946 results about "Virtual servers" patented technology

A management capability is provided for a virtual computing platform. In one example, this platform allows interconnected physical resources such as processors, memory, network interfaces and storage interfaces to be abstracted and mapped to virtual resources (e.g., virtual mainframes, virtual partitions). Virtual resources contained in a virtual partition can be assembled into virtual servers that execute a guest operating system (e.g., Linux). In one example, the abstraction is unique in that any resource is available to any virtual server regardless of the physical boundaries that separate the resources. For example, any number of physical processors or any amount of physical memory can be used by a virtual server even if these resources span different nodes. A virtual computing platform is provided that allows for the creation, deletion, modification, control (e.g., start, stop, suspend, resume) and status (i.e., events) of the virtual servers which execute on the virtual computing platform and the management capability provides controls for these functions. In a particular example, such a platform allows the number and type of virtual resources consumed by a virtual server to be scaled up or down when the virtual server is running. For instance, an administrator may scale a virtual server manually or may define one or more policies that automatically scale a virtual server. Further, using the management API, a virtual server can monitor itself and can scale itself up or down depending on its need for processing, memory and I / O resources. For example, a virtual server may monitor its CPU utilization and invoke controls through the management API to allocate a new processor for itself when its utilization exceeds a specific threshold. Conversely, a virtual server may scale down its processor count when its utilization falls. Policies can be used to execute one or more management controls. More specifically, a management capability is provided that allows policies to be defined using management object's properties, events and / or method results. A management policy may also incorporate external data (e.g., an external event) in its definition. A policy may be triggered, causing the management server or other computing entity to execute an action. An action may utilize one or more management controls. In addition, an action may access external capabilities such as sending notification e-mail or sending a text message to a telephone paging system. Further, management capability controls may be executed using a discrete transaction referred to as a “job.” A series of management controls may be assembled into a job using one or management interfaces. Errors that occur when a job is executed may cause the job to be rolled back, allowing affected virtual servers to return to their original state.

The present solution provides a spillover management technique for virtual servers of an appliance based on bandwidth. A network administrator may configure a bandwidth threshold for one or more virtual servers, such as virtual servers providing acceleration or load balancing for one or more services. The bandwidth threshold may be specified as a number of bytes transferred via the virtual server. The bandwidth threshold may also be specified as a round trip time or derivative thereof. A user may specify the bandwidth threshold via a configuration interface. Otherwise, the appliance may establish the bandwidth threshold. The appliance monitors the bandwidth used by a first virtual server. In response to detecting the bandwidth reaching or exceeding the bandwidth threshold, the appliance dynamically directs client requests to a second virtual server.

For disaster recovery of a file server at an active site, the files that define the user environment of the file server are replicated to a virtual server at a disaster recovery site. To switch over user access from the active site to the disaster recovery site, the disaster recovery system determines whether there are sufficient network interfaces and file system mounts at the disaster recovery site. If so, the required resources are reserved, and user access is switched over. If not, an operator is given a list of missing resources or discrepancies, and a choice of termination or forced failover. Interruptions during the failover can be avoided by maintaining a copy of user mappings and a copy of session information at the disaster recovery site, and keeping alive client-server connections and re-directing client requests from the active site to the disaster recovery site.

A system and method for balancing the load on virtual servers managed by server array controllers at separate data centers that are geographically distributed on a wide area network such as the Internet is described. The virtual servers provide access to resources associated with a domain name request by a client program. When a Primary Domain Name System (DNS) determined the requested domain name is delegated to a EDNS, the EDNS employs metric information and statistics to resolve an IP address for a virtual server that is selected by the EDNS to optimally balance the load and provide access to resources associated with the domain name. The EDNS may load balance name servers. Additionally, the name server load balancing system may bridge disparate content delivery networks. Internet addresses are divided into geographical information that is used to delegate traffic. Also, metric information is collected and analyzed to help distribute the traffic.

Systems and methods, including computer program products, providing high-availability in server systems. In one implementation, a server system is cluster of two or more autonomous server nodes, each running one or more virtual servers. When a node fails, its virtual servers are migrated to one or more other nodes. Connectivity between nodes and clients is based on virtual IP addresses, where each virtual server has one or more virtual IP addresses. Virtual servers can be assigned failover priorities, and, in failover, higher priority virtual servers can be migrated before lower priority ones. Load balancing can be provided by distributing virtual servers from a failed node to multiple different nodes. When a port within a node fails, the node can reassign virtual IP addresses from the failed port to other ports on the node until no good ports remain and only then migrate virtual servers to another node or nodes.

A system and a method dynamically adjusts the quality of service guarantees for virtual servers based upon the resource demands experienced by the virtual servers. Virtual server resource denials are monitored to determine if a virtual server is overloaded based upon the resource denials. Virtual server resources are modified dynamically to respond to the changing resource requirements of each virtual server. Occasionally, a physical host housing a virtual server may not have additional resources to allocate to a virtual server requiring increased resources. In this instance, a virtual server hosted by the overloaded physical host is transferred to another physical host with sufficient resources.

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for testing and evaluating software in the network cloud. A developer or other operator may wish to debug, modify, or update a set of test software based on testing of that software. The developer can instantiate a set of virtual servers or other test beds in the cloud, and install the subject software to the virtual test beds. A test management module can monitor the execution of the set of test software on the set of virtual test beds, to detect execution faults, measure processing performance, stress-test the software with predetermined data inputs, and manage other aspects of software life cycle development. The test management module can provide or access a set of application programming interfaces to a set of software tools external to the cloud, so that the set of test software can be tested and optimized using external programming development tools.

Managing data in a server system includes providing a plurality of servers, each having an internal gateway / switch that is accessible from outside the server, providing a plurality of virtual servers on at least some of the servers, where each of the virtual servers is accessible by the internal gateway / switch of the corresponding server, and accessing the data using the internal gateway / switch, where the internal gateway / switch determines which particular one of the virtual servers contain the data and then accesses the particular virtual server to provide the data. Managing data in a server system may also include associating portions of the data to tenants of the server system. Each of the servers may maintain a table that correlates tenants with the virtual servers maintained thereby and the internal gateway / switch may use the table to determine which particular one of the virtual servers contains data for a particular tenant.

The present invention provides methods and systems for performing load balancing via a plurality of virtual servers upon a failover using metrics from a backup virtual server. The methods and systems described herein provide systems and methods for an appliance detecting that a first virtual server of a plurality of virtual servers having one or more backup virtual servers load balanced by an appliance is not available, identifying at least a first backup virtual server of a one or more backup virtual servers of the first virtual server is available, maintaining a status of the first virtual server as available in response to the identification, obtaining one or more metrics from the first backup virtual server of a one or more backup virtual servers, and determining the load across the plurality of virtual servers using the metrics obtained from the first backup virtual server associated with the first virtual server.

A method for scaling resources according to workload among virtual servers running on a mainframe computer is provided. The invention comprises monitoring the number of service requests received by a cluster of virtual servers and determining if the service requests exceed a specified service limit for the servers. If the number of service requests exceeds the specified service limit, a new virtual server is automatically deployed by a software solution. This additional virtual server performs identical services as the other virtual servers in the cluster. This process is repeated until there are a sufficient number of servers to handle the workload. Service requests are then allocated among the cluster of virtual servers, until the number of requests falls below a certain threshold, at which point the extra servers are automatically deactivated.

The present disclosure presents systems and methods for obtaining metric information by a multi-core GSLB intermediary device and providing global server load balancing services using the obtained information. A first core of a multi-core GSLB appliance establishes a transport layer connection to a remote load balancer at a site of a plurality of sites. The first core transmits a message to each of the other cores of the multi-core GSLB appliance that that the first core is a master core for receiving metric information from the load balancer. The first core receives metric information of the remote site from the load balancer. The first core propagates the metric information to each of the other cores of the GSLB appliance. A GSLB virtual server on a slave core receives a DNS request. The GSLB virtual server determines a DNS resolution for the DNS request based on the metric information.

For disaster recovery of a file server at an active site, the files that define the user environment of the file server are replicated to a virtual server at a disaster recovery site. To switch over user access from the active site to the disaster recovery site, the disaster recovery system determines whether there are sufficient network interfaces and file system mounts at the disaster recovery site. If so, the required resources are reserved, and user access is switched over. If not, an operator is given a list of missing resources or discrepancies, and a choice of termination or forced failover. Interruptions during the failover can be avoided by maintaining a copy of user mappings and a copy of session information at the disaster recovery site, and keeping alive client-server connections and re-directing client requests from the active site to the disaster recovery site.

A distributed and coordinated security system providing intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention for the virtual machines (VMs) in a virtual server is described. The virtualization platform of the virtual server is enhanced with networking drivers that provide a “fast path” firewall function for pre-configured guest VMs that already have dedicated deep packet inspection security agents installed. A separate security VM is deployed to provide virtual security agents providing deep packet inspection for non pre-configured guest VMs. The network drivers are then configured to intercept the data traffic of these guest VMs and route it through their corresponding virtual security agents, thus providing a “slow-path” for intrusion detection and prevention.

A management capability is provided for a virtual computing platform. In one example, this platform allows interconnected physical resources such as processors, memory, network interfaces and storage interfaces to be abstracted and mapped to virtual resources (e.g., virtual mainframes, virtual partitions). Virtual resources contained in a virtual partition can be assembled into virtual servers that execute a guest operating system (e.g., Linux). In one example, the abstraction is unique in that any resource is available to any virtual server regardless of the physical boundaries that separate the resources. For example, any number of physical processors or any amount of physical memory can be used by a virtual server even if these resources span different nodes.

A first virtual server is moved from a first network location to a second network location without interrupting service to users of the first virtual server. The state and data of the first virtual server are copied and transmitted to the second network location to create a copy of the first virtual server. The first virtual server copy is then updated to duplicate the first virtual server and all connections or packets directed to the first virtual server are intercepted and directed to the first virtual server copy at the second network location. A DNS entry for the symbolic name of the first virtual server is updated to reflect a shortened TTL value and then the address field of the DNS entry is set to the address of the first virtual server copy after the changeover and subsequent connections are directed to the first virtual server copy.

A system, method and computer program product for providing centralized management of multiple Virtual Execution Environments (VEEs) implemented on multiple physical servers. Each VEE is a virtual server. Multiple virtual servers of various types and formats are implemented on multiple physical servers. The physical servers are connected into a network. An intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) of a central console for remote management and administration of a plurality of virtual servers and multiple physical servers is provided. The system includes server managers controlled from a common control center. The system also includes a database containing configuration data and data related to operation formats of the physical and virtual servers. A server system can be a plurality of physical servers and VEEs implemented on them or it can be a plurality of VEEs executed on one physical server.

A method and system for backing up and restoring data of virtual machines. A virtual machine may be discovered through a directory service or via an agent that is installed on the host operating system that is running the virtual machine. If the agent is installed on the virtual machine, the agent monitors changes to a set of protected volumes on the virtual machine. If the agent is installed on the host, the agent monitors changes to the protected volumes, which may contain one or more virtual servers on the host. Periodically, these changes from the host or the virtual server are sent to a data protection server. The data protection server updates its replicas of protected volumes with the sent changes. Versions of files on a data protection server corresponding to a volume of a virtual server may be restored to the virtual machine, to another machine, or may be viewed from the data protection server.

The present application is directed towards systems and methods for adaptive application provisioning for cloud services. An appliance deployed in a network as a gateway may be able to transparently monitor application activity in a cloud computing environment provided by one or more servers, including servers executed by virtual machines, bare-metal or non-virtual servers, or other computing devices. In some embodiments, the appliance may monitor one or more network metrics, including bandwidth usage, latency, congestion, or other issues; and / or may monitor application health or server or virtual machine statistics, including memory and processor usage, bandwidth usage, latency, or other metrics. Responsive to one or more metrics exceeding a threshold, the appliance may automatically provision or start, or deprovision or shut down, one or more virtual or physical machines from a cloud service provider, and may provide configuration information to the provisioned or started machines as needed.

An intelligent financial card system, process and article that allows more secure E-commerce transactions with Internet merchants by avoiding the transfer of financial card information to the merchants, while at the same time advantageously employing portions of infrastructure already used in conventional financial card E-commerce transactions. The intelligent financial card verifies itself and acts as its own transaction authorization agent during an E-commerce transaction, thus eliminating the need for a third-party transaction authorization agent and resultant costs to the merchant. The intelligent financial card better protects a merchant against fraudulent E-commerce transactions by providing a customer identity verification system that more reliably verifies that the person using financial card information for the E-commerce transaction is the actual person authorized to do so.

Systems and methods for data center power supply control are provided that identify a parameter of at least one of a plurality of servers that form at least part of a data center that includes an uninterruptable power supply. An estimated parameter of a virtual server can be identified, and one of the plurality of servers can be selected based at least in part on the parameter and the estimated parameter. The virtual server can be provided to the selected server, and the power provided to at least one of the plurality of servers can be reduced, shut down, or otherwise adjusted.

An integrated hybrid system is provided. The hybrid system includes compute components of different types and architectures that are integrated and managed by a single point of control to provide federation and the presentation of the compute components as a single logical computing platform.

There is provided a monitoring system capable of representing relationships of computer resources that virtual servers use in a tree structure and aggregating the performance statistics of the virtual resources sharing physical resources. The monitoring system has: a virtualization module that makes virtual computers operate; and a monitoring module for monitoring the physical computers and components of the virtual computers. The monitoring module designates the physical computer and the components of the virtualizing module as base resources, manages the components of the virtual computers as virtual resources, generates a platform tree by extracting a tree structure from the virtual resources and the components of the base resources for predetermined platforms, generates a service provision tree by extracting a tree structure having the base or virtual resources as starting points, and establishes a reference relationship for the components contained in the platform tree and also contained in the service provision tree.

The invention is directed to the use of Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) technology with Shortest Path Bridging, also called Provider Link State Bridging (PLSB) technology in the context of data centers and virtualized physical servers infrastructures. Virtual servers can be located anywhere inside the data center, or across different data centers, and still act as though they are physically adjacent and share the same Ethernet connectivity. Ethernet virtual machine VLan memberships are mapped to PBB Service Identifiers (I-SIDs). PBB I-SIDs extend the connectivity model to every Ethernet switches in the local, metropolitan or wide area networks. PLSB complements the connectivity by providing dynamic distribution and mapping of I-SID endpoints in the PBB domain. Virtual servers can then be added, removed or transferred to another point in the network and PLSB adjusts the VLan / I-SID specific connectivity pattern to match the physical distribution of the servers.

A method and system for managing a large number of servers and their server components distributed throughout a heterogeneous computing environment is provided. In one embodiment, an authenticated user, such as a IT system administrator, can securely and simultaneously control and configure multiple servers, supporting different operating systems, through a "virtual server." A virtual server is an abstract model representing a collection of actual target servers. To represent multiple physical servers as one virtual server, abstract system calls that extend execution of operating-system-specific system calls to multiple servers, regardless of their supported operating systems, are used. A virtual server is implemented by a virtual server client and a collection of virtual server agents associated with a collection of actual servers.

Server virtualization technology is applied to virtualize and encapsulate all unique information of a server as an image that is stored on a storage area network at one site and replicated on a storage area network at another site to provide high availability of system resources and data recovery capabilities. In one embodiment, a virtualized server system (100) includes a primary site (110), a secondary site (130), and a computer executable control application (150). The primary site (110) includes a storage area network (112), at least one primary virtual server platform (114), and at least one primary virtual server stored as at least one image (116) on the storage area network (112). The control application (150) directs replication of the primary virtual server image (116) onto a storage area network (132) at the secondary site (130) to create a corresponding replicated virtual server image (138). The control application (150) also monitors operation of the primary virtual server platform (114) and associates the replicated virtual server image (138) with a secondary virtual server (134) at the secondary site (130) in the event that a problem is detected with the primary site virtual server (114).

A method of creating and managing virtual servers utilizes separate master copies of information such as operating systems, configuration files, and application programs. When a virtual server is created, it loads an appropriate operating system and configuration information. During the boot process, the virtual server is configured to provide a predetermined service. Appropriate application programs are subsequently loaded to support the service configuration. Multiple virtual servers can be created and configured using the master copies of information, thus reducing the amount of customization required by each virtual server. Virtual servers can be easily restarted from failures with minimal loss of data.

Systems and methods for analyzing the service and performance levels associated with virtual machines in a storage network environment for compliance with a resource capacity policy are provided. Component configuration and connectivity information from components in the network environment is collected without using host agents on the virtual machines. Access paths defining end-to-end access relationships between an application on a virtual machine and storage data objects associated with the virtual machine in the network environment are derived. Access paths comprise sequences of components configured to enable information flow between an application residing on a virtual machine and a data object on a respective storage device. Access path resource consumption is computed and virtual machines with resource consumptions that violate the resource capacity policy are identified.

An object of this invention is to facilitate the workload management of a virtual server by an administrator in environment that a plurality of virtual computers configuring a single or a plurality of task systems are distributed among a plurality of physical computers. To achieve the object, there is provided a computer management method based upon a computer management method in a computer system having a plurality of physical computers, a plurality of virtual computers operated in the physical computer and a management computer connected to the physical computer via a network and characterized in that specification for performance allocated every group is accepted, the performance of the physical computers is acquired and the performance of the specified group is allocated to the virtual computers included in the group based upon the acquired performance of the physical computers.