Appliance Abstraction Engine for Hybrid Infrastructure Deployment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing and deploying computing platforms across different types of environments (physical, virtual, and cloud) is complex due to the need for different tooling and manual intervention, leading to costly duplication of effort and lack of unified control surfaces.
Innovation Solution
An appliance abstraction engine that exposes a programming interface to access undifferentiated resources across various environments, automatically discovering and configuring resources to create a virtual appliance based on specified capabilities, facilitating consistent architecture and simplified deployment across hybrid environments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If different tooling and manual intervention are used for each environment type, then deployment can be performed across diverse environments, but complexity and duplication of effort increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal virtual appliance architecture that can be deployed across physical, virtual, and cloud environments using a single toolset. The virtual appliance serves as a multi-functional platform that adapts to different infrastructure types through configuration rather than requiring separate deployment tools for each environment.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer (the virtual appliance with abstraction engine) that mediates between the deployment tooling and the underlying infrastructure. This intermediary handles environment-specific variations, allowing unified tooling to manage diverse environments without direct complexity exposure.
2Reliability
If environment-specific tooling is used, then precise control over each environment type is achieved, but unified control surfaces are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual appliance provides a unified control surface that works across all environment types. The same management interfaces and control mechanisms can be used whether deploying to physical servers, virtual machines, or cloud platforms, eliminating the need for environment-specific control procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual appliance acts as an intermediary that translates unified control commands into environment-specific operations. This allows precise control to be maintained at the infrastructure level while presenting a simplified, unified interface to operators.
3Adaptability or versatility
If manual intervention is required for deployment, then flexibility in handling environment variations is achieved, but automation and productivity are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual appliance includes an appliance abstraction engine that automatically discovers the deployment environment type and configures itself accordingly. This self-service capability eliminates the need for manual environment assessment and configuration, enabling automated deployment while maintaining adaptability to different infrastructures.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses parameter-based configuration where the virtual appliance adjusts its behavior based on detected environment parameters. The abstraction engine automatically modifies deployment parameters according to the identified environment type, enabling automated adaptation without manual intervention.
Data Source
AI summary
Example implementations relate to virtual appliances. In an example, a processor-based appliance abstraction engine exposes a programming interface for accessing undifferentiated resources of a computing environment irrespective of the type of the computing environment. Computing environment types may include physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, or cloud infrastructure. The appliance abstraction engine discovers available resources of the computing environment and creates a virtual appliance by configuring the discovered available resources of the computing environment according to capabilities defined in a specification and by populating the computing environment with artifacts for a computing platform defined in the specification.