US 6,460,082 B1Granted

Management of service-oriented resources across heterogeneous media servers using homogenous service units and service signatures to configure the media servers

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorsLeon L. Lumelsky, Nelson R. Manohar

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Abstract

A system and method for configuring service-oriented resources suitable for the resource management in a media server and more particularly, for resource configuration across distributed media servers. Heterogeneous media serves are configured in terms of homogeneous service-oriented resource units each used to represent a resource allocation commitment from a participating server for provisioning a particular media service on demand. A service unit associated with each different service supported by a media server represents an envelope of resource requirements as needed for provisioning a service. The method includes generating a resource envelope, and additionally compensating, at a media server, for differences between true resource utilization and resource envelope projected by a service unit. Each service unit also comprises a signature representing metadata used to control access to a service unit by defining rights, privileges, and characteristics of services that may use that particular server unit.

Claims24

Dependent claims

A system for administering resources in heterogeneous server devices included in a distributed wide area computer network, said resources including media content and service resources for providing said media content to clients, said system comprising:

a) for each of said server devices, a first resource pool comprising resources for providing media services and capable of being locally administered;
and a second resource pool comprising resources for providing media services, and capable of being remotely administered;
each of said media services having an associated homogeneous service unit comprising a resource envelop representing a commitment of resources for provisioning a media service by a particular server device, and a metadata construct providing information for characterizing types of services that may make use of the service unit and for customizing said commitment of resources when provisioning a media service;
and
b) an administrator device for receiving client requests and determining a server device to provide a requested service, said administrator device accessing said homogeneous service units and comparing said homogeneous service units of associated server devices according to a predetermined criteria provided in an associated metadata construct to determine said server device, whereby said homogeneous server units provide a basis for integrating management of services and resources of heterogeneous server devices in said distributed wide area network.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.