Patent ID: 11900139
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A method of executing workflows in virtual machines that have been deployed to implement virtual network functions of a network service, wherein the virtual machines are running in a plurality of data centers each having a cloud management server running a cloud computing management software to provision virtual infrastructure resources thereof for a plurality of tenants, said method comprising:
in response to receiving at a data center a request to execute a workflow, wherein a virtual network function identifier, a workflow execution method, and a pointer to instructions of the workflow are received with the request as parameters of the request:
identifying using the virtual network function identifier, a virtual machine that has been deployed in the data center to implement one of the virtual network functions corresponding to the virtual network function identifier, in which the instructions of the workflow are to be executed; and
issuing a command to the virtual machine to execute the instructions of the workflow, according to the workflow execution method,
wherein the virtual machine, in response to the issued command, executes the instructions of the workflow that have been retrieved using the pointer, and
wherein the workflow execution method is an SSH (secure shell) script method that includes the steps of:
retrieving the instructions of the workflow using the pointer to the instructions of the workflow;
injecting the instructions of the workflow into the virtual machine; and
instructing the virtual machine to execute the instructions.