VM Placement Scheduler with Situational Enforcement Policies

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing cloud computing environments lack flexibility in enforcing collocation rules for virtual machine placement on physical hosts, leading to inefficient resource utilization and varying workload management needs.

Innovation Solution

A scheduler mechanism that allows system administrators to set situational enforcement policies for collocation rules, enabling hard or soft enforcement of affinity and anti-affinity rules based on specific situations, thereby optimizing virtual machine placement across physical hosts.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If hard enforcement of collocation rules is applied, then rule compliance is improved, but resource utilization efficiency deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecollocation rule complianceVSAvoidresource utilization efficiency

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The system dynamically adjusts enforcement strictness based on situational context. The scheduler evaluates current system state and workload characteristics to determine whether to apply hard or soft enforcement, making the collocation rule enforcement flexible rather than static. This resolves the contradiction by allowing strict enforcement when needed for compliance while permitting relaxed enforcement when resource utilization is the priority.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

Solution Approach 2:

The enforcement policy parameter is changed based on situational factors. The system transitions between different enforcement modes (hard/soft) by modifying the enforcement parameter, allowing the same collocation rules to be applied with different strictness levels depending on system conditions, thereby balancing compliance requirements with resource utilization efficiency.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Productivity

If soft enforcement of collocation rules is applied, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but rule compliance deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveresource utilization efficiencyVSAvoidcollocation rule compliance

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system dynamically switches between soft and hard enforcement based on real-time evaluation of system state and workload characteristics. When resource utilization is critical, soft enforcement is applied to maximize efficiency, while when compliance is paramount, hard enforcement is activated, making the system adaptive to varying operational requirements.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

Solution Approach 2:

The enforcement strictness parameter is adjusted based on situational context. The scheduler modifies the enforcement parameter to transition between soft and hard modes, allowing the system to optimize for either resource utilization or rule compliance depending on current priorities and system conditions.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

3Device complexity

If uniform enforcement policy is applied to all virtual machines, then system simplicity is maintained, but flexibility in workload management deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveenforcement policy managementVSAvoidworkload management flexibility

Core Design Contradiction:

Device complexityVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The system applies different enforcement policies to different virtual machines or workload groups based on their specific requirements. Rather than uniform enforcement, the scheduler evaluates each workload's characteristics and applies appropriate enforcement strictness locally, allowing critical workloads to receive hard enforcement while non-critical workloads receive soft enforcement.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

Solution Approach 2:

The system segments workloads into different groups or categories based on their enforcement requirements. By dividing the workload management into segments with different enforcement policies, the system achieves both simplicity (through standardized segments) and flexibility (through differentiated policies for different segments).

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentUS10691312B2Placement of virtual machines on physical hosts based on collocation rules

Publication Date: 2020.06.23 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION

AI summary

Placement of virtual machines on physical hosts is based on collocation rules with situational enforcement policies set by a system administrator to increase flexibility in rule enforcement and to more efficiently utilize system resources. A scheduler mechanism allows a system administrator to select different collocation rules and situational enforcement policies for a group of virtual machines. The scheduler mechanism utilizes the collocation rules and the situational enforcement policies to place the virtual machines.