VM Instance Placement Policies for Cloud Capacity
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Solution Overview
Problem
As data centers scale, managing and provisioning physical computing resources becomes increasingly complex, and customers lack control over the placement of their virtual machine instances within service provider networks, which can lead to insufficient capacity and correlated hardware failures.
Innovation Solution
A service provider network allows customers to reserve virtual machines with specified location policies, including instance proximity and cotenant requirements, and employs a capacity management service to ensure sufficient resources are available by migrating instances and adding hardware as needed to honor these policies.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If service provider networks allow customers to specify location policies for virtual machine instances, then customer control over instance placement is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a capacity management service as an intermediary between customers and the physical computing infrastructure. This service layer handles the complexity of location policy enforcement, instance placement decisions, and capacity tracking, while presenting a simplified interface to customers. The capacity management service translates customer location policies into concrete placement decisions without exposing the underlying system complexity.
2Reliability
If capacity management service migrates instances to honor location policies, then reliability of reserved instances is improved, but productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The capacity management service performs preliminary actions by proactively monitoring capacity availability and pre-positioning instances in locations that will satisfy future location policy requirements. When capacity becomes available, the service immediately migrates instances to honor location policies without waiting for customer requests, thus ensuring reliability while minimizing the impact on productivity through automated, background operations.
3Reliability
If service provider network adds hardware to ensure sufficient capacity, then reliability is improved, but loss of substance increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements universal hardware resources that can serve multiple purposes and multiple customers. The capacity management service dynamically allocates and shares physical computing resources across different customers and workloads based on demand and location policy requirements. This multi-functional approach ensures sufficient capacity for reserved instances while maximizing hardware utilization and avoiding unnecessary hardware additions.
Data Source
AI summary
Apparatus and method are described that relate to reserved virtual machine instances and location policies. Customers of a provider network can reserve one or more reserved virtual machine instances in a reservation and also specify a location policy for the reservation. The location policy provides restrictions as to which hardware may or may not be used to launch the reserved instances and/or how close together the hardware should or should not be to launch the instances of the reservation. The location policies afford customers some degree of control over which hardware is used by the provider network to launch the instances. As such, customers can help control increase security and/or reduce latency of their instances, or control other aspects of their instances.