Methods and apparatus for an E-mail-based management interface for virtualized environments

摘要

A server system is configured to provide an e-mail based interface for executing management operations on a virtualized infrastructure which includes a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), underlying host computers, clusters, and/or data centers. Such an interface may be provided in a virtualized infrastructure to enable a system administrator to execute administrative operations remotely from a mobile device without requiring custom installation of an application on the mobile device or a secure connection to the server system. The server system receives e-mails at a pre-determined e-mail address, authenticates the sender of the e-mail, and extracts and executes commands from the e-mail. A number of techniques for validating the e-mail containing server commands may also be provided.

主权项

1. A method of processing commands for a virtual machine (VM) management module managing a virtualized computing environment comprising a plurality of physical host computers executing one or more VMs, comprising:
receiving an e-mail message from a sender, the e-mail message comprising one or more commands for provisioning or migrating the virtual machines of the virtualized computing environment in a first format; parsing the e-mail message to extract the one or more commands; determining whether the e-mail message is a redundant response to a notification issued by the VM management module, wherein the notification indicates a condition associated with the virtualized computing environment has been detected; if the e-mail message is a redundant response, then: determining whether the extracted commands conflict with one or more commands received by the VM management module in a previous response to the detected condition; if the extracted commands do not conflict with the commands received in the previous response, translating the extracted commands from the first format to a second format executable by the VM management module and transmitting the translated commands to the VM management module for execution therein; and if the extracted commands conflict with the commands received in the previous response, ignoring the e-mail message; and if the e-mail message is not a redundant response, thentranslating the extracted commands from the first format to the second format and transmitting the translated commands to the VM management module for execution therein.