Patent ID: 10241782

Abstract:
A method and associated system. A patching schedule is generated by scheduling, in W sequential time windows, P patches applicable to virtual machines in L redundancy groups. Each redundancy group includes virtual machines and independently belongs to a respective software application x of X software applications, wherein P≥1, L≥1, Rm≥1, and X≥1. The L redundancy groups collectively comprise at least 2 virtual machines. The scheduling determines xwmk for T tuples (w, m, k) defined by (w=1, . . . , W) and (m=1, . . . , L) and (k=1, . . . , Rm), by maximizing an objective function subject to constraints. Determining xwmk includes setting xwmk=1 if virtual machine k in redundancy group m is to be patched in time window w or setting xwmk=0 otherwise.