Novell, Inc.

Oracle International Corporation

Micro Focus Software Inc.

Eric W B Anderson

Robert A Wipfel

Scott Alan Isaacson

Moiz Kohari

Usman Choudhary

Alexander Y Danoyan

Kurt Andrew Westerfeld

James Bart Whiteley

Jon Carey

Adam Spiers

Alan Murray

Kurt Westerfield

Jonathan Golan

The system and method described herein for providing annotated service blueprints in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may converge information for creating annotated service blueprints to provision and manage tessellated services distributed within an information technology infrastructure. For example, in response to a request to provision a service, a service blueprint describing one or more virtual machines may be created. The service blueprint may then be annotated to apply various parameters to the virtual machines, and the annotated service blueprint may then be instantiated to orchestrate the virtual machines with the one or more parameters and deploy the orchestrated virtual machines on information technology resources allocated to host the requested service, thereby provisioning the requested service.

System and method for providing annotated service blueprints in an intelligent workload management system

The system and method for intelligent workload management described herein may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads, wherein the management threads may converge information for managing identities and access credentials, enforcing policies, providing compliance assurances, managing provisioned and requested services, and managing physical and virtual infrastructure resources. In one implementation, an authentication server may generate authentication tokens defining access credentials for managed entities across a plurality of authentication domains, wherein the authentication tokens may control access to resources in an information technology infrastructure. For example, a management infrastructure may create service distributions for the managed entities, which may include virtual machine images hosted on physical resources. Further, the authentication tokens may be embedded in the service distributions, whereby the embedded authentication tokens may control access to the resources in the information technology infrastructure.

System and method for intelligent workload management

The system and method described herein for providing scorecards to visualize services in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may converge information for describing services, applications, workloads, in an information technology infrastructure. For example, a discovery engine may reference an identity vault to capture enriched models of an infrastructure, and a management infrastructure may then generate one or more scorecards that can be used to manage the infrastructure. In particular, the scorecards may provide information for tuning or otherwise controlling risk, complexity, cost, availability, and agility versus rigidness in the infrastructure.

System and method for providing scorecards to visualize services in an intelligent workload management system

The system and method described herein for managing information technology models in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may converge information for managing planned changes and recovery processes for version-controlled snapshots of the information technology models. For example, a discovery engine may enrich models of an infrastructure with identity information obtained from an identity vault and the infrastructure itself, and a management infrastructure may then manage planned changes to the infrastructure model. In particular, the management infrastructure may construct implementation plans that coordinate interaction between managed entities to implement the planned changes, and may further detect drifts between operational states and planned states for the infrastructure models.

System and method for managing information technology models in an intelligent workload management system

The system and method described herein for discovery enrichment in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may converge information for managing identities and access credentials, which may provide information that can enrich discovery of physical and virtual infrastructure resources. For example, a discovery engine may reference federated identity information stored in an identity vault and enrich a discovered infrastructure model with the federated identity information. Thus, the model may generally include information describing physical and virtualized resources in the infrastructure, applications and services running in the infrastructure, and information derived from the federated identity information that describes dependencies between the physical resources, the virtualized resources, the applications, and the services.

System and method for discovery enrichment in an intelligent workload management system

The system and method described herein for recording collaborative information technology processes in an intelligent workload management system may include a computing environment having a model-driven, service-oriented architecture for creating collaborative threads to manage workloads. In particular, the management threads may include one or more data structures that converge information describing interaction between managed entities and content that may relate to such interaction in time-ordered series of events. The time-ordered event stream may then be replayed in a real-time stream to remediate, roll back, or otherwise analyze the collaborative information technology processes.

System and method for recording collaborative information technology processes in an intelligent workload management system

A customized distribution, e.g. of Linux software, is built using only packages that satisfy a customer's individual requirements. The packages are verified, at build time, to be interoperable at run-time. Also, the distribution is verified to ensure all package dependencies are included. In cases where no package already exists that meets a user requirements, a new package can be created for this purpose. The packages in the distribution customized for the user can be tracked, so that as updates to the packages are released, the customer can be notified about those updates (without being notified about packages not in the customer's customized distribution). Finally, once the distribution has been built for the user, it can then be offered as a general-purpose distribution for future customers.

System for creating a customized software distribution based on user requirements

A customized installation, e.g. of Linux software, is created by allowing a user to select packages that the user is interested in installing. During the process, the user is informed if two of the packages that were selected will not be interoperable at run-time. The user is then given an opportunity to resolve the conflict. The user is also informed if selected packages depend on other packages that were not selected in order to run properly, and given the opportunity to include those needed packages in the installation. Once the selected packages have been validated that they will interoperate and all dependencies are satisfied, the system can install the installation.

System for creating a customized software installation on demand

To effect a change to the system, a user process makes a request. An interface receives the request, and attempts to authenticate the user. Assuming the user is authenticated, the interface determines the user's UID. The interface determines a provider process that can make the requested change, and forwards the request to the provider process. The interface also assigns the user's UID to the provider process's eUID. The provider process then attempts to make the change, provided the change can be made given the eUID assignment. The provider process then attempts to run under the new eUID, enabling the system to prohibit it from doing something that is not authorized for that user. This protects the system from inadvertently executing management operations by one provider process that is not expected or intended by the user of another provider process.

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Alpine, UT, United States of America

Eric W B Anderson