A cloud management system can be configured to monitor and allocate resources of a cloud computing environment. The cloud management system can be configured to receive a request to instantiate a virtual machine. In order to instantiate the virtual machine, the cloud management system can be configured to determine the current resource usage and available resources of the cloud in order to allocate resources to the requested virtual machine. The cloud management system can be configured to scale the resources of the cloud in the event that resources are not available for a requested virtual machine.

Methods and systems for load balancing in cloud-based networks

Operating profiles for consumers of computing resources may be automatically determined based on an analysis of actual resource usage measurements and other operating metrics. Measurements may be taken while a consumer, such as a virtual machine instance, uses computing resources, such as those provided by a host. A profile may be dynamically determined based on those measurements. Profiles may be generalized such that groups of consumers with similar usage profiles are associated with a single profile. Assignment decisions may be made based on the profiles, and computing resources may be reallocated or oversubscribed if the profiles indicate that the consumers are unlikely to fully utilize the resources reserved for them. Oversubscribed resources may be monitored, and consumers may be transferred to different resource providers if contention for resources is too high.

Automated profiling of resource usage

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for identification and management of cloud-based virtual machines. A user requests the instantiation of a set of virtual machines from a cloud computing environment. A cloud management system requests the resources necessary to build the machines from a set of resource servers. After populating the set of virtual machines from the cloud, the cloud management system inserts a token ID into one of the virtual machines to designate that machine as a management instance. An image of that machine can be stored in the cloud management system to represent the configuration of the set of virtual machines, even when the cloud itself lacks permanent storage. When the user wishes to update the set of virtual machines, the cloud management system can insert another token ID into another virtual machine, reconfigure the software, processing, or other resources of that machine as a revised management instance.

Systems and methods for identification and management of cloud-based virtual machines

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for testing and evaluating software in the network cloud. A developer or other operator may wish to debug, modify, or update a set of test software based on testing of that software. The developer can instantiate a set of virtual servers or other test beds in the cloud, and install the subject software to the virtual test beds. A test management module can monitor the execution of the set of test software on the set of virtual test beds, to detect execution faults, measure processing performance, stress-test the software with predetermined data inputs, and manage other aspects of software life cycle development. The test management module can provide or access a set of application programming interfaces to a set of software tools external to the cloud, so that the set of test software can be tested and optimized using external programming development tools.

Systems and methods for software test management in cloud-based network

A cloud marketplace system can be configured to communicate with multiple cloud computing environments in order to ascertain the details for the resources and services provided by the cloud computing environments. The cloud marketplace system can be configured receive a request for information pertaining to the resources or services provided by or available in the cloud computing environments. The cloud marketplace system can be configured to generate a marketplace report detailing the resource and service data matching the request. The cloud marketplace system can be configured to utilize the resource and service data to provide migration services for virtual machines initiated in the cloud computing environments.

Methods and systems for providing a marketplace for cloud-based networks

A virtual machine management/monitoring service can be configured to automatically monitor and implement user-defined (e.g., administrator-defined) configuration policies with respect to virtual machine and application resource utilization. In one implementation, the monitoring service can be extended to provide user-customized alerts based on various particularly defined events that occur (e.g., some memory or processing threshold) during operation of the virtual machines and/or application execution. The user can also specify particularly tailored solutions, which can include automatically reallocating physical host resources without additional user input on a given physical host, or moving/adding virtual machines on other physical hosts. For example, the monitoring service can be configured so that, upon identifying that a virtual machine's memory and processing resources are maxed out and/or growing, the monitoring service adds memory or processing resources for the virtual machine, or adds a new virtual machine to handle the load for the application program.

Optimizing application performance on virtual machines automatically with end-user preferences

Configuration drift refers to changes made over time that cause a computer or service to deviate from a desired configuration. Configuration drift of a group of machines can be managed by defining configuration intent. Intent is defined by defining a configuration baseline comprised of a collection of related configuration rules. Configuration rules include settings, and targets which can be any managed entity that enables reporting of non-compliance at a more granular level. A configuration baseline can be completed by reading configuration rules from one or more well-configured computers. Configuration drift is assessed by comparing actual values to the configuration baseline values and is reported at a managed entity level instead of at a machine level. Remediation, returning the computer to a state of compliance with the configuration baseline, can be performed on demand. Remediations performed over time are retained and applied to a new instance of the service to eliminate configuration drift on the new instance.

Alan H. Goodman

Papers

Optimizing application performance on virtual machines automatically with end-user preferences

Effectively managing configuration drift