Surgient, Inc.

Rackn, Inc.

Precision Edge Access Control, Inc.

Precision Control Systems of Chicago, Inc.

Robert A Hirschfeld

Dave D McCrory

Gregory Scott Althaus

Scott C Johnson

Michael C Klobe

C Evan Pollan

Victor L Lowther

Michael K Cation

Charles A Willman

A federation with distributed edge configuration management including multiple data centers, each including an infrastructure, at least one storage, and a configuration platform. The infrastructure includes physical resources including at least one computer server. The storage stores state information indicative of a current state of the infrastructure and configuration information of the infrastructure. The configuration information includes composed immutable content incorporating automation tasks and instructions to effectuate state changes of the infrastructure. The configuration platform includes a network interface and a configuration processor that configures the infrastructure by generating and executing a workflow that includes a sequence of operations to effectuate a change of state of the infrastructure. The composed immutable content may include catalog units of subcomponents each including one or more declarative instructions. Catalog units or subcomponents may be grouped into version sets managed by a version set manager.

System and method of distributed edge configuration management

A system for dynamic context automation workflow including a data center which includes an infrastructure and a configuration platform. The infrastructure includes physical resources for implementing at least one machine, and the configuration platform includes a configuration processor that coordinates automatic sequential execution of multiple tasks of a workflow by different agents each running on a different one of multiple contexts for updating a machine state controlled by the configuration processor.

System and method of dynamic context workflow automation

An endpoint of a distributed federation with proxy synchronization including a data center infrastructure, a storage, and an endpoint. The storage stores a state of the data infrastructure and further stores a mirrored state for each of at least one other endpoint. The endpoint includes a communication interface for communicating via a communication network, where the endpoint, in response to receiving a command via the communication interface for changing the mirrored state, forwards the command towards an endpoint that owns the mirrored state via the communication interface. Commands may be forwarded directly or indirectly via one or more intermediary endpoints. An owner endpoint receives a command, updates its local state, and sends one or more events to one or more proxy endpoints to update corresponding mirrored states. A restricted proxy endpoint may store a partial mirrored state. The federation may support bidirectional sharing, synchronization, and resource data sharing.

Distributed federation of endpoints with proxy synchronization

A physical access control system is disclosed which includes a network, at least one access controller, a producer device, and a consumer device. Each access controller generates status and event information associated with a controlled physical barrier. The producer device includes producer logic which collects and stores the status and event information. The consumer device includes consumer logic which periodically polls the producer logic via the network to retrieve the status and event information from the producer device. The producer logic and the consumer logic communicate via the network according to a commonly accepted message syndication protocol, such as the RSS protocol or the Atom Publishing Protocol or the like. The use of a commonly accepted message syndication protocol simplifies communications, avoids proprietary configurations and facilitates integration, such as combining systems or adding new devices and the like.

Feed protocol used to report status and event information in physical access control system

A method of controlling access to a restricted area including receiving location information from at least one supplemental tracking source which tracks location of an authorized user, and controlling access by the authorized user to a restricted area based on the location information. The method may further include maintaining a muster based on the location information. A physical access control system for controlling access to a restricted area including a user location information system and an access system which controls access based on the location information. The user location information system may further maintain a muster based on the location information. The user location information system receives location information indicating location of an authorized user from at least one supplemental tracking source.

Access control system and method using user location information for controlling access to a restricted area

A computer system of a federation coupled to a network including a server having an internal address associated with a first subnet and a network abstraction and isolation layer rules-based federation and masquerading (NAIL RBFM) interface that interfaces the server with the network. The NAIL RBFM interface transforms the internal address between the first subnet and a second subnet for intra-federation communications. The NAIL RBFM interface performs transform and inverse transform operations to convert between internal and external addresses of intra-federation network traffic. The operations may be performed on source and destination addresses, and may be configured in any of several manners, such as modifying at least one bit of an address, replacing at least one octet of an IP address, substituting a prefix of an address, replacing an entire address, etc.

Network abstraction and isolation layer rules-based federation and masquerading

A server cloud manager (SCM) for controlling logical servers and physical resources that form a virtualized logical server cloud. The SCM includes multiple core components and one or more interface components. The core components serve as a shared foundation to collectively manage events, validate and authorize server cloud users and agents, enforce predetermined requirements and rules and store operation data. The one or more interface components enable communication with external entities and includes an SCM proxy manager that enables communication with one or more SCMs of other server clouds. A server cloud system including a first server cloud that includes a first server cloud manager (SCM) and a first logical server, and a second server cloud that includes a second SCM. The first and second SCMs are configured to cooperate to manage operation of the first logical server.

Virtual server cloud interfacing

A shared-nothing virtual cluster including multiple virtual servers located on a corresponding number of physical servers linked together via a network. The virtual servers collectively form an active/passive (A/P) cluster including an active virtual server and at least one passive server. The shared-nothing virtual cluster further includes an interlink and multiple virtual drives located on the physical servers. The active virtual server handles a cluster load and executes a first operating system that operates the virtual drives in a data redundant configuration that collectively stores a data set for the cluster. Each passive virtual server, when activated, is coupled to a sufficient number of the virtual drives with redundant information to recover the data set for the cluster. The interlink is operatively configured to detect failure of the active server and to initiate promotion of a virtual server to active status to resume handling the cluster load after failover.

Shared nothing virtual cluster

A virtual hard drive (VHD) file manager system for a virtualized logical server cloud including a master repository and a VHD file manager. The VHD interfaces virtualization software and a server cloud manager to manage VHDs for logical servers of the server cloud. The master repository stores multiple master component files associated with the stored VHDs. The master component files include at least one core file and at least one delta file. The VHD file manager enables copying of the master component files to deploy VHDs in the server cloud, manages creation and storing of new delta files and corresponding VHDs in the master repository, and generates and maintains meta information to maintain file relationship integrity.

Server file management

A dynamic state manager (DSM) for a server cloud manager (SCM) of a virtualized logical server cloud including a resource definition, a rules module and a state manager engine. The resource definition incorporates information of the available physical and logical resources of the server cloud, including cost, priority, usage and demand information of the resources. The resource definition further incorporates dependencies and relationships between physical and logical resources. The rules module includes predetermined behavioral rules based on demand, usage, priority and cost information. The behavioral rules define optimized resource utilization of the resources of the server cloud. The state manager engine is linked to the resource definition and the rules module and cooperates with the SCM to apply the behavioral rules to achieve optimized resource utilization.

Near on-line server

A virtualized logical server cloud that enables logical servers to exist independent of physical servers that instantiate the logical servers. Servers are treated as logical resources in order to create a logical server cloud. The logical attributes of a logical server are non-deterministically allocated to physical resources creating a cloud of logical servers over the physical servers. Logical separation is facilitated by the addition of a server cloud manager, which is an automated multi-server management layer. Each logical server has persistent attributes that establish its identity. Each physical server includes or is coupled to physical resources including a network resource, a data storage resource and a processor resource. At least one physical server executes virtualization software that virtualizes physical resources for logical servers. The server cloud manager maintains status and instance information for the logical servers including persistent and non-persistent attributes that link each logical server with a physical server.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Robert A Hirschfeld