Migrating legacy applications to a multi-tenant computing environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10904321-B2
Application number	US-201815936613-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 27, 2018
Priority date	Mar 2, 2015
Publication date	Jan 26, 2021
Grant date	Jan 26, 2021

Abstract

Various embodiments migrate a legacy application to a multi-tenant computing environment. In one embodiment, at least one virtualized computing container is instantiated on a host system in a multi-tenant computing environment. An instance of the legacy application is executed within the virtualized computing container. The legacy application having been initially configured to run on premise and serve one tenant at a time. The virtualized computing container securely isolates the executing instance of the legacy application from other executing instances of the legacy application. At least one request received from a first client is sent to the instance of the legacy application executing within the virtualized computing container. The virtualized computing container is quiesced based on at least one quiescing criterion having been satisfied by the instance of the legacy application.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for migrating a legacy application to a multi-tenant computing environment, the method comprising:
instantiating at least one virtualized computing container on a host system in a multi-tenant computing environment;
executing an instance of the legacy application within the virtualized computing container, the legacy application being initially configured to run on premise and serve one tenant at a time, and where the virtualized computing container securely isolates the executing instance of the legacy application from other executing instances of the legacy application;
processing, based on the executing, at least one request received by a load balancer from a first client for accessing the instance of the legacy application;
determining that the instance of the legacy application has satisfied at least one quiescing criterion based on monitoring an operating state of the instance of the legacy application; and
quiescing the virtualized computing container based on the at least one quiescing criterion having been satisfied by the instance of the legacy application.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
instantiating at least one additional virtualized computing container on the host system; and
executing an additional instance of the legacy application within the additional virtualized computing container, where the virtualized computing container serves the first client and the additional virtualized computing container serves a second client.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, by a load balancer, the request from the client;
selecting, by the load balancer, at least one request dispatcher; and
sending the request to the at least one request dispatcher.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein instantiating the at least one virtualized computing container is based on:
extracting, by the request dispatcher, a tenant identifier from the request, the tenant identifier uniquely identifying the first client;
comparing, by the request dispatcher, the tenant identifier to a set of mapping information, where the set of mapping information maps each of a set of clients to at least one virtualized computing container;
determining, by the request dispatcher and based on the comparing, that a virtualized computing container fails to be mapped to the tenant identifier; and
dynamically performing the instantiating based on determining that a virtualized computing container fails to be mapped to the tenant identifier.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
sending, by the request dispatcher, the request to the virtualized computing container after the container has been initialized that the instance of the legacy application has been executed.

6. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:
extracting, by the request dispatcher, a tenant identifier from the request, the tenant identifier uniquely identifying the first client;
comparing, by the request dispatcher, the tenant identifier to a set of mapping information, where the set of mapping information maps each of a set of clients to at least one virtualized computing container;
determining, by the request dispatcher and based on the comparing, that the virtualized computing container is mapped to the tenant identifier; and
sending, by the request dispatcher, the request to the virtualized computing container.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one quiescing criterion comprises one of:
the instance of the legacy application performing an exit operation, the exit operation stopping executing of the instance of the legacy application; and
the instance of the legacy application comprising an idle state.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the instance of the legacy application writes its current state to a persistent storage prior to the virtualized computing container being quiesced.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving the request from the client;
determining, based on an identifier within the request, that the request is state-full and related to other requests;
analyzing a set of mapping information, where the set of mapping information maps each of a set of clients to a set of virtualized computing containers and further maps each of the set of virtualized computing containers to a set of related requests;
determining, based on the analyzing, the virtualized computing container is mapped to the request; and
sending the request to the virtualized computing container based on determining that the virtualized computing container is mapped to the request.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining the legacy application satisfies a plurality of migration criteria, wherein the at least one virtualized computing container is instantiated based on determining the legacy application satisfies a plurality of migration criteria.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the legacy application satisfies a plurality of migration criteria is based on analyzing a set of attributes associated with the legacy application.

12. An information processing system for migrating a legacy application to a multi-tenant computing environment, the information processing system comprising:
memory;
a processor communicatively coupled to the memory; and
a resource manager communicatively coupled to the memory and the processor, the resource manager configured to perform a method comprising:
instantiating at least one virtualized computing container on a host system in a multi-tenant computing environment;
executing an instance of the legacy application within the virtualized computing container, the legacy application being initially configured to run on premise and serve one tenant at a time, and where the virtualized computing container securely isolates the executing instance of the legacy application from other executing instances of the legacy application;
processing, based on the executing, at least one request received by a load balancer from a first client for accessing the instance of the legacy application;
determining that the instance of the legacy application has satisfied at least one quiescing criterion based on monitoring an operating state of the instance of the legacy application; and
quiescing the virtualized computing container based on the at least one quiescing criterion having been satisfied by the instance of the legacy application.

13. The information processing system of claim 12 , the method further comprising:
instantiating at least one additional virtualized computing container on the host system; and
executing an additional instance of the legacy application within the additional virtualized computing container, where the virtualized computing container serves the first client and the additional virtualized computing container serves a second client.

14. The information processing system of claim 12 , the method further comprising:
receiving, by a load balancer, the request from the client;
selecting, by the load balancer, at least one request dispatcher; and
sending the request to the at least one request dispatcher, wherein instantiating the at least one virtualized computing container is based on:
extracting, by the request dispatcher, a tenant identifier from the request, the tenant identifier uniquely identifying the first client;
comparing, by the request dispatcher, the tenant identifier to a set of mapping information, where the set of mapping information maps each of a set of clients to at least one virtualized computing container;
determining, by the request dispatcher and based on the comparing, that a

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Khalaf Rania Y
• Muthusamy Vinod
• Shepard David E
• Slominski Aleksander

Classifications

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• H04L67/1001

  for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers · CPC title

• H04L67/01

  Protocols · CPC title

• H04L67/34

  involving the movement of software or configuration parameters  (network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416) · CPC title

• G06F2009/45595

  Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances · CPC title