International Business Machines Corporation

Karl Ross Shultz

Simon C Chu

David Michael Green

Paul Brian Tippett

William W Buchanan, Jr

Richard Alan Dayan

Peter Thomas Donovan

William Paul Zeggert

Peter Gerard Chin

Timothy J Green

Thomas William Lange

Akram Abboud

John Michael Brantly

William Joseph Piazza

Gregory Brian Pruett

Andrew Hamilton Wray

Frank Cassatt Harwood

Jeffrey Wayne Anderson

Travis Daren Appleman

A method, system and computer program product for dynamically sharing a limited supply of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses among a larger number of servers. A manager coupled between the Internet and a plurality of servers may receive a request for an IP address associated with a domain name from a client coupled to the Internet. The manager may be configured to map the domain name into an IP address assigned to the server hosting the web site of the domain name. Each assigned IP address may be valid only for a limited time. Once the time the assigned IP address is valid has expired, the assigned IP address may be returned to the pool of available IP addresses thereby allowing a smaller number of IP addresses to be dynamically shared among a larger number of servers.

Dynamically sharing a pool of IP addresses

Disclosed is a method for automatically re-provisioning an appliance server without significant user-interaction. The disk drive of a server to be utilized as an appliance server is partitioned into at least three partitions, including a systems partition, a network operating system partition, and an images partition. A re-provisioning utility is provided, which, when activated by a user, removes the present application from the server and forwards it to a storage location on the network or in a fourth storage partition and installs another application on the server. The system is re-booted and re-configured to provide full operation of the new application.

Automatic appliance server re-provision/re-purposing method

Disclosed is a method and hard disk configuration for accommodating different sizes of applications during an automatic re-provisioning of an appliance server. The disk drive of the appliance server is partitioned with a system partition, a network operating system (NOS) partition, a float partition, and an images partition. The float partition is utilized to provide additional space to the NOS partition and the images partition, when required. A re-provisioning utility is provided, which initiates both a create image utility and an apply image utility, whereby an image file of a current application and associated operating system is created and a stored image file of a second application is installed on the appliance server. When the apply image utility is initiated, the NOS partition is dynamically extended into the float partition server if the second application requires more space than is provided in the NOS partition. Similarly, when an image file is stored in the images partition and the image file requires more space than is available in the images partition, the images partition is dynamically extended into the float partition.

Appliance server with a drive partitioning scheme that accommodates application growth in size

Growing community of inventors

Cary, NC, United States of America

Karl Ross Shultz