Cloud Management Service Selective Business Continuity Failover
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers face challenges in ensuring business continuity and minimizing disruptions during infrastructure outages, as existing solutions lack efficient and customizable disaster recovery mechanisms for virtual machines across geographically diverse sites.
Innovation Solution
A cloud management service that enables selective enablement of business continuity services for virtual machines, allowing for failover to secondary sites on a per-customer, per-VDC, or per-VM basis, with features like data replication, secure communication, and customizable recovery plans, ensuring minimal disruption and adherence to Service Level Agreements (SLA) for Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If business continuity services are implemented across all virtual machines, then service reliability is improved, but system complexity and operational overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by enabling business continuity services on a selective basis (per-customer, per-VDC, or per-VM) rather than universally. This allows the system to divide the virtualization environment into segments that require continuity protection and those that don't, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining reliability where needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements partial action by allowing customers to choose which specific virtual machines or virtual data centers receive business continuity protection. This selective approach avoids the complexity of implementing continuity services across the entire infrastructure while still providing reliability improvements to critical workloads.
2Reliability
If failover capabilities are implemented across multiple geographic sites, then disaster recovery capability is improved, but infrastructure cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies universality by designing the failover system to operate across multiple geographic sites with a unified management approach. The same virtualization and failover mechanisms work consistently across different locations, allowing the infrastructure to serve multiple purposes (primary and secondary sites) without proportionally increasing complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements copying by creating virtual copies of virtual machines and virtual data centers at secondary geographic sites. These copies can be activated during disasters, providing recovery capability without requiring entirely separate infrastructure systems at each location.
3Adaptability or versatility
If selective failover is enabled on a per-customer, per-VDC, or per-VM basis, then service customization is improved, but management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies self-service by enabling customers to autonomously configure and manage their own failover preferences at different levels (per-customer, per-VDC, or per-VM). This customer-controlled approach allows high customization without proportionally increasing provider management complexity, as the system provides self-service interfaces for configuration.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamics by allowing failover configurations to be flexibly adjusted at multiple hierarchical levels. Customers can dynamically change their protection scope and preferences based on changing business needs, with the system adapting to these changes without requiring complete reconfiguration of the underlying infrastructure.
4Reliability
If data replication is implemented between primary and secondary sites, then recovery point objective is improved, but network bandwidth consumption and system overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies periodic action by implementing data replication that operates in scheduled intervals or triggered events rather than continuous real-time synchronization. This periodic approach achieves acceptable recovery point objectives while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption compared to continuous replication.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local quality by allowing different replication frequencies and methods for different virtual machines or data centers based on their specific recovery requirements. Critical workloads receive more frequent replication (better RPO) while less critical workloads use less intensive replication, optimizing overall network bandwidth usage.
Data Source
AI summary
Business continuity services in a data processing environment where a service provider offers virtual data center services to numerous customers.