Patent ID: 8572612
Filing Date: 2013-10-29
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of autonomic scaling of virtual machines in a cloud computing environment, the cloud computing environment comprising a plurality of virtual machines (‘VMs’), the VMs comprising modules of automated computing machinery installed upon cloud computers disposed within a data center, the cloud computing environment further comprising a cloud operating system and a data center administration server operably coupled to the VMs, the method comprising: deploying, by the cloud operating system, an instance of a VM, including flagging the instance of a VM for autonomic scaling including termination and executing a data processing workload on the instance of a VM; monitoring, by the cloud operating system, one or more operating characteristics of the instance of the VM; deploying, by the cloud operating system, an additional instance of the VM if a value of an operating characteristic exceeds a first predetermined threshold value, including executing a portion of the data processing workload on the additional instance of the VM; and terminating operation of the additional instance of the VM if a value of an operating characteristic declines below a second predetermined threshold value; wherein the cloud operating system comprises a module of automated computing machinery, further comprising a self service portal and a deployment engine, and deploying an instance of a VM further comprises: passing by the self service portal user specifications for the instance of a VM to the deployment engine; implementing and passing to the data center administration server, by the deployment engine, a VM template with the user specifications; and calling, by the data center administration server, a hypervisor on a cloud computer to install the VM template as an instance of a VM on the cloud computer.