Patent Application
20070294736
The subject matter which is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the concluding portion of the specification. The invention, however, both as to organization and method of practice, together with the further objects and advantages thereof, may best be understood by reference to the following description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings in which:
A management solution to the problem set forth above might, for example, provide one or more of the following management functions:
One embodiment of the solution provided by the present invention introduces changes in the model set forth immediately above. By redefining many of the heretofore dedicated static management resources as dynamically provisionable resources themselves, a greater level of granularity is applied to the provisioning process. Implementation of this solution involves a more mature and complete data center model. In the conventional model “provisionable” consumer resources are individually defined within homogenous pools and management components are defined as static elements. In the present invention, additional resource pools are created to model and define the elements of the management solution which are dynamically provisioned. Additional modeling enhancements are implemented in the present solution to allow grouped or clustered resources to be managed collectively and provisioned en mass, in contrast to the more commonplace “one at a time” provisioning implementations which are currently typical within many enterprises.
One embodiment of the present invention incorporates a web services Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface to allow the integration of external management functions such as: an advanced reservation and scheduling subsystem or integration into any other desired management functions and subsystems within an enterprise. The SOAP protocol ensures that an open standard communication flow takes place between the server environments.
Custom processes are implemented within the process of the present invention to facilitate extension of the implementation through integration with external management functions. These custom processes externally invoke the SOAP interface to extend the solution to encompass resources which are newly introduced into the environment. The newly defined resources are then modeled, provisioned and brought into an enterprise wide management schema.
The SOAP interface and the derivative functionally also provide the ability to integrate separate instantiations of the described solution into a single all-encompassing enterprise management schema.
One embodiment of the solution involves and implements certain core technologies. The physical and logical elements which the solution employs and integrates with and manages include the following example. In one embodiment, the solution involves, implements and integrates the following core technologies:
Once an action request is submitted to perform provisioning tasks, the master provisioning workflow is invoked. The master provisioning workflow evaluates the provisioning request and validates all of the required data center components against the data center model. If the request is successfully validated and contains only valid resources which are defined within the data center model the action request is processed further. The master provisioning workflow performs calls to sub-process workflows. These sub-process workflows are designed to perform specific provisioning tasks against the individual and collective IT resources and components which are to be provisioned as part of the current request.
The entire provisioning process is ultimately performed by a hierarchy of workflows. The workflows are invoked and monitored by the master provisioning process. The sub-process workflows are designed to interact with the IT resource components in a very atomic fashion, so that the implemented design is ultimately very modular. Individual processes are easily added, updated or removed as the underlying technology evolves and changes within the data center environment. The workflow processes perform provisioning and configuration tasks on IT resources and subsequently update the data center model to reflect the new state of the resources. The various state changes which occur during the provisioning and de-provisioning processes are: available, assigned and in transition.
As IT components are reconfigured by data center staff during the normal course of business operations it is desirable, from time to time, to perform maintenance procedures and to make specific resources unavailable for use by the dynamic provisioning solution. This scenario is supported and workflow processes are invoked by all of the standard methods to move IT resources into “maintenance” mode for the required timeframes and then to return them to available status once all maintenance procedures are completed.
Fully configurable Layer2/Layer3 network switching equipment with the ability to implement network controls using abstract commands is desired. The network infrastructure allows a secure environment to be developed which can provide a separate, distinct secure environment for distinct user communities. The solution implements custom processes to reconfigure network settings and to reallocate resources within the network while ensuring that a secure operating environment is maintained.
Pre-boot execution environment (PXE) technology, which allows servers to be booted remotely, with a fully implemented command line API (Application Program Interface) and support for both in-band and out-of-band management of managed server resources, is a very desired element of the present solution. The solution utilizes these management elements to manage and provision consumer resources and to concurrently define these management resources as elements of the solution which are dynamically managed and provisioned as required to meet current demands.
The solution embodiment leverages autonomic theory, allowing a separate service (like Cluster Systems Manager or Xcat) to manage the actual installation and configuration of cluster or grid nodes, since the installation and configuration of nodes is delegated to a service, the management solution focuses on implementing the efficient management of the model. The solution interacts with the switching environment to manage network routing protocols and with the security context to manipulate the build environment and eventual production deployment. Additionally, server management is achieved via secure execution using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for user management and Secure Shell (SSH) for encrypted access.
The provisioning manager component of the solution is built upon a WebSphere application and utilizes a DB2 database to store the model of the managed environment. By manipulating the model and its real counterparts, the embodiment controls the deployment of provisioning as well as production resources.
While the invention has been described in detail herein in accordance with certain preferred embodiments thereof, many modifications and changes therein may be effected by those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended by the appended claims to cover all such modifications and changes as fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention.
