Virtual Instance State Recovery via Activity Chain Archiving
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern cloud-based and virtual computing environments lack the ability to fully audit and recover historic states of dynamic resources such as virtual machines and containers, leading to lost data and inability to relaunch deallocated instances, which hinders forensic analysis and compliance checks.
Innovation Solution
The system archives environment properties and activities of virtual computing instances, allowing for the reinstantiation of instances to their previous states by storing them in a sandbox environment and compressing changes, enabling on-demand recovery and live checks without disrupting production environments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If virtual computing instances are deallocated to free resources for production use, then resource availability for production environments is improved, but the ability to recover and audit historic states is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary archiving of virtual computing instance states before deallocation occurs. By capturing environment properties, configuration data, and activity chains in advance and storing them in long-term storage, the system ensures that historic state information is preserved before resources are freed for production use.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates copies of virtual computing instance states and stores them separately in long-term storage infrastructure. These copies include environment properties, configuration data, and activity chains, allowing the original instances to be deallocated while preserving recoverable state information for future audit and recovery operations.
2Reliability
If complete state archiving is performed for all virtual computing instances, then recovery capability is improved, but storage requirements and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential state information needed for recovery from virtual computing instances. By identifying and archiving specific environment properties, configuration data, and activity chains rather than complete instance states, the system reduces storage requirements and simplifies the archiving infrastructure while maintaining recovery capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies different archiving strategies to different types of virtual computing instances based on their recovery importance. By categorizing instances and applying selective archiving policies, the system optimizes storage resource allocation and reduces overall system complexity while ensuring critical instances remain recoverable.
3Measurement precision
If real-time monitoring and archiving are implemented for all instances, then audit capability is improved, but performance of production environments deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary archiving layer that captures virtual computing instance state information without directly interfering with production workloads. By using lightweight agents or hooks that operate at the boundary between production systems and archiving infrastructure, the system enables comprehensive monitoring while isolating performance impact from critical production environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements periodic archiving of virtual computing instance states at strategically chosen intervals rather than continuous real-time capture. By archiving states at key transition points such as instance creation, modification, or deallocation events, the system achieves sufficient audit capability while minimizing the performance overhead on production environments.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for enabling recovery of deactivated virtual computing instances that were previously instantiated in a dynamic virtualized computing environment. Techniques include identifying a status change for a virtual computing instance; archiving a plurality of environment properties representing a chain of activities comprising a plurality of activities executed by a processor of the virtual computing instance; and reactivating the virtual computing instance. Reactivating the virtual computing instance may include reinstantiation of the virtual computing instance based on the plurality of environment properties and chain of activities such that the virtual computing instance is reinstantiated to a state at a time of the status change.