Trust Overlay Controller for Disaggregated Infrastructure

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Solution Overview

Problem

Current disaggregated IT infrastructure lacks a mechanism to specify and provision trust characteristics, such as security and immutability, when deploying applications, as existing systems cannot effectively examine trust requirements and allocate appropriate hardware and software solutions.

Innovation Solution

A trust overlay approach is implemented, using a trust overlay controller that gathers and compares trust characteristics of hardware and software components with application trust policies, selecting and forming compute nodes that meet these requirements, and deploying appropriate overlays to ensure trusted infrastructure.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If disaggregated IT components are grouped into optimized computing packages, then infrastructure flexibility and resource utilization are improved, but the ability to specify and provision trust characteristics is lost

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveinfrastructure flexibilityVSAvoidtrust characteristic provisioning

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces a trust overlay controller as an intermediary layer between the disaggregated infrastructure components and the applications. This controller manages trust characteristics by examining application trust requirements and provisioning appropriate hardware and software components from the disaggregated pool, thereby maintaining both infrastructure flexibility and trust characteristic provisioning capability

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent segments the infrastructure into distinct trust overlay layers that can be independently managed and configured. These overlay layers separate the trust management functionality from the underlying disaggregated components, allowing trust characteristics to be specified and provisioned without compromising the flexibility of the disaggregated infrastructure

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

2Productivity

If existing systems deploy applications on disaggregated infrastructure, then deployment speed is improved, but trust requirements cannot be examined and satisfied

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedeployment speedVSAvoidtrust policy compliance

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The trust overlay controller performs preliminary examination of application trust requirements before deployment. By analyzing trust policies in advance and pre-configuring appropriate trust overlays and components, the system ensures trust compliance is established prior to application deployment, maintaining fast deployment speeds while satisfying trust requirements

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements feedback mechanisms where the trust overlay controller continuously monitors deployed applications and their trust requirements. This feedback loop ensures that trust policies are examined and satisfied by adjusting and reconfiguring trust overlays as needed, maintaining both deployment efficiency and trust compliance

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS9781163B2Trust overlays for disaggregated infrastructures

Publication Date: 2017.10.03 EMC IP HLDG CO LLC

AI summary

Trust characteristics attributable to components associated with a disaggregated infrastructure environment are obtained. A trust policy of an application to be hosted in the disaggregated infrastructure environment is obtained. The trust characteristics are compared to the trust policy. One or more of the components associated with the disaggregated infrastructure environment are selected based on the comparison step. A compute node is formed from the selected components.