TRANSFORMATION OF DISCRETE SERVICE EVENTS INTO CONTINUOUS, PERIODIC DATA FOR METERING AND BILLING OF CLOUD SERVICES

摘要

A cloud computing system includes services that provide virtual cloud computing resources. The service publishes service events that are transformed into periodic rating data as per centralized, pluggable, service-specific business rules. The cloud computing system includes a metering service that reduces network traffic for billing using a carry-forward mechanism that remembers a last-known rating state. Anomalies in the last-known state, such as, from lost or duplicate service events, can be detected via a reconciliation protocol between the metering service and cloud computing services.

主权项

1. A method, comprising:
receiving, from a cloud computing service, a first service event indicating a change to an amount of virtual computing resources allocated to a user by the cloud computing service during a first time period; generating first periodic rating data for the first time period based on the received first service event; generating second periodic rating data for a second time period based on a last known state of the virtual computing resources according to the first service event, the second time period occurring after the first time period; responsive to determining at least one service event was not received during the first time period, requesting a replay of service events from cloud computing service during the first time period; and modifying the first and second periodic rating data based on the replay of service events.