Discovery and storage of resource tags

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11032381-B2
Application number	US-201916445914-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 19, 2019
Priority date	Jun 19, 2019
Publication date	Jun 8, 2021
Grant date	Jun 8, 2021

Abstract

A system may contain a computational instance including persistent storage that maintains a discovery pattern and credentials for a cloud-based service, where the cloud-based service provides a remote computing infrastructure. The system may also contain one or more processors configured to: remotely access, using the credentials, the cloud-based service; execute the discovery pattern to obtain copies of tags configured in the cloud-based service, where the tags each include key fields, value fields, and resource identifier fields, and where the resource identifier fields uniquely specify respective computational resources of the cloud-based service; associate the tags that were discovered to configuration item representations of the respective computational resources; and store, in the persistent storage, the tags and their associations to the configuration item representations.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a computational instance including persistent storage that maintains a discovery pattern and credentials for a cloud-based service, wherein the cloud-based service provides a remote computing infrastructure; and
one or more processors configured to:
remotely access, using the credentials, the cloud-based service;
execute the discovery pattern to obtain copies of one or more tags configured in the cloud-based service, wherein the one or more tags each include a key field, a value field, and a resource identifier field, and wherein each resource identifier field uniquely specifies a respective computational resource of one or more computational resources of the cloud-based service;
associate the one or more tags that were discovered to one or more configuration item representations of the one or more computational resources stored in a configuration management database (CMDB) by:
matching the resource identifier field of each respective tag to an additional resource identifier field of a respective configuration item representation of the one or more configuration item representations; and
generating an association between the respective tag and the respective configuration item representation based on the resource identifier field matching the additional resource identifier field; and

store, in the CMDB, the one or more tags and their respective associations to the one or more configuration item representations.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more computational resources include a processor, a virtual machine, a unit of storage, a database, a load balancer, an application programming interface, or an authentication service.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are disposed within a proxy server device, wherein the proxy server device is disposed within a managed network, and wherein storing the one or more tags and their respective associations to the one or more configuration item representations comprises transmitting the one or more tags and their respective associations to the computational instance.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are disposed within a proxy server device, wherein the proxy server device is disposed within a managed network, and wherein executing the discovery pattern to obtain the copies of the one or more tags configured in the cloud-based service comprises executing the discovery pattern to obtain the copies of the one or more tags associated with a particular type of computational resource.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the persistent storage includes a second discovery pattern, and wherein the one or more processors are configured to:
execute the second discovery pattern to obtain copies of one or more further tags associated with a second particular type of computational resource configured in the cloud-based service;
associate the one or more further tags that were discovered to the one or more configuration item representations of the respective computational resources; and
transmit the one or more further tags and their respective associations to the computational instance.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein a first group of the one or more processors is disposed within a proxy server device and a second group of the one or more processors is disposed in the computational instance, wherein the proxy server device is disposed within a managed network, wherein remotely accessing the cloud-based service and executing the discovery pattern is performed by the proxy server device, and wherein associating the one or more tags that were discovered to the one or more configuration item representations of the respective computational resources and storing the one or more tags and their respective associations to the one or more configuration item representations is performed by the computational instance.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the proxy server device transmits the one or more tags to the computational instance.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the persistent storage comprises the CMDB, wherein the configuration item representations are represented in a configuration item table of the CMDB, and wherein the copies of the tags are represented in a key-value-pair table of the CMDB.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the persistent storage maintains a second discovery pattern and second credentials for a second cloud-based service, wherein the second cloud-based service provides a second remote computing infrastructure, and wherein the one or more processors are configured to:
remotely access, using the second credentials, the second cloud-based service;
execute the second discovery pattern to obtain copies of one or more further tags configured in the second cloud-based service;
associate the one or more further tags that were discovered to one or more second configuration item representations of respective computational resources disposed within the second cloud-based service; and
store, in the persistent storage, the one or more further tags and their respective associations to the one or more second configuration item representations.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more tags comprise one or more existing tags configured outside the computational instance before the cloud-based service is remotely accessed.

11. A computer-implemented method comprising:
remotely accessing, by one or more processors and using credentials, a cloud-based service, wherein the cloud-based service provides a remote computing infrastructure;
executing, by the one or more processors, a discovery pattern to obtain copies of one or more tags configured in the cloud-based service, wherein the one or more tags each include a key field, a value field, and a resource identifier field, and wherein each resource identifier field uniquely specifies a respective computational resource of one or more computational resources of the cloud-based service;
associating, by the one or more processors, the one or more tags that were discovered to one or more configuration item representations of the one or more computational resources stored in a configuration management database (CMDB) by:
matching the resource identifier field of each respective tag to an additional resource identifier field of a respective configuration item representation of the one or more configuration item representations; and
generating an association between the respective tag and the respective configuration item representation based on the resource identifier field matching the additional resource identifier field; and

storing, by the one or more processors and in the CMDB, the one or more tags and their respective associations to the one or more configuration item representations.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein the one or more processors are disposed within a proxy server device, wherein the proxy server device is disposed within a managed network, and wherein storing the one or more tags and their respective associations to the one or more configuration item representations comprises transmitting the one or more tags and their respective associations to the computational instance.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein the one or more processors are disposed within a proxy server device, wherein the proxy server device is disposed within a managed network, and wherein executing the discovery pattern to obtain the copies of the one or more tags configured in the cloud-based service comprises executing the discovery pattern to obtain the copies of the one or more tags associated with a particular

Assignees

• Servicenow Inc

Inventors

• Feiguine Alexandra
• Herzog Shay
• Hameiri Shiri
• Badyan Daniel
• Garty Asaf
• Bitterfeld Robert

Classifications

• H04L67/561

  Adding application-functional data or data for application control, e.g. adding metadata · CPC title

• H04L67/53

  using third party service providers · CPC title

• H04L67/51 Primary

  Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services · CPC title

• H04L67/1097 Primary

  for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS] · CPC title

• H04L67/1004

  Server selection for load balancing · CPC title