Methods and systems that share resources among multiple, interdependent release pipelines

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10296327-B2
Application number	US-201615348995-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 11, 2016
Priority date	Oct 15, 2016
Publication date	May 21, 2019
Grant date	May 21, 2019

Abstract

The current document is directed to automated application-release-management facilities that, in a described implementation, coordinate continuous development and release of cloud-computing applications. The application-release-management process is specified, in the described implementation, by application-release-management pipelines, each pipeline comprising one or more stages, with each stage comprising one or more tasks. The currently described methods and systems allow resources to be shared among multiple, interdependent release pipelines and allow access to shared resources to be controlled.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An automated-application-release-management subsystem within a cloud-computing facility having multiple servers, data-storage devices, and one or more internal networks, the automated-application-release-management subsystem comprising:
a dashboard user interface;
automated-application-release-management controller;
an interface to a workflow-execution engine within the cloud-computing facility;
an artifact-storage-and-management subsystem; and
a global-context data-storage component that stores
key/value pairs that represent resources shared by multiple, interdependent release pipelines, and
tags that represent groups of users.

2. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 1 that is further incorporated in a workflow-based cloud-management system that additionally includes an infrastructure-management-and-administration subsystem and the workflow-execution engine.

3. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 1 wherein the automated-application-release-management controller controls execution of multiple, interdependent application-release-management pipelines, each interdependent application-release-management pipeline representing; a sequence of tasks carried out by the automated-application-release-management subsystem to generate a releasable version of an application.

4. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 3
wherein each application-release-management pipeline comprises one or more stages; and
wherein each application-release-management-pipeline stage comprises a set of one or more tasks.

5. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 4 wherein the tasks includes tasks of task types selected from among:
initialization tasks;
deployment tasks;
run-tests tasks;
gating-rule tasks; and
finalize tasks.

6. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 3 wherein the automated-application-release-management subsystem includes multiple resources, including:
entrypoints for executables, including applications and routines provided by plug-in components of the automated-application-release-management subsystem;
artifacts stored within the artifact-storage-and-management subsystem;
machine resources, including virtual machines and vApps; and
parameters output by release pipelines.

7. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 6 wherein, when a key represents access of a shared resource in a workflow element processed by the workflow-execution engine, the workflow-execution engine accesses a corresponding key/value pair in the global-context data-storage component, retrieves the value from the key/value pair, and uses the value by one of:
accessing the shared resource through the retrieved value; and
using the retrieved value as a value returned by the shared resource.

8. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 6 wherein, when a key represents generation of a shared-resource value in a workflow element processed by the workflow-execution engine, the workflow-execution engine accesses a corresponding key/value pair in the global-context data-storage component and updates the value of the corresponding key/value pair with the generated shared-resource value.

9. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 6 wherein, prior to execution of a release pipeline, the automated-application-release-management subsystem:
determines a set of keys representing shared resources accessed by tasks within the release pipeline;
for each key in the set of keys,
accesses a corresponding key/value pair in the global-context data,storage component, and
determines whether or not corresponding key/value pair includes a current value for the key; and

when the key/value pair for a key in the set of keys does not include a current value for the key, generates an error condition.

10. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 6
wherein each tag stored in the global-context data-storage component represents a set of users;
wherein a shared resource may be associated with a tag, the association of the tag with the shared resource stored in the global-context data-storage component; and
wherein an association between a tag and a shared resource represents that the set of users represented by the tag have authorization to access a key/value pair corresponding to the shared resource stored in the global-context data-storage component.

11. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 10 wherein, when a key represents a shared-resource value in a workflow element processed by the workflow-execution engine and when the shared resource is associated with a tag, the workflow-execution engine accesses the tag in the global-context data-storage component to determine whether the workflow-execution engine is authorized to access the key/value pair in the global-context data-storage component corresponding to the key.

12. The automated-application-release-management subsystem of claim 1 wherein a key comprises one of:
a unique key name; and
a unique name obtained by concatenation of a pipeline name, a pipeline stage, a pipeline task, and a key name.

13. A method carried out in an automated-application-release-management subsystem within a cloud-computing facility having multiple servers, data-storage devices, and one or more internal networks, the method comprising:
providing a dashboard user interface, an automated-application-release-management controller, an interface to a workflow-execution engine within the cloud-computing facility, an artifact-storage-and-management subsystem;
storing key/value pairs that represent resources shared by multiple, interdependent release pipelines and tags that represent groups of users in a global-context data-storage component; and
using the stored key/value pairs to share resources, among multiple, interdependent release pipelines and to control access to shared resources.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the automated-application-release-management controller controls execution of multiple, interdependent application-release-management pipelines, each interdependent application-release-management pipeline representing a sequence of tasks carried out by the automated-application-release-management subsystem to generate a releasable version of an application.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the automated-application-release-management subsystem includes multiple resources, including:
entrypoints for executables, including applications and routines provided by plug-in components of the automated-application-release-management subsystem;
artifacts stored within the artifact-storage-and-management subsystem;
machine resources, including virtual machines and vApps; and
parameters output by release pipelines.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising:
when a key represents access of a shared resource in a workflow element processed by the workflow-execution engine,
accessing a corresponding key/value pair in the global-context data-storage component; retrieving the value from the key/value pair; and
using the value by one of
accessing the shared resource through the retrieved value, and
using the retrieved value as a value returned by the shared resource.

17. The method of claim 15 further comprising:
when a key represents generation of a shared-resource value in a workflow element processed by the workflow-execution engine,
accessing a corresponding key/value pair in t

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Govindaraju Agila
• Kasha Ravi
• Muneebuddin Mohammed

Classifications

• G06F9/52

  Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores · CPC title

• G06F8/71 Primary

  Version control (security arrangements therefor G06F21/57); Configuration management · CPC title

• G06F8/60

  Software deployment · CPC title