Application configuration in a virtual environment

#The subject matter of this invention relates to application configuration, and more specifically to a system and method for configuring applications in a cloud based virtual machine environment.

#Cloud computing continues to grow as a preferred platform for information technology (IT) solutions. For example, cloud computing allows enterprises to scale in or out servers very quickly to adapt to business needs. For instance, thousands of virtual machines (VMs) can be easily provisioned based on pre-built images in minutes. This allows, for example, applications such as Web servers to be provisioned in different data centers during peak times to handle high loads.

#However, one of the challenges with provisioning large scale enterprise applications is that it can be time consuming and error prone to configure the applications consistently. In large scale systems, enterprise applications running on virtual machines have to for example be registered to load balancers, be connected to application servers, be set to cluster and session sharing, etc.

#These and other features of this invention will be more readily understood from the following detailed description of the various aspects of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:

#FIG. 1 shows a virtual configuration management system according to embodiments.

#FIG. 2 shows an overview of capturing virtual configurations according to embodiments.

#The drawings are not necessarily to scale. The drawings are merely schematic representations, not intended to portray specific parameters of the invention. The drawings are intended to depict only typical embodiments of the invention, and therefore should not be considered as limiting the scope of the invention. In the drawings, like numbering represents like elements.

#Referring now to the drawings, FIG. 1 depicts a virtual configuration management system 11 that manages configuration information for applications running in a virtual environment, such as a cloud computing environment or the like. In this embodiment, virtual configuration management system 11 is integrated with a computing platform 10 configured to host a set of virtual machines (VM) 12. Computing platform 10 may for example include a physical machine or set of machines. Each VM 12 includes an application 14, such as a Web server, file or application server, middleware, tools, etc., as well as an associated operating system (OS). A typical VM 12, as shown, includes a virtual central processing unit (CPU), virtual memory, virtual network interface controller (NIC) and virtual disk. Each VM 12 is instantiated with a virtual machine image that is loaded and run on the computing platform 10.

#Computing platform 10 also includes a hypervisor 18 that is responsible for handling services associated with each VM 12. In particular, the hypervisor 18 provides virtual disks and a virtual network to the VM 12. Accordingly, when VM 12 writes/reads data to/from a file system or remote database, hypervisor 18 writes/reads the data to/from a virtual disk or network, which is transparent to the application running on VM 12. Thus, as described herein, hypervisor 18 is also utilized to intercept write/read requests for configuration management purposes.