Ephemeral Infrastructure Resource Tagging and Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional IT management systems face challenges in dynamically tracking and managing infrastructure resources in ephemeral computing environments, where resources are frequently provisioned and de-provisioned, and services are scaled elastically, making it difficult to maintain a coherent view of resource allocation and service delivery over time.
Innovation Solution
A system that monitors provisioning changes on infrastructure resources, tags performance data with a service name and instance identifier, and stores this data in a relational database, enabling a time series view of service performance and resource allocation, even as resources shift between primary and backup roles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional IT management systems are used to track infrastructure resources, then static infrastructure can be managed effectively, but dynamic ephemeral environments cannot be tracked coherently
Solution Approach 1:
The system transitions from static resource tracking to dynamic tracking by continuously monitoring provisioning changes and updating tags in real-time. The monitoring mechanism polls infrastructure resources and detects changes in provisioning state, enabling the system to adapt to ephemeral environments where resources are frequently created and destroyed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a temporal dimension to resource tracking by introducing timestamps to tag updates. This allows the system to reconstruct the history of resource allocation and maintain coherence over time, transforming static snapshots into a time-series view of infrastructure state.
2Productivity
If resources are frequently provisioned and de-provisioned for elastic scaling, then service scalability is improved, but tracking resource allocation becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The monitoring mechanism establishes a feedback loop that continuously polls infrastructure resources and detects provisioning changes. This feedback enables automatic detection of resource allocation changes, eliminating the need for manual tracking and reducing the complexity of managing elastic scaling.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service tracking by having infrastructure resources report their own provisioning state through polling. Each resource's state is automatically discovered and tagged without requiring external manual intervention, simplifying the tracking process despite frequent provisioning changes.
3Measurement precision
If manual hand-assembly is used to piece together infrastructure pictures, then detailed control is achieved, but time consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The monitoring mechanism automatically discovers infrastructure resources and their provisioning states through systematic polling. This self-service approach eliminates manual data collection while maintaining precise tracking of resource allocation, as the system autonomously gathers and organizes infrastructure information.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces manual mechanical assembly of infrastructure data with automated electronic monitoring and tagging systems. The monitoring mechanism electronically polls resources and automatically tags performance data, substituting human labor with automated processes that maintain precision while reducing time consumption.
Data Source
AI summary
A system executes a method that includes monitoring the systems that provide the provisioning of computing infrastructure resources to provide services for services executing on the resources, to monitor provisioning changes on the infrastructure resources. It further uses the information gathered by the monitoring of the provisioning resource(s) to provide a tag, which denotes the current assignment of each resource with a service name and an instance of the service associated with the resource identifier and a time stamp, and storing this a relational database, as a part of the record of the state, or performance data for that resource during that time interval.