Patent Application
20100223368
This invention relates to virtual machines and to the provisioning of new virtual machines on a virtual network host.
Virtual machines are configured on virtual machine hosts, of which Microsoft Virtual Server, VMWare Server, VMWare ESX Server, are commercially available examples. Typically, the virtual machine host is protected by a firewall which prevents external communications from remote machines outside of the virtual network. It is therefore difficult to remotely provision new virtual machines from outside of a virtual machine network.
What is required is a system, method and computer readable medium for remotely provisioning virtual machines on a virtual machine host platform from a vendor independent configuration.
In one aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a method for remotely provisioning a virtual machine. The method comprises providing a client application in a network comprising a virtual network host, providing a server application in a machine remote from the network, receiving one or more provisioning parameters from a user through the server application, communicating the one or more provisioning parameters from the sever application to the client application, communicating the one or more provisioning parameters from the client application to the virtual network host, and provisioning a virtual machine on the virtual network host from the one or more provisioning parameters.
In one aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a system for provisioning virtual machines on a virtual machine host within a network. The system comprises a server application configured to receive one or more provisioning parameters of a virtual machine, and a client application configured to receive the one or more provisioning parameters from the server application and to provision a virtual machine on the virtual machine host.
In one aspect of the disclosure there is provided a computer-readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions for execution by a processor, that, when executed, cause a first processor to provide an interface on a remote machine to receive one or more virtual machine provisioning parameters in a host independent format, receive one or more virtual machine provisioning parameters through the interface, and communicate the one or more virtual machine provisioning parameters in a host independent format to a client application within a network.
Reference will now be made, by way of example only, to specific embodiments and to the accompanying drawings in which:
In
The virtual machine host 16 is typically provided with a firewall which prevents direct communication with the virtual machine host from outside of the network 13. In accordance with an embodiment of the disclosure, the virtual network 13 includes a client application 14 which provides a communication channel 19 between the server application 12 via the outside network 15 on one end and between the virtual machine host 16 on the other end.
A method for provisioning a virtual machine on the virtual machine host 16 is illustrated in the flowchart 100 of
The client application may reside on any machine within the virtual network 13 including the virtual machine host 16 itself. However, the client application 14 is configured with a communication channel that allows it to communicate with outside machines through any network firewalls.
The virtual machine configuration parameters are specified independent of the virtual machine vendor. Therefore, the user provisioning the virtual machine need not be aware of the virtual machine platform vendor. The virtual machine configuration details are transported in a vendor independent format over the network and are only instantiated into a vendor specific definition at the point of direct interaction with the virtual machine host 16. The client application performs all the marshalling required to translate the configuration parameters specified by the user into vendor specific parameters. Typically, there is a great deal of commonality among different virtualization vendors. In one embodiment, the client application 14 includes an associated data store 17 of provisioning code which stores code blocks for provisioning different parameters of virtual machines for the variety of available virtual machine host vendors. Once a vendor machine host is specified or selected, the client application selects the appropriate code blocks for configuring the specified parameters. The code blocks are combined into a vendor specific instruction set that executes within the host to perform the provisioning.
In a network having multiple virtual machine hosts 16, the machine provisioning parameters may include a specification of which virtual machine host the new virtual machine is to be provisioned on.
The components of the systems 10 may be embodied in hardware, software, firmware or a combination of hardware, software and/or firmware. In a hardware embodiment, the server application 12 may be executed on a device, such as a computer, etc including a processor 61 operatively associated with a memory 62 as shown in
As shown in
Although embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated in the accompanying drawings and described in the foregoing description, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the embodiments disclosed, but is capable of numerous rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions without departing from the spirit of the invention as set forth and defined by the following claims. For example, the capabilities of the invention can be performed fully and/or partially by one or more of the blocks, modules, processors or memories. Also, these capabilities may be performed in the current manner or in a distributed manner and on, or via, any device able to provide and/or receive information. Further, although depicted in a particular manner, various modules or blocks may be repositioned without departing from the scope of the current invention. Still further, although depicted in a particular manner, a greater or lesser number of modules and connections can be utilized with the present invention in order to accomplish the present invention, to provide additional known features to the present invention, and/or to make the present invention more efficient. Also, the information sent between various modules can be sent between the modules via at least one of a data network, the Internet, an Internet Protocol network, a wireless source, and a wired source and via plurality of protocols.
