LOCATION BASED AUTHENTICATION OF USERS TO A VIRTUAL MACHINE IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM

摘要

An apparatus and method uses location based authentication of a user accessing a virtual machine (VM) by using the physical location of the virtual machine as a criteria for the authentication. When a user requires a logical partition to run in a known, specified physical location, the user specifies the physical location when the VM is created. The specified physical location is then incorporated into the user authentication process. Users are challenged and must know the physical location in order to be authenticated to the system. When a “disruptive event” in the cloud environment occurs that necessitates moving the VM to another location, the original physical location is stored so the virtualization manager later can automatically relocate the VM back to its original physical location.

主权项

1. A method for location based authentication comprising:
providing a virtualization manager that provisions virtual machines on a plurality of compute nodes to provide resources to a user; providing a location authentication mechanism that uses location based authentication to access a virtual machine by a user that includes:
requiring a user to provide a physical location of the virtual machine during authentication, where the physical location was determined at a time when the virtual machine was created and provisioned by the virtualization manager;where the user provides an incorrect physical location, denying access to the virtual machine by the user;where the user provides the physical location of the virtual machine, allowing the user to proceed with authentication to gain access to the virtual machine.