{
  "patent_number": "US 9075661",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Cloud Systems Automatically Assign Virtual Machines to Servers",
  "original_title": "Placing objects on hosts using hard and soft constraints",
  "summary": "A method for cloud services to automatically choose the best server for a task by filtering out impossible options and then ranking the remaining ones.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes an automated system for managing cloud infrastructure, such as assigning virtual machines or databases to physical servers. It uses a two-step filtering process: first, it applies 'hard constraints' to disqualify any server that cannot physically or logically handle the task (like a server that is already full or lacks the required hardware). Second, it applies 'soft constraints' to rank the remaining servers based on performance preferences, such as spreading out workloads to avoid bottlenecks. This ensures that redundant services are placed on different physical machines, preventing a single hardware failure from taking down an entire application.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover manual placement of objects by a human administrator.",
    "Does not cover systems that rely solely on a single-step selection process without distinguishing between hard and soft constraints.",
    "Does not cover the internal logic of how a virtual machine operates once it is placed on a host.",
    "Does not cover hardware-level circuit switching or physical network cabling."
  ],
  "filed": "2010-10-20",
  "granted": "2015-07-07",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/microsoft-technology-licensing-llc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Erick Raymundo Lerma",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/erick-raymundo-lerma"
    },
    {
      "name": "Patrick Simek",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/patrick-simek"
    },
    {
      "name": "Dan Rosenthal",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/dan-rosenthal"
    },
    {
      "name": "Marc Keith Windle",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/marc-keith-windle"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alexander Hopmann",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/alexander-hopmann"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 3,
  "tags": [
    "software",
    "telecommunications",
    "ai_ml"
  ],
  "abstract": "Objects are placed on hosts using hard constraints and soft constraints. The objects to be placed on the host may be many different types of objects. For example, the objects to place may include tenants in a database, virtual machines on a physical machine, databases on a virtual machine, tenants in directory forests, tenants in farms, and the like. When determining a host for an object, a pool of hosts is filtered through a series of hard constraints. The remaining pool of hosts is further filtered through soft constraints to help in selection of a host. A host is then chosen from the remaining hosts.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9075661/hyper-v-virtualization",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9075661/hyper-v-virtualization/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US9075661",
  "relatedPatents": []
}