| 主权项 |
1. A method of collecting deployment information from a user for a multi-tier computer system including a plurality of inter-dependent servers comprising:
receiving a deployment type and a deployment size of the multi-tier computer system from the user at a terminal; determining automatically the number of servers required and characteristics of unmodified system resources; identifying automatically by a host computer a set of self-contained virtual appliances, each of which provides its own operating system environment, by function based upon the deployment size and type received from the user and based upon a predetermined deployment description file wherein each virtual appliance of the set of virtual appliances incorporates a set of interface protocols for at least some of the plurality of servers defining how each server interacts with other servers of the plurality of servers and identifying automatically a set of mandatory servers based upon a function of the multi-tier system and deployment type selected by the user where each of the mandatory servers serves a predetermined function within the multi-tiered system; prompting the user at the terminal for a name for each identified virtual appliance based upon the deployment description file; collecting automatically by the host computer network information of each virtual appliance based upon the name; and generating automatically by the host computer a deployment configuration file for the set of virtual appliances, by prompting the user for information about the multi-tier computer system with questions automatically formulated based upon the deployment description file in conjunction with user responses, the deployment configuration file containing a set of interface protocols, collected from the multi-tier computer system for at least some of the plurality of servers, that define how the servers interact within the multi-tier computer system and defining the multi-tier computer system without entry of duplicate data by the user and which enables the interface protocols to be unincorporated into respective virtual appliances for installation of respective servers into the multi-tier computer system and thereby enabling the plurality of servers to be automatically individually installed by the virtual appliances without regard for local security and network settings. |
