US 11,755,363 B2
Framework for workflow extensibility in a cloud computing system
Jeffrey Moroski, South Abington Township, PA (US); Praagyan Pokharel, Somerville, MA (US); Colm Caffrey, Palo Alto, CA (US); and Ishita Saxena, Palo Alto, CA (US)
Assigned to VMWARE, INC., Palo Alto, CA (US)
Filed by VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US)
Filed on Dec. 19, 2016, as Appl. No. 15/383,591.
Prior Publication US 2018/0173561 A1, Jun. 21, 2018
Int. Cl. G06F 9/48 (2006.01); H04L 67/10 (2022.01); G06F 9/50 (2006.01); G06F 9/455 (2018.01)
CPC G06F 9/4843 (2013.01) [G06F 9/45558 (2013.01); G06F 9/4856 (2013.01); G06F 9/5088 (2013.01); H04L 67/10 (2013.01); G06F 9/5038 (2013.01); G06F 2009/4557 (2013.01); G06F 2009/45595 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of extending a cloud director configured to manage a cloud computing system, the method comprising:
receiving requests to register external services with the cloud director, the external services being external to the cloud director, the cloud director configured to execute a workflow to allocate virtual computing resources of the cloud computing system to a user, the workflow including a plurality of phases of execution;
generating phase associations for the external services between the external services and one or more extensible phases of the plurality of phases of execution, each respective phase association of the phase associations being between a respective external service of the external services and a particular extensible phase of the one or more extensible phases, wherein:
each respective phase association of the phase associations is associated with a respective policy that indicates a priority of the respective external service of the external services for the respective phase association with respect to the particular extensible phase to which the respective phase association corresponds;
the one or more extensible phases are for communicating messages with the external services;
the messages are for enabling the external services to access objects managed by the cloud director; and
executing the workflow of the cloud director and, in response to reaching a given extensible phase of the one or more extensible phases in the plurality of phases of execution:
selecting a given external service of the external services based on the priority indicated in the policy of each respective phase association of the phase associations that corresponds to the given extensible phase; and
sending a message from the cloud director to the given external service, the message including information for enabling the given external service to gain access to one or more objects managed by the cloud director.