International Business Machines Corporation

John Arthur Pershing, Jr

Tushar Deepak Chandra

Peter Richard Badovinatz

Orvalle Theodore Kirby

Ajei Sarat Gopal

Larry Bert Brenner

Tamar Eilam

Marc Adam Kaplan

Michael H Kalantar

Marion Lee Blount

Alexander V Konstantinou

Vijay Krishnarao Naik

John Joseph Turek

William Francis Jerome

Liana Liyow Fong

Dennis Duane Jurgensen

John Joseph Edward Turek

Sameh Afif Fakhouri

Vijay A Kumar

Krishna Kummamuru

Pradeep Varma

Jing Luo

David W Levine

Lily Barkovic Mummert

Srirama Mandyam Krishnakumar

Ajay Raina

Ying Li

Heiko Hary Ludwig

Asit Dan

Steve Richard White

Nagui Halim

Guerney D H Hunt

Michael Man Behrendt

Jie Qiu

Kaoutar El Maghraoui

Gerald P Bozman

Hendrik Wagner

Aditya Agrawal

Christos N Nikolaou

Peter B Badovinatz

Joann Ruvolo-Chong

Orvalle Theordore Kirby

Alok Menghrajani

Ahmed-Sameh Afif Fakhouri

Techniques are disclosed for workflow based high availability analysis in computing systems. For example, a computer-implemented method for analyzing an information network infrastructure to identify one or more availability weak points includes the following steps. A workflow specification is provided based on one or more user-visible processes and an application topology. Service workflows associated with the specification are mapped from the application topology to the infrastructure to generate a workflow data structure. An availability weak point analysis is performed in accordance with the workflow data structure to determine one or more optimal high availability parameters for one or more deployed components of the infrastructure. The one or more optimal high availability parameters are applied in the infrastructure so as to substantially eliminate the one or more availability weak points.

Method and apparatus for workflow based high availability analysis

A method, device and system for generating an HA group according to a user's HA requirement by retrieving an applicable HA pattern, according to a result of HA requirement analysis on the user's HA requirement; generating an initial HA group based on the retrieved HA pattern; performing context rebuilding on a member unit in the initial HA group to obtain a preliminarily configured HA group; generating a member unit based HA group variant for the preliminarily configured HA group according to an HA group redundancy obtained from the user's HA requirement; and performing structure configuration and attribute configuration on a member unit in the generated HA group variant to obtain an HA group that meets the user's HA requirement.

Method and apparatus to simplify HA solution configuration in deployment model

A method, system, and computer program product are disclosed for automatically determining a valid ordering of provisioning operations, and their needed parameters, so that a provisioning system can configure a desired resource state. This is accomplished by formally describing the pre-conditions and effects of provisioning operations, the current state of managed resources and the desired final state. A planning algorithm is then used to determine the provisioning operations, a valid ordering and appropriate parameters to bring the system from the current state to the desired state.

Method, system, and product for identifying provisioning operations via planning methods

A decision support system called Mounties that is designed for managing applications and resources using rule-based constraints in scalable mission-critical clustering environments. Mounties consists of four active service components: (1) a repository of resource proxy objects for modeling and manipulating the cluster configuration; (2) an event notification mechanism for monitoring and controlling interdependent and distributed resources; (3) a rule evaluation and decision processing mechanism; and (4) a global optimization service for providing decision making capabilities. The focus of this paper is on the design of the first three services that together connect and coordinate the distributed resources with the decision making component.

Decision based system for managing distributed resources and modeling the global optimization problem

A method and system for model-driven transformation are provided. The method and system in one aspect allows selecting of one or more model elements in a model. Transformation definitions are evaluated to identify one or more transformations that may be applicable to the selected one or more model elements. In one aspect, transformations may be identified that are applicable in an entire model, those that take the selected one or more model elements as input parameters, those that affect one or more model element, or any combination thereof. In one aspect, a list of applicable transformations is presented. In another aspect, the method and system automatically apply the one or more applicable transformations to the model.

System and method for model driven transformation filtering

A system and method for automated design deployment for distributed applications includes providing a node with at least one requirement attribute in an application description. A repository for infrastructure elements is searched for candidate infrastructure elements for that satisfy the at least one requirement attribute. A candidate infrastructure element that best satisfies the at least one requirement attribute in the application description is substituted in place of the node with the at least one requirement attribute.

Automated design for deployment of a distributed application using constraint propagation

A computer implemented method and a computer program product provide a provisioning system for automated provisioning of a computing infrastructure by providing relationship factories with resources of the computing infrastructure. The relationship factories include information necessary for establishing relationships within the computing infrastructure. The provisioning system ranks relationship factories according to suitability to provide for appropriate provisioning of new resources added to the computing infrastructure.

Method and computer program product for selecting among multiple provisioning mechanisms in a self-managing computer system

The present invention is directed to provisioning and managing computing services in a computing utility system. It receives as an input an infrastructure independent description of a set of requirements on the new desired state of a computing service. It uses a knowledge plane to represent the infrastructure. The method generates a Concrete Model that describes a resource structure that refines the input and is implementable over the infrastructure. It then generates and possibly executes provisioning actions to create an identical resource structure on the infrastructure. The method can be used to create new computing services, to destroy existing computing services, to modify the resource combinations allocated to a computing service, or the configuration of these resources. Provisioning actions can be executed immediately, or saved and executed later, and possibly many times. Provisioning actions may be regenerated using the method whenever infrastructure characteristics, or the service requirements change.

Automatic provisioning of services based on a high level description and an infrastructure description

An embodiment of the invention provides a method of managing a cluster of networked resources and resource groups using rule-based constraints. This method includes the step of building a globally optimal cluster configuration of the resources in accordance with the rule-based constraints and a current state of the resources, including identifying for each of the resources and resource groups an availability and quality of service, which are determined by dependencies among the resources and resource groups, resource equivalency, constraints on the resources and network policies. The method comprises the further steps of bringing the cluster of resources on-line in a systematic manner, given the current state of each of the resources and resource groups; and with the cluster of networked resources on-line, determining dynamic dependencies of and configuration infomration about the cluster of resources (i) statically at defined times and (ii) dynamically during cluster operation.

Managing a cluster of networked resources and resource groups using rule - base constraints in a scalable clustering environment

Program product for an application programming interface that unifies a plurality of mechanisms into a single framework. The interface includes a mechanism for communicating between members of a process group of related processes, and a mechanism for synchronizing the related processes of the process group. Additionally, the application programming interface may include mechanisms for managing membership of the process group or a processor group of processors, and/or a mechanism for controlling a group state value for the process group.

Program product for an application programming interface unifying multiple mechanisms

The number of instances of an application running in a computing environment are controlled by monitoring the current load on the application, and altering the current number of instances of the application based on results of the monitoring. The load may be monitored by monitoring the current number of instances of the application running in the computing environment. Where a maximum, minimum and/or initial number on startup, of instances of the application are specified, the altering is done based on comparing the current number to one or more of the specified numbers of instances.

Controlling a number of instances of an application running in a computing environment

Resources are checkpointed in order to save the state of the resources. The resources can then be brought back to the same running state, during a restart procedure, by making use of the saved state. The determination of when to take a checkpoint or when to restart a resource is made by an entity, such as a cluster manager, external to the entity initiating or taking the checkpoint or performing the restart. The decision to checkpoint/restart a resource is provided by the cluster manager to a resource manager associated with the resource. This communication is facilitated by interfaces to the cluster manager provided by the resource manager.

Method, system and program products for managing the checkpointing/restarting of resources of a computing environment

A method and program product for managing membership of process groups of a distributed computing environment. Requests to alter membership of a first process group are received and presented to the first process group as a batched request. However, requests to change the membership of a second process group are received and presented to the second process group serially. Thus, the manner in which requests are presented can be different for various process groups. Additionally, different types of requests can be presented to the same process group in a differing manner. For instance, requests to join a process group can be presented as a batched request and requests to leave the process group can be presented serially, or vice versa.

Utilizing batch requests to present membership changes to process groups

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Buchanan, NY, United States of America

John Arthur Pershing, Jr