Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Yousef A Khalidi

Jose Bernabeu-Auban

Madhusudhan Talluri

Frederick Justus Smith

Jeff L Havens

Changhoon Kim

Deepak Bansal

Srikanth Kandula

Albert Gordon Greenberg

Alireza Dabagh

Jeffrey Lee Havens

Frank V Peschel-Gallee

David A Maltz

Saad Syed

Guhan Suriyanarayanan

Anil A Ingle

Zachary Thomas Crowell

Charles T Lenzmeier

Stephen E Dossick

Stephan Zachwieja

Charles Thomas Lenzmeier

Anil Ingle

The ensuring of predictable and quantifiable networking performance includes adaptively throttling the rate of VM-to-VM traffic flow. A receiving hypervisor can detect congestion and communicate messages for throttling traffic flow to reduce congestion at the receiving hypervisor.

Ensuring predictable and quantifiable networking performance

The ensuring of predictable and quantifiable networking performance. Embodiments of the invention combine a congestion free network core with a hypervisor based (i.e., edge-based) throttling design to help insure quantitative and invariable subscription bandwidth rates. A lightweight shim layer in a hypervisor can adaptively throttle the rate of VM-to-VM traffic flow. A receiving hypervisor can detect congestion and communicate back to sending hypervisors that rates are to be regulated. In response, sending hypervisors can reduce transmission rate to mitigate congestion at the receiving hypervisor. In some embodiments, the principles are extended to any message processors communicating over a congestion free network.

The provisioning of a host computing system by a controller located over a wide area network. The host computing system has power-on code that automatically executes upon powering up, and causes the host to notify the controller of the host address. In a first level of bootstrapping, the controller instructs the host to download a maintenance operating system. The host responds by downloading and installing a maintenance operating system, enabling further bootstrapping. The persistent memory may further have security data, such as a public key, that allows the host computing system to securely identify the source of the download instructions (and subsequent instructions) as originating from the controller. A second level of bootstrapping may accomplish the configuring of the host with a hypervisor and a host agent. A third level of bootstrapping may accomplish the provisioning of virtual machines on the host.

Automated controlling of host over network

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for automating deployment of service applications by exposing environmental constraints in a service model are provided. In general, the methods are performed in the context of a general purpose platform configured as a server cloud to run various service applications distributed thereon. Accordingly, the general purpose platform may be flexibly configured to manage varying degrees of characteristics associated with each of the various service applications. Typically, these characteristics are provided in the service model that governs the environmental constraints under which each component program of the service application operates. As such, hosting environments are selected and adapted to satisfy the environmental constraints associated with each component program. Adapting the hosting environments includes installing parameters transformed from configuration settings of each component program via map constructs, thereby refining the hosting environment to support operation of the component program.

Automating deployment of service applications by exposing hosting environment constraints

A regional data center system corresponding to a particular region of the world. The data center system includes multiple data centers, each configured such that region-specific requests for services may be satisfied by any of the data centers. One or more of the data centers may also perform load balancing on received region-specific request. In order to perform load balancing, the receiving data center may itself process the requests, but in some cases may determine that the request is to be processed by another data center within the regional data center system.

Distributed data center technology

Software deployment to server nodes within large-scale networked systems is provided using image-based deployment. A mostly immutable image is provided at a central service and transferred from the central service to the server nodes. The image includes a base image, which is immutable, and a delta image, which is writable and provides role-specific and/or node-specific state to the base portion. When a server node receives an image from the central server, the server node stores the image intact without installation. The server node then runs software directly from the stored image.

Software deployment in large-scale networked systems

The resources needed by an application to execute are declared by the application. When the application is activated, only the declared resources are made available to the application because only the declared resources are connected to the execution environment. Accessibility to resources may be controlled by the operating system by making the resource visible or invisible to the executing software by mapping a local name used by the executing software to a global resource, possibly limiting the type of access allowed. Because the executing software relies on the mapping function performed by the operating system for access to resources, and the operating system only maps names declared by the software, the operating system can isolate the software, and prevent the application from accessing undeclared global resources.

Operating system context isolation of application execution

Systems, methods and computer storage media for operating a scalable computing platform are provided. A service description describing a requested service is received. Upon receiving the service description a determination of the required resources and the available resources is made. An instance description is produced. The resources required to sustain the deployment of the service are mapped to the available resources of the computing platform so the service may be deployed. The instance description is amended with each deployment of the service to allow for sustained deployment of the service.

System and method for describing applications for manageability and efficient scale-up deployment

A containment mechanism provides for the grouping and isolation of multiple processes running on a single computer using a single instance of the operating system. A system is divided into one or more side-by-side and/or nested isolated environments enabling the partitioning and controlled sharing of resources by creating different views of hierarchical name spaces via virtual hierarchies.

Using virtual hierarchies to build alternative namespaces

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for updating a component utilized by an application within a distributed computing environment. An inventory of components relied on by applications within a distributed computing environment is created and maintained to facilitate identifying applications utilizing a particular component. A determination is made from the inventory of applications that utilize the particular component. An indication is received that an update is available for the particular component. An application image for an application utilizing the particular component is booted in an isolated computing environment to allow the component to be updated. A new image of the application is created to reflect the updated component. A user, such as a developer, of the application may be notified that the new image is available for future instantiations of the application.

Virtual machine image update service

Embodiments described herein are directed to updating the various software associated with a distributed application in a piecemeal fashion. All instances of the software are analyzed and separated into different portions, called 'roles.' Each instance of a role is strategically assigned to an update domain based on the structural information included in the service model of the distributed application. The distributed application is upgraded one update at a time by selecting an update or host update domain, bringing the roles assigned thereto offline, updating the offline roles, bringing the roles back online, and repeating for other update or host update domains.

Rolling upgrades in distributed applications

A containment mechanism provides for the grouping and isolation of multiple processes running on a single computer using a single instance of the operating system. A system environment is divided into one or more side-by-side and/or nested spaces enabling the partitioning and controlled sharing of resources by creating different views of hierarchical name spaces via virtual hierarchies. A set of declarative rules specifying access capabilities may specify a set of filter drivers to be used to limit access to nodes in the hierarchical name space. The rules may be applied in sequence to construct a new name space from an existing one, or to add to an existing hierarchy. Filter drivers are used to limit access to nodes in the new name space or new portion of the name space. Access to nodes can be limited (read-only access instead of read/write) or nodes can be hidden altogether. Rules may be specified in a declarative language such as XML.

Use of rules engine to build namespaces

Two or more separate physical file system directories are presented as one merged (virtual) file system directory to a process running in a silo. The operating system controls the level of access to the files in the merge directory. The operating system provides the merged view of the file system directories by monitoring file system requests made by processes in silos on a computer or computer system and in response to detecting certain types of file system access requests, provides the view of the seemingly merged directories by performing special processing. The types of requests which trigger the special processing include: enumeration, open, create, rename or close.

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Yousef A Khalidi