International Business Machines Corporation

Quest Software Inc.

Neal R Prager

Sameer S Jagtap

Stephen Thomas Cochran

C Evan Pollan

Carey Lee Jung

An application reservation and delivery system with capacity pooling including a logical resource pool, an application library, a resource manager, and a deployment manager. The logical resource pool includes computer resource assets which includes asset type, amount, and asset source in which each computer resource asset is decomposed to a specified level of granularity. The application library includes application configurations, each including at least one server configuration and computer resource asset requirements. The resource manager tracks availability of the computer resource assets, receives requests for specific application configurations for specified time periods, compares each requested application configuration with available computer resource assets at the specified time periods, and reserves resources for each requested application configuration during the specified time periods. The deployment manager deploys each requested application configuration using the reserved resources.

Capacity pooling for application reservation and delivery

The invention relates to a method executed by a computer system to increase the ease and efficiency of the configuration management task in large, complex, distributed networks of heterogeneous computer systems. In this paradigm, referred to as management-by-subscription, a central configuration database is used to store configuration information. Individual systems (e.g., computers) express interest in receiving configuration information from the central configuration database through a process known as subscription. By subscribing to the central configuration database a system establishes a persistent relationship (also stored in the central configuration database) through which it becomes eligible for future distributions or updates of the configuration information to which it subscribes. The management-by-subscription paradigm uses object-oriented programming technology to define a class of template objects which can be used by system administrators to establish consistent and coherent configuration management policies (operating guidelines). End-point systems can subscribe to individual template objects, to logical collections of template objects known as a virtual host, or to a combination of templates and virtual hosts. Management-by-subscription, through the use of template objects, allows distributed system's administrators to: (1) divide management tasks between different individuals while maintaining system security, (2) provide a consistent means of propagating and enforcing management policies, and (3) encourage configuration consistency across different platforms.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Neal R Prager