Adaptive resource management for instantly provisioning test environments via a sandbox service

US11256607B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC · US

Inventors

• Raj Moizbhai Dhrolia · Redmond, US
• Jianfeng Cai · Redmond, US
• Nir Zvi Yurman · Redmond, US
• Sophie Dasinger · Cambridge, US
• Peter Kenneth Harwood · Bellevue, US
• Jeffrey E. Steinbok · Redmond, US
• Peter Erling Hauge · Marysville, US
• Nicola Greene Alfeo · Seattle, US
• Sandeep Kumar · Cupertino, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 18, 2021
• Grant date: Feb 22, 2022
• Expiry date: Jan 18, 2041

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F2221/2111
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Disclosed herein is a system for providing a test environment, composed of one or more virtual machines, to a developer instantly in response to a checkout request from the developer. To do this, a sandbox service implements a smart, tiered approach to creating and provisioning virtual machines that compose the test environments. The approach is flexible and elastic in nature, so that the developers do not have to wait an extended period of time for a test environment, yet the costs associated with configuring the virtual machines (e.g., storage and compute costs) are minimized. For example, the sandbox service can use historical data to predict a number of checkout requests expected for a first time interval (e.g., one day), a second time interval (e.g., thirty minutes), and a third time interval (e.g., five minutes). The sandbox service can then configure virtual machines into different states based on the predicted numbers.