Consolidated Billing for Logical and Physical Availability Zones
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Solution Overview
Problem
Provider networks face challenges in aligning the costs of computing resources with revenues generated from diverse user groups, making it difficult to leverage volume discounts and capacity reservation schemes effectively, especially when managing resources across different physical and logical availability zones.
Innovation Solution
Implementing consolidated billing techniques and resource management systems that allow clients to reserve computing resources based on logical or physical availability zones, enabling flexible scaling and cost optimization by aggregating usage across linked user accounts and applying volume discounts and capacity reservations accordingly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If multiple user accounts are grouped into a single larger account for resource management, then ease of operation and resource control are improved, but difficulty in aligning costs with revenues and leveraging volume discounts increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the billing and resource management system into two distinct layers: a consolidated billing account level for leveraging volume discounts and capacity reservations, and individual user account levels for independent resource control. This segmentation allows each layer to fulfill its specific function without interference, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and cost alignment complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary billing management system that sits between the consolidated billing account and individual user accounts. This intermediary automatically allocates costs, applies volume discounts, and manages capacity reservations across multiple user accounts, eliminating the manual complexity of cost alignment while preserving independent resource control.
2Reliability
If resources are managed across multiple physical availability zones for redundancy and flexibility, then reliability and adaptability are improved, but device complexity and management difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal resource management interface that abstracts the underlying physical availability zone infrastructure. Users interact with a single unified system that automatically handles resource allocation across multiple physical zones, providing multi-functionality (single interface for multiple zones) and eliminating the need for separate management procedures for each zone.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements self-service automation where the resource management infrastructure automatically monitors, allocates, and balances resources across physical availability zones without manual intervention. This self-service capability maintains reliability through automatic failover and load balancing while eliminating management complexity for users.
3Reliability
If capacity reservations are made for guaranteed resource availability, then reliability is improved, but loss of flexibility and adaptability increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic capacity reservation system that automatically adjusts reservation levels based on real-time demand patterns, usage metrics, and available capacity. The system transitions between reserved and on-demand capacity dynamically, maintaining reliability through automatic scaling while preserving flexibility through adaptive resource allocation that responds to changing conditions.
Data Source
AI summary
A provider network may implement resource management and billing for logical and physical availability zones. Consolidated billing techniques may be applied to the aggregate usage of multiple linked user accounts. A billing setting may indicate whether consolidated billing is performed according to resource consumption in logical availability zones or physical availability zones. Mappings to physical availability zones may be provided to linked user accounts so that computing resources may be consumed according to either logical or physical availability zones. Capacity reservations for computing resources for a particular physical availability zone may be made available to each of the linked user accounts for consumption.