Tagging Physical Resources In A Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract

A cloud system may create physical resource tags to store relationships between cloud computing offerings, such as computing service offerings, storage offerings, and network offerings, and the specific physical resources in the cloud computing environment. Cloud computing offerings may be presented to cloud customers, the offerings corresponding to various combinations of computing services, storage, networking, and other hardware or software resources. After a customer selects one or more cloud computing offerings, a cloud resource manager or other component within the cloud infrastructure may retrieve a set of tags and determine a set of physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings. The physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings may be subsequently used to provision and create the new virtual machine and its operating environment.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . One or more non-transitory computer-readable media, storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause a system to:
 receive a request to create a virtual machine in a cloud-computing environment;   receive a selection of a virtual machine offering associated with the request to create the virtual machine, the virtual machine offering comprising a set of characteristics of a host computing device for the virtual machine, and a set of characteristics of one or more network elements to provide networking capabilities for the virtual machine;   in response to the selection of the virtual machine offering, access a storage system storing predetermined associations between virtual machine offerings and physical resources in the cloud-computing environment;   retrieve, from the storage system, a tag identifying a physical resource of the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment, the tag being retrieved based on a predetermined association between the physical resource and the selected virtual machine offering; and   provision the virtual machine using the physical resource.   
     
     
         2 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the predetermined associations between the virtual machine offerings and the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment are established before receiving the request to create the virtual machine. 
     
     
         3 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the tag identifying the physical resource of the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment comprises an electronic label associated with the physical resource. 
     
     
         4 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 3 , wherein the electronic label associated with the physical resource comprises an entry in a table storing the predetermined associations between the virtual machine offerings and the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment. 
     
     
         5 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the tag identifying the physical resource of the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment further identifies a different physical resource of the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment. 
     
     
         6 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 5 , wherein the tag identifying the physical resource and the different physical resource identifies one or more hardware characteristics, and the physical resource and the different physical resource have the one or more hardware characteristics identified in the tag. 
     
     
         7 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , wherein a different tag identifies the physical resource of the physical resources. 
     
     
         8 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the storage system stores the predetermined associations between the virtual machine offerings and the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment in a table comprising associations between tags, the virtual machine offerings, and the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment. 
     
     
         9 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 1 , storing further computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to:
 generate for display one or more predetermined combinations of virtual machine offerings comprising the virtual machine offering, each of the predetermined combinations of virtual machine offerings comprising one or more functional specifications of a virtual machine associated with the respective virtual machine offering.   
     
     
         10 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 9 , wherein the one or more functional specifications of the virtual machine associated with the respective virtual machine offering comprise a processor speed and an amount of memory for a host computing device for the virtual machine associated with the respective virtual machine offering. 
     
     
         11 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 9 , wherein at least one of the predetermined combinations of virtual machine offerings is generated based on input received from a user of the system. 
     
     
         12 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 9 , wherein at least one of the predetermined combinations of virtual machine offerings is generated based on physical resources available in the cloud-computing environment. 
     
     
         13 . One or more non-transitory computer-readable media, storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause a system to:
 receive a request to create a virtual machine in a cloud-computing environment, the request to create the virtual machine identifying one or more requested hardware characteristics for a physical resource running the virtual machine;   access a storage system storing physical resource tags that identify hardware characteristics of physical resources in the cloud-computing environment;   retrieve, from the storage system, a physical resource tag identifying a physical resource of the physical resources in the cloud-computing environment, the physical resource tag being retrieved based on the identified physical resource having the one or more requested hardware characteristics identified in the request to create the virtual machine; and   provision the virtual machine using the physical resource identified by the physical resource tag.   
     
     
         14 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 13 , wherein the physical resource tag identifies a manufacturer of the identified physical resource. 
     
     
         15 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 13 , wherein the physical resource tag identifies a hardware reliability rating of the identified physical resource. 
     
     
         16 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 13 , wherein the physical resource tag identifies a measure of reliability of the identified physical resource. 
     
     
         17 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 13 , wherein the physical resource tag identifies a measure of performance of the identified physical resource. 
     
     
         18 . One or more non-transitory computer-readable media, storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause a system to:
 receive a request to create a virtual machine in a cloud-computing environment;   receive a selection of a cloud computing offering associated with the request;   retrieve from a storage system a physical resource tag associated with the cloud computing offering, the storage system storing a first table containing a set of physical resource tags associated with a set of physical resources in the cloud-computing environment, the storage system storing a second table containing a set of cloud-computing offerings associated with the set of physical resource tags;   identify one or more physical resources associated with the physical resource tag, the one or more physical resources being of the set of physical resources in the cloud-computing environment; and   create the virtual machine, wherein the virtual machine is configured to use the one or more physical resources associated with the physical resource tag.   
     
     
         19 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 18 , storing further computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to:
 determine a plurality of subsets of the one or more physical resources associated with the physical resource tag; and   select a subset of the plurality of subsets for use by the virtual machine based on one or more factors for selecting the one or more physical resources.   
     
     
         20 . The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of  claim 19 , wherein the one or more factors for selecting the one or more physical resources comprise at least one of:
 physical proximity of the one or more physical resources to a different physical resource being used by a device that made the request for the virtual machine, and   current capacity of the one or more physical resources.