Patent Application
20130232470
Enterprise application software (EAS) is composed of enterprise applications, implemented in software and used in organizations such as in a business or government, that is an integral part of a computer based information system.
Enterprise applications aim to improve an enterprise's productivity and efficiency and are typically implemented as a collection of computer programs with common business applications. Typical examples of such business applications include online shopping, online payment processing, interactive product catalogs, automated billing systems, security and management software for such functions as Information Technology (IT), service, customer relations, resource planning, human resources (HR), manufacturing, automation of business processes and so on. Enterprise applications often display, manipulate and store large amounts of complex data.
Enterprise applications often run in cloud computing environments that support various programming languages, platforms, libraries and interfaces. Within the cloud computing environment, enterprise applications typically must interface successfully with pre-defined protocols and credentials to be operational.
Cloud computing allows the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, so that shared resources, software, and information can be provided as a metered service over a network (typically the Internet). Computation, software, data access, and storage resources are provided without requiring users to know details of the computing infrastructure. Computing infrastructure typically includes servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software for information technology infrastructure management, automation and orchestration. End users are typically allowed to access cloud based enterprise applications through a web browser or a mobile app.
Cloud computing allows faster implementation, easier manageability and less maintenance of enterprise applications. The converged infrastructure and shared service available in a cloud computing environment facilitates enterprise IT to adjust resources, such as servers, storage and networking, to meet fluctuations in business demands.
An application stack is a set of applications that interact together to provide services. In order to port an application stack from an original cloud computing environment to a new cloud platform environment it is necessary to make available within the new cloud platform environment the software resources required by the application stack to run in the original cloud computing environment. The resources can include a particular version of an operating system, a particular version of each application with accompanying libraries and plug-is, particular configuration settings, particular additional software code, particular data and so on.
The application stack launching device captures information about the operating system, settings, library and platforms for each application in the application stack. The application stack launching device also captures the applications relationships and dependencies. These include, for example, hosts, ports and credentials. The application stack launching device also captures infrastructure dependencies such as firewall rules, server load-balancer and network storage. The application stack launching device generates application manifests and launches application stacks using information captured from the user.
Dynamic application engine 10 includes an application assembler 11, a dependency and action assembler 12, an infrastructure assembler 13, a manifest generator 14 and a workload launcher 15. Configuration repository 20 includes application description files 21 and a workload database 22.
Application assembler 11 captures from the user elements associated with applications. The elements can include, for example, operating system and version 31, application and version 32, libraries and plug-ins 33, configuration settings 34, code location 35 and data locations 36. The information captured is stored as an application manifest. For example, the application manifests are templates in Extensible Markup Language (XML).
A workload 30 includes application manifests for all applications in an application stack. This is illustrated in
Dependency and action assembler 12 assembles dependency information for applications within an application stack. Application dependencies arise, for example, when an application performs services for, requires data from, or provides data to another application. The user interface for dependency and action assembler 12 guides a user to select from a list of available hosts in the application stack. Once selected, the relationship and dependency is stored in the application manifest.
For example,
Each dependency setting selected by a user is associated with an action attribute. The action attribute specifies actions to be taken during workload operation. Table 1 below sets out an example list of action attributes and descriptions.
When an application stack is launched in—e.g., as a result of cloning or migration—into a new cloud platform environment, application settings in the application manifest are replaced according to the action attributes included in the application manifest. For example, suppose the action attribute is “follow new host” for a database host “db host”. During a cloning operation, the “db host” setting is replaced with the hostname of the new launched database server that appears in the cloud platform environment into which the application stack is cloned.
Application manifests populated by application assembler 11 and by dependency and action assembler 12 enable seamless mobility of application stacks in real-time cloning or migrating the application stacks into a cloud platform environment.
Table 2 below shows an example of an application manifest written in the form of a template in XML.
Infrastructure assembler 13, shown in
Manifest generator 14 translates the application manifest written in the form of a template in XML into software, such as the open-source software called Puppet, that can be used by a server automation tool. The application manifest in the Puppet format, or a similar format, may be executed in real time to construct the application stack in a cloud platform environment. Workload launcher 15 executes infrastructure deploy steps 41 and the application manifest in puppet format to construct the application stack in a cloud platform environment. Workload launcher 15 initiates application programming interface (API) calls to specific targets within the cloud platform environment to accomplish each provisioning request in the infrastructure deploy steps 41 and the application manifest.
The foregoing discussion discloses and describes merely exemplary methods and embodiments. As will be understood by those familiar with the art, the disclosed subject matter may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or characteristics thereof. Accordingly, the present disclosure is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.
