Automatic Scaling of at Least One User Application to External Clouds

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016134558-A1
Application number	US-201514745972-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jun 22, 2015
Priority date	Nov 12, 2014
Publication date	May 12, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention provide a method, a system and a computer program product configured to automatically auto-scale a user compute instance to multiple cloud providers while considering a multiplicity of user requirements. The method, executed on a digital data processor, includes obtaining information, via a user interface, that is descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences, including a user cloud computing budgetary preference. The method further includes sensing properties of a plurality of clouds and making decisions, based at least on the obtained information and on the sensed properties, of when to scale up or scale down the user cloud instance, of selecting one of the plurality of clouds as where to scale the user cloud instance, and determining which resource or resources of the selected cloud to add or remove from the selected cloud. The method further includes automatically executing the decisions on the selected cloud.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A system, comprised of at least one data processor connected with at least one memory that stores software instructions, where execution of the software instructions by the at least one data processor causes the system to:
obtain information, via a user interface, that is descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences, including a user cloud computing budgetary preference; sense properties of a plurality of clouds; make decisions, based at least on the obtained information and on the sensed properties of the plurality of clouds, of when to scale up or scale down a user cloud instance, of selecting one of the plurality of clouds as where to scale the user cloud instance, and determining which resource or resources of the selected cloud to add or remove from the selected cloud; and automatically execute the decisions on the selected cloud.

2 . The system of claim 1 , where the user's cloud instance is being executed on a private cloud when the decisions are executed, and where the selected cloud is a public cloud.

3 . The system of claim 1 , where the obtained information descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences comprises, in addition to the user cloud computing budgetary preference, at least one of a performance preference, a reliability level preference, a location preference and a latency preference.

4 . The system of claim 1 , where the obtained information is further descriptive of a user objective preference as to a certain cloud provider or cloud providers.

5 . The system of claim 1 , where the sensed properties comprise at least cost, reliability, security, location, performance and infrastructure properties.

6 . The system of claim 5 , where some of the sensed properties are obtained directly from a cloud provider via an application program interface of the cloud provider, and where some of the sensed properties are obtained indirectly based at least on historical knowledge of the cloud provider.

7 . The system of claim 1 , where the making decisions is automatically triggered by at least a change in a user application instance so as to require more cloud resources or less cloud resources.

8 . A computer program product comprised of software instructions on a computer-readable medium, where execution of the software instructions using a computer results in performing operations comprising:
obtaining information, via a user interface, that is descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences, including a user cloud computing budgetary preference; sensing properties of a plurality of clouds; making decisions, based at least on the obtained information and on the sensed properties of the plurality of clouds, of when to scale up or scale down a user cloud instance, of selecting one of the plurality of clouds as where to scale the user cloud instance, and determining which resource or resources of the selected cloud to add or remove from the selected cloud; and automatically executing the decisions on the selected cloud.

9 . The computer program product of claim 8 , where the user's cloud instance is being executed on a private cloud when the decisions are executed, and where the selected cloud is a public cloud.

10 . The computer program product of claim 8 , where the obtained information descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences comprises, in addition to the user cloud computing budgetary preference, at least one of a performance preference, a reliability level preference, a location preference and a latency preference, and where the sensed properties comprise at least cost, reliability, security, location, performance and infrastructure properties.

11 . The computer program product of claim 8 , where the obtained information is further descriptive of a user objective preference as to a certain cloud provider or cloud providers.

12 . The computer program product of claim 8 , where some of the sensed properties are obtained directly from a cloud provider via an application program interface of the cloud provider, and where some of the sensed properties are obtained indirectly based at least on historical knowledge of the cloud provider.

13 . The computer program product of claim 8 , where the operation of making decisions is automatically triggered by at least a change in a user application instance so as to require more cloud resources or less cloud resources.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Steinder Malgorzata
• Unuvar Merve

Classifications

• G06Q10/063 Primary

  Operations research, analysis or management · CPC title

• H04L47/783 Primary

  Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers · CPC title

• H04L67/16

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L67/10

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title

• H04L67/51

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