Method and system for automatically detecting and resolving infrastructure faults in cloud infrastructure

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10025678-B2
Application number	US-201514833880-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 24, 2015
Priority date	Jun 15, 2012
Publication date	Jul 17, 2018
Grant date	Jul 17, 2018

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for any party in a cloud ecosystem (cloud providers of such resources, the intermediate management software for such resources, and the end user of such resources) to detect and resolve faulty resources synchronously or asynchronously, before said faults adversely affect the users' workloads. The system requests a service or set of one or more resources within a cloud, automatically checking the infrastructure for various faults that would cause it to be non-functional, including pre-defined and user-defined checks, and resolving them before including the infrastructure in the working service cluster of resources. The system presents an API to the user that returns only functional, production-quality resources that are not in a faulty state. An API that tests and resolves bad infrastructure can be registered during the request or a preceding/subsequent API call, removing the need for the end-user to deal with various types of infrastructure faults.

First claim

We claim:

1. A process for returning selected infrastructure to a user in a cloud computing system that will keep the selected infrastructure in use to a user below any limits imposed by a provider of the cloud computing system, comprising:
determining the limits of resources to be provided by the provider to a user;
allocating and providing resources to a user, while checking to determine whether the resources are non-faulty and within the limits of resources to be provided to a user; and;
continuing to keep the resources within the resource limits to be provided to a user, and continuing to keep the resources non-faulty without increasing those resources.

2. A cloud computing system comprising a processor and an application programming interface (API) comprising a plurality of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform the steps comprising:
tests selected resources within an infrastructure for faults;
resolves any faults in the resources within the infrastructure; and
registers any faulty resource within the infrastructure during a request or a preceding/subsequent API call and keeping any faulty resource within the infrastructure from being provided to a user, thereby removing the need for an end-user to deal with and receive resource infrastructure faults in user-defined fault checks.

3. A cloud computing system for validating a service or set of one or more resources within a cloud, comprising a processor and an application programming interface (API) comprising a plurality of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform the steps comprising:
automatically checks resources within an infrastructure to detect for any faults including pre-defined and user-defined checks that would cause the resources within an infrastructure to be non-functional;
resolves any faults in the resources that are detected;
includes only non-faulty resources in the infrastructure in a working service cluster of resources; and
presents to the user only functional resources that are free of faults.

4. The cloud computing system of claim 3 , wherein the API performs the step of fault resolution asynchronously.

5. A cloud computing system for using management or client software, comprising a processor and an application programming interface (API) comprising a plurality of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform the steps comprising:
receives resources from a cloud application programming interface that may be non-faulty or faulty resources;
runs fault tests against the resources to detect for the presence of faults in the resources;
makes any detected faulty resources non-faulty; and
communicates only the non-faulty resources to a client application.

6. A cloud computing system for validating cloud-based resources in order to maintain a list of fault-free resources, comprising a processor and an application programming interface (API) comprising a plurality of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform the steps comprising:
(a) tests the ability of a user to log into an infrastructure server;
(b) tests the ability of a user to access a file system within the infrastructure server;
(c) alerts the results of steps (a) and (b) back to fault detection and resolution software, in at least one of Cloud, Management, or Client software; and
if a fault is detected in any of steps (a)-(c), has the ability to perform all and any of the following:
(d) hold the resources for examination,
(e) ensure that any faulty resource detected is not re-acquired by a user, and
(f) shut down the faulty resource until rendered non-faulty.

7. The cloud computing system of claim 6 , wherein the API performs at least one of steps (a)-(f) synchronously.

8. The cloud computing system of claim 6 , wherein the API performs at least one of steps (a)-(f) asynchronously.

Assignees

• Cycle Computing Llc
• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Alderman Ian
• Chalfant Chris M
• Chesal Ian
• Clayton Douglas
• Futrick S Robert
• Harris Daniel
• Kaczorek Andrew
• Stowe Jason
• Johnson Adrian
• Watrous Ben
• Watrous David
• Kulshrestha Archit

Classifications

• G06F11/3604

  Analysis of software for verifying properties of programs (testing of software G06F11/3668) · CPC title

• H04L43/04

  Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation · CPC title

• G06F11/0709

  in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems · CPC title

• H04L41/5096

  wherein the managed service relates to distributed or central networked applications · CPC title

• G06F11/20 Primary

  using active fault-masking, e.g. by switching out faulty elements or by switching in spare elements · CPC title