table corresponding to the container process to locate an entry corresponding to a file identifier of the requested file. The entry also includes data identifying a file location on the storage device from which the requested file is accessible. The technique further includes retrieving a copy of the requested file according to the file location identified by the data in the located entry in the mapping table and providing the retrieved copy of the requested file to the container process, thereby allowing the container process to access the requested file.

Dynamic image composition for container deployment

A virtualization partition (VP) is executed by a virtualization layer. The VP contains guest software that executes in isolation within the VP. The guest software has a background task (BT) that needs to be performed in the future. The BT is virtualized by a BT service that executes outside of the VP. The guest software registers the BT, through the virtualization layer, with a BT virtualization service. An event occurs outside of the VP that triggers the BT. The BT virtualization service responds to the event by assuring that the VP is available (executing), and optionally triggers (possibly indirectly) the execution of code in the application.

Virtualized background activations

To provide a hierarchical visual paradigm while maintaining the communication advantages of sibling extensions, a visual hierarchy simulation extension generates and maintains placeholders in a visually hierarchical manner, with the visual positioning of such placeholders informing the visual positioning of overlays of frames hosting the visual output of sibling extensions. Such a visual hierarchy simulation extension is utilized to layout and establish a desired visual hierarchy. One or more modules of computer-executable instructions are invoked to provide the relevant functionality, including the obtaining of the visual positioning of placeholders, the relevant visual translation between the visual positioning of placeholders and the visual overlaying of corresponding frames, the generation and movement of the corresponding frames, and the instantiation of extension content within the corresponding frames. The visual hierarchy simulation extension is hosted independently from the one or more modules.

Simulated visual hierarchy while facilitating cross-extension communication

Techniques of deferred container deployment are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, at a computing device, a container image corresponding to the container. The container image includes a first set of files identified by symbolic links individually directed to a file in the host filesystem on the computing device and a second set of files identified by hard links. The method also includes in response to receiving the container image, at the computing device, storing the received container image in a folder of the host filesystem on the computing device without resolving the symbolic links of the first set of the files until runtime of the requested container.

Deferred path resolution during container deployment

Memory is partitioned and isolated in container-based memory enclaves. The container-based memory enclaves have attestable security guarantees. During provisioning of the container-based memory enclaves from a container image, a purported link in the container to a memory address of the enclave is modified to verifiably link to an actual memory address of the host, such as partitioned memory enclave. In some instances, enclave attestation reports can be validated without transmitting corresponding attestation requests to remote attestation services, based on previous attestation of one or more previous container attestation reports from a similar container and without requiring end-to-end attestation between the container and remote attestation service for each new attestation request.

Using secure memory enclaves from the context of process containers

One example technique includes receiving a request for accessing a file from a container process. In response to receiving the request, the technique includes querying a mapping table corresponding to the container process to locate an entry corresponding to a file identifier of the requested file. The entry also includes data identifying a file location on the storage device from which the requested file is accessible. The technique further includes retrieving a copy of the requested file according to the file location identified by the data in the located entry in the mapping table and providing the retrieved copy of the requested file to the container process, thereby allowing the container process to access the requested file.

Enacting a compliance action using an assessment that considers a mix of coldpatches and hotpatches includes identifying a policy defining the compliance condition based on patching status of a software component. A patching state of the software component is determined, including identifying evidence of coldpatched binary file(s) and hotpatch binary file(s) applicable to the software component, and using the evidence to determine whether or not the hotpatch binary file(s) have been applied to a memory image into which an instance of the software component is loaded. Based on the policy and on the patching state of the software component, a compliance action is enacted for the compliance condition. The compliance action includes generating a health report or a health attestation, initiating a patching action, initiating an execution control action, and the like.

System compliance based on a mix of hotpatches and coldpatches

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Benjamin M Schultz