Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Rahim Maknojia

Robert S T Gibson

Shawn Lucas

Cheng Wei

Jeffrey P Snover

Bruce Gordon Payette

Sameer S Mutatkar

James G Robertson

Liu Hong

Vitaly Bordovskiy

Christine Moeller

Kenneth M Hansen

Narayanan Lakshmanan

Lee Holmes

Hemant Mahawar

Constantin Sorin Oprea

Miriam Rosenberg

The application is directed to a cloud computing platform. The cloud computing platform includes a memory having instructions stored thereon for managing updates the cloud computing platform. The cloud computing platform also includes a controller, operably coupled to the memory. The controller is configured to execute an instruction of identifying an update for an existing cloud computing service operating on the cloud computing platform. The controller is also configured to download the update for the existing service. The controller is also configured to merge the differences between the downloaded update and the existing service to create a new image. The controller is also configured to test the new image offline. Further, the controller is configured to validate the new image online.

End-to-end automated servicing model for cloud computing platforms

System management services can discover the addition of new physical devices, take automated actions to provision software (operating system and other related cloud services software components) on them, and scale out management infrastructure based on the new capacity of the total resources (including the newly added resources). A configuration file can contain the rules for automatic expansion and contraction of the system.

Automatic system response to external field-replaceable unit (FRU) process

A cloud declarative language is used to configure and reconfigure cloud computing environments. The language includes physical and logical topology declarations as well as cloud operations commands, and allows users to declare commands at multiple topology hierarchies. The language may be used to create scripts and sets of scripts that are used to configure cloud stacks and other operational parameters. Scripts may be created through direct editing by cloud designers or with the aid of graphical user interfaces. Scripts may be automatically generated using templates of configurations and requirements and use for rapid prototyping and testing of cloud environments. Scripts may also be used to monitor conformance with specified configurations, and to facilitate deployment of incremental modifications to configurations.

Packaging tool for first and third party component deployment

A configuration management system provides a partitioned data model for collecting and representing configuration information from a diverse set of sources to allow easier modeling of very large, highly redundant sets of enterprise configuration information. The system partitions large configuration schema into logical subcomponents that can be combined, shared, and reused. The system also partitions instantiated data models into logical sub-models that can be combined, shared, reused, and incrementally updated. Each product team can provide its own configuration schema, which allows the domain experts in a particular field to provide reusable models for their products. These models may include sub-models that allow reuse of selected portions of the configuration schema. When the system stores data related to each portion of the model, it stores the data in a partitioned manner that makes incremental updates of each component of the model more straightforward and less resource intensive.

Incrementally managing distributed configuration data

A workflow scripting system is described herein that combines the features of workflows and scripts by automatically translating between the two models. Using the system, a script author can create workflows on the fly using familiar scripting language, and a workflow author can use scripting steps to perform actions. Workflows run in this manner can be setup to execute in their own process to improve robustness or efficiency. Operations in an enterprise environment frequently take a long time and are subject to interruptions. By adding reliability concepts of workflows to a shell environment, users of the system can write scripts to address common needs of large-scale computing environments. Thus, the workflow scripting system blends the available resources provided by workflow and scripting environments to provide a host of powerful, advanced capabilities to IT personnel.

Automatic transcoding and semantic adaptation between scripting and workflow systems

A computer monitoring system uses a set of parameterized models to gather information about monitored devices. The models include scripts for gathering information, as well as type validation and data validation functions. The parameters within the model are used to generate user interface prompts and to populate discovery scripts as well as data validation scripts. In some cases, the models may include localization settings that may customize the user interface and validation output for different languages. A processing engine may generate a user interface from the parameters defined in the models, customize the scripts from the user input, and cause the scripts to be executed. The data gathered by the scripts may be analyzed using type validation and data validation.

Parameterized computer monitoring system

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Rahim Maknojia