Application placement among a set of consolidation servers utilizing license cost and application workload profiles as factors

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10592825-B2
Application number	US-201113165989-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 22, 2011
Priority date	Jun 22, 2011
Publication date	Mar 17, 2020
Grant date	Mar 17, 2020

Abstract

Applications in a data center can be consolidated by identifying different combinations of software executing on hardware. The software can include a set of applications that execute upon a set of servers. The different combinations can have different arrangements of applications running on different ones of the servers. For each of the different combinations, a licensing cost, an operating cost, and a total cost can be calculated. The total cost of operation for each of the configurations can be calculated by summing the licensing costs, the operating costs adjusted for the cost savings for complementary workload patterns, and migration costs for adjusting a current configuration of the applications and servers to arrive at the configuration. The total cost results per configuration can be reported to a user for at least a set of the configurations.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer program product for handling media, the computer program product comprising:
a computer usable non-transitory storage medium having computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code configured to instruct a data processor to perform steps of:
storing information on a storage medium, wherein said information is for a set of applications running on a set of servers, said information comprising:
(i) licensing data for the set of applications that includes licensing costs per application,
(ii) application workload requirements for the set of applications running on the set of servers, and
(iii) records of computing resources of each of the set of servers;

mapping the application workload requirements of the set of applications to the computing resources of the set of servers;
determining dependencies for the set of applications running on the set of servers;
identifying various arrangements to place the set of applications within different ones of the set of servers based on the licensing data, the application workload requirements and the records of computing resources;
generating a plurality of configurations for the set of applications running on the set of servers, wherein said plurality of configurations comprises a first configuration and a second configuration, wherein different arrangements of the set of applications are placed within different ones of the set of servers in the first configuration and in the second configuration, wherein each of the plurality of configurations are generated:
(i) to assure that the set of applications are placed within specific ones of the set of servers, and
(ii) to assure that computing resources of each of the set of servers upon which the set of applications are placed satisfies application workload requirements of a server-subset of the set of applications that are placed within that server;

calculating licensing costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration, wherein the licensing costs are determined for licenses associated with the set of applications and the dependencies;
calculating operational costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration;
calculating total costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration, including summing the licensing costs and the operating costs when calculating the total costs;
recommending one of the first configuration and the second configuration depending on which configuration has a lower total cost in accordance with the calculations;
providing results of the recommending to an authorized administrator as part of a programmatic action that consolidates the set of applications running on the set of servers;
responsive to providing the results, consolidating the set of applications into the first configuration or the second configuration according to the results; and
changing information technology infrastructures for the first configuration and the second configuration using a consolidation tool that includes a graphical user interface, wherein the licensing costs, operational costs, and total costs are calculated automatically and presented within the graphical user interface responsive to specifics constructed using the graphical user interface, wherein as changes are interactively made, cost computations are dynamically and correspondingly changed so that the configurations represented within the graphical user interface have updated and corresponding cost values associated with them.

2. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of configurations comprise at least two configurations in addition to the first configuration and the second configuration, the computer program product is further configured to instruct the data processor to perform steps of:
calculating, for each of the plurality of configurations, the licensing costs, the operational costs, and the total costs for that configuration, wherein a licensing cost for an application of the set of applications varies based on an arrangement of the application relative to the set of servers; and
recommending one of the plurality of configurations based on the calculated total costs for the plurality of configurations.

3. The computer program product of claim 1 , when the licensing costs for the first configuration and the second configuration comprise application licensing costs, middleware licensing costs, and operating system operating costs for operating systems needed by the set of applications per the dependencies.

4. The computer program product of claim 2 , wherein specific ones of the plurality of configurations being generated:
(i) require a purchase of different hardware for the set of servers,
(ii) require purchasing of additional application licenses, and
(iii) require a change in application licensing arrangements, said computer program product further comprising computer program code configured to:
factor in a cost of the different hardware when calculating total costs for the plurality of configurations;
factor in a cost of purchasing the additional application licensing when calculating total costs for the plurality of configurations; and
factor in a cost of changing application licensing arrangements when calculating total costs for the plurality of configurations.

5. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising computer program code configured to instruct the data processor to perform steps of:
calculating a migration cost for migrating the set of applications from an original configuration to the first configuration and from the original configuration to the second configuration; and
wherein calculating the total costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration comprises summing the migration costs, the licensing costs and the operating costs.

6. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein calculating the licensing costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration comprises:
determining the licensing cost for the first configuration and the second configuration using application licensing costs, middleware licensing costs, and operating system operating costs for operating systems needed by the set of applications per the dependencies.

7. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein at least a portion of the set of servers are virtual machines running on a virtualization layer of an information technology environment, wherein calculating the total costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration takes operational costs of running the virtual machines into account.

8. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein at least a portion of the set of servers are virtual machines running on a virtualization layer of an information technology environment, wherein calculating the total costs for the first configuration and for the second configuration accounts for hardware-level costs for the set of servers and related components, accounts for virtualization layer costs, and accounts for application level costs.

9. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein the first configuration is generated to represent a current configuration of the set of servers and the set of applications within an information technology (IT) environment, wherein the second configuration is generated to represent a proposed change to the information technology (IT) environment that was programmatically determined by a consolidation tool, wherein the second configuration has a lower total cost than the first configuration, wherein cost savings between the first configuration and the second configuration represent an operational cost savings achieved by consol

Assignees

• Garg Ankit
• Nayak Tapan K
• Sen Aritra
• Verma Akshat
• IBM

Inventors

• Garg Ankit
• Nayak Tapan K
• Sen Aritra
• Verma Akshat

Classifications

• G06Q10/00 Primary

  Administration; Management · CPC title