International Business Machines Corporation

Timothy R Croy

Trevor Graham

Kevin M Hamilton

Steven S Shuman

Matthew Edward Duggan

Robert P Fulton

Ivor Bradley

Paul Basil French

John E Dinger

Randy George

David J Wallace

A method, system and program product for deploying a service on a network comprising a plurality of network resources, the method comprising providing an actual network model comprising network resources and the configurations of the network resources; providing a computer-implemented network configuration management system controlling the actual network resource configurations in the actual model; providing a service description comprising network resource configuration information for implementing the service on specific network resources; selecting a set of available network resources for deploying the service in the network based on the service description; reserving available network resources for deploying the service in an off-line version of the actual network model, the off-line version including updated network resource configurations to reflect the changes to the configurations of the actual network resources triggered by the deployment of the service; and deploying the service by updating the actual network model using the off-line version.

Robust service deployment

In one embodiment, a computer program product for using a common configuration template for a set of devices includes a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code including computer readable program code configured for identifying a set of devices from the plurality of devices which share a common configuration template applicable to a proposed change, wherein the common configuration template includes a collection of command variations, computer readable program code configured for determining which command from the collection of command variations is applicable to each device in the set of devices, and computer readable program code configured for executing the proposed change across all devices in the set of devices using the determined command for each device.

Configuration command template creation assistant using cross-model analysis to identify common syntax and semantics

Techniques are provided for service placement on hosts for a consumer based on geographic location The techniques include: determining a geographical location of a consumer; and inputting a topology model of an environment including multiple candidate hosts to support a service required by the consumer, the topology model including: a geographic location of each of resource in the environment; and connectivity details between the resources and between the resources and the consumer. The techniques also include: calculating the distance from a candidate host to the consumer; determining if a geographic requirements is met by a candidate host; and ordering candidate hosts that meet geographic requirement.

Service placement on hosts for a consumer based on their geographic location

In one embodiment, a method for using a common configuration template for a set of devices includes identifying a set of devices from the plurality of devices which share a common configuration template applicable to a proposed change, wherein the common configuration template includes a collection of command variations, determining which command from the collection of command variations is applicable to each device in the set of devices, and executing the proposed change across all devices in the set of devices using the determined command for each device.

Techniques are provided for service placement on hosts for a consumer based on geographic location The techniques include: determining a geographical location of a consumer; and inputting a topology model of an environment including multiple candidate hosts to support a service required by the consumer, the topology model including: a geographic location of each of resource in the environment; and connectivity details between the resources and between the resources and the consumer. The techniques also include: specifying bounding requirements for a host and/or bounding requirements for a path between the consumer to a host; calculating the distance from a candidate host to the consumer; determining if bounding requirements are met by a candidate host; and ordering candidate hosts that meet bounding requirements by distance.

In one embodiment, a computer program product for creating a configuration template for a set of devices includes a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith. The program instructions are readable/executable by a hardware processor to cause the processor to separate, by the processor, existing syntactic models describing syntax from existing semantic models describing semantics prior to determining a command information and determine, by the processor, the command information for a plurality of devices. The program instructions also cause the processor to identify, by the processor, a command structure from the command information which is common to a set of devices from the plurality of devices, and associate, by the processor, the set of devices to a common configuration template.

In one embodiment, a method for creating a configuration template for a set of devices includes determining command information for a plurality of devices, identifying a command structure from the command information which is common to a set of devices from the plurality of devices, and associating the set of devices to a common configuration template.

Provided are systems, methods and computer program products that proactively manage configurations that enable a service. Configurations that are critical to enabling a particular service are automatically captured, for example as part of a provisioning activity, and/or tracked in association with that service. This automated, service-oriented configuration management enables improved service assurance and faster identification of problems, and mitigates the problem of errors and compromised service delivery that can arise from misconfigurations.

Managing network configurations

Method and system are provided for network device configuration management. The method includes: receiving a set of user commands for configuration of a network device; retrieving a syntactic model of a network device configuration interface for a network device type and generating a modelled configuration of a current configuration of the network device; predicting the effect of the user command on the modelled configuration to generate a predicted modelled configuration; and applying rules for a user and/or network device type to determine if the command is permitted based on the predicted modelled configuration of the network device. Predicting the effect of the user command predicts in near real-time the effect on the network device configuration of a command that the user enters.

Network device configuration management

In one embodiment, a computer program product for creating a configuration template for a set of devices includes a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code including computer readable program code configured for determining command information for a plurality of devices, computer readable program code configured for identifying a command structure from the command information which is common to a set of devices from the plurality of devices, and computer readable program code configured for associating the set of devices to a common configuration template. In another embodiment, a method for creating a configuration template for a set of devices includes determining command information for a plurality of devices, identifying a command structure from the command information which is common to a set of devices from the plurality of devices, and associating the set of devices to a common configuration template.

Growing community of inventors

Ballymena, United Kingdom

Timothy R Croy