System and method for automatically launching virtual machines based on attendance

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9940149-B2
Application number	US-201414546117-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 18, 2014
Priority date	Nov 18, 2014
Publication date	Apr 10, 2018
Grant date	Apr 10, 2018

Abstract

Certain aspect of the present disclosure relates to a virtual machine (VM) control system, which includes a VM controller. For a plurality of employees, the VM controller registers each employee by assigning an employee ID, and stores registration information in an attendance database. The VM controller also associates one or more VMs to each employee, and stores VM association information between the VMs and the employees in an employee ID database. The VM controller transmits polling inquiries periodically to the attendance database to retrieve employee presence events of the employees. For each employee, the employee presence events include an ingress event and an egress event. When the ingress event is detected and the associated VM is off, the VM controller launches the associated VM. When the egress event is detected and the associated VM is on, the VM controller shuts down the associated VM.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A virtual machine control system, comprising:
a virtual machine controller comprising a processor and a memory storing computer executable instructions, wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed at the processor, are configured to
register a plurality of employees, wherein each of the plurality of employees is assigned an employee ID;
store information of the registration of each of the plurality of employees in an attendance database;
associate one or more of a plurality of virtual machines to each of the plurality of employees, wherein each of the plurality of virtual machines has a virtual machine ID;
store virtual machine association information between the plurality of virtual machines and the plurality of employees in an employee ID database;
transmit polling inquiries periodically to the attendance database to retrieve employee presence events of the plurality of employees detected by one or more employee presence detection devices in a predetermined polling time interval, wherein the employee presence events include an ingress event when one of the plurality of employees enters a predetermined area, and an egress event when the one of the plurality of employees exits the predetermined area;
identify, in response to a detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees, the virtual machine ID associated with the employee ID of the one of the plurality of employees through look-up of the virtual machine association information of the employee ID database; and
instruct a hypervisor to
launch, using the virtual machine association information, a virtual machine with the virtual machine ID associated with the employee ID when the detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees is the ingress event and when the virtual machine is in an off state;
shut down the virtual machine with the virtual machine ID associated with the employee ID when the detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees is the egress event and when the virtual machine is in an on state; and
apply a launching delay T 1 based on current virtual machine loads and applications running on the hypervisor when the virtual machine was shut down during an immediately prior on state to delay start of the launching of the virtual machine when the virtual machine control system instructs the hypervisor to launch the virtual machine.

2. The virtual machine control system of claim 1 , further comprising:
the one or more employee presence detection devices configured to detect employee presence events of the plurality of employees;
the attendance database configured to store employee presence events for each of the plurality of employees;
the employee ID database configured to store employee IDs of the plurality of employees and one or more virtual machines associated with each of the plurality of employees; and
at least one virtual machine server having the hypervisor and the plurality of virtual machines running on the hypervisor.

3. The virtual machine control system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more employee presence detection devices comprise:
a security control system of a predetermined area configured to detect the entering and exiting of the plurality of employees individually;
a proximity detection device configured to detect the entering and exiting a vicinity of the predetermined area for each of the plurality of employees individually;
a wireless device detection device configured to detect a presence at and a departure from the predetermined area for each of the plurality of employees individually;
an online virtual machine control system configured to detect logins and logouts of the plurality of employees individually; and
an employee working schedule control system configured to control the launching and the shutting down of a virtual machine according to a working schedule of an employee of the plurality of employees associated with the virtual machine.

4. The virtual machine control system of claim 3 , wherein each of the one or more employee presence detection devices is configured to:
determine that the detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees is the ingress event when:
the one of the plurality of employees enters the security control system of the predetermined area;
the presence event of the one of the plurality of employees is detected by the proximity detection device of the predetermined area;
the presence event is detected by the wireless device detection device of the predetermined area;
the one of the plurality of employees logs into a virtual machine remotely; or
a current time reaches the one of the plurality of employees start of predetermined working schedule;
determine that the detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees is the egress event when:
the one of the plurality of employees exits the security control system of the predetermined area;
the one of the plurality of employees departure is detected by the proximity detection device of the predetermined area;
the one of the plurality of employees departure is detected by the wireless device detection device of the predetermined area;
the one of the plurality of employees logs out of the virtual machine remotely; or
the current time reaches the one of the plurality of employees end of predetermined working schedule; and
transmit the detected employee presence event of the one of the plurality of employees to the attendance database.

5. The virtual machine control system of claim 1 , wherein the attendance database is configured to:
receive and store the information of the registration of each of the plurality of employees;
receive employee presence events of each of the plurality of employees from the one or more employee presence detection devices;
update the employee presence events received in the attendance database;
maintain attendance information for each of the plurality of employees;
receive periodical polling inquiries from the virtual machine controller at the predetermined polling time interval; and
transmit, in response to the polling inquiries, the employee presence events occurred during last predetermined polling time interval, along with the employee ID to the virtual machine controller.

6. The virtual machine control system of claim 1 , wherein the employee ID database is configured to:
receive and store the information of the registration of each of the plurality of employees with corresponding employee IDs;
receive and store the virtual machine ID associated with each of the plurality of employees;
receive one or more identification inquiries from the virtual machine controller to identify a virtual machine ID based on a given employee ID; and
transmit, in response to the one or more identification inquiries, the virtual machine ID associated with the one of the plurality of employees with the employee ID to the virtual machine controller.

7. The virtual machine control system of claim 1 , wherein
the virtual machine controller further comprises a network interface controller configured to connect the virtual machine controller to a network; and
the computer executable instructions comprise firmware, wherein the firmware comprises:
a polling module configured to transmit the polling inquiries periodically to the attendance database at the predetermined polling time interval to retrieve the employee presence events of the plurality of employees detected by the one or more employee presence detection devices;
an employee ID lookup module to identify the virtual machine IDs based on the corresponding employee IDs of the plurality of employees whose employee presence events were

Assignees

• American Megatrends Inc

Inventors

• Mathews Santhosh Samuel
• Parthasarathy Sudhakar Errappa

Classifications

• G06F16/955

  using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL] · CPC title

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G07C1/10

  together with the recording, indicating or registering of other data, e.g. of signs of identity · CPC title

• G06F17/30876

  Physics · mapped topic