FAST PROVISIONING SERVICE FOR CLOUD COMPUTING

1 . A cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform physical element, comprising:

a processing component supplying the computational capacity for a platform element, comprising one or more processing elements, memory and I/O subsystems;

a storage component utilizing commodity disk drives and comprised of one or more physical storage devices; and

a network component providing a high speed connection among processing elements and the processing component to storage components.

2 . A cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform, comprising:

a physical layer component supplying the computational capacity for a platform element, comprising one or more processing elements, memory and I/O subsystems and high speed network devices;

a virtualization layer component comprising a system virtualization element, a storage virtualization element, and a network virtualization element; and

a service container level comprising a collection of one or more virtual appliances containing applications and services and a communication fabric accessing services.

3 . The cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform of claim 3 where the processing elements in the physical layer are pooled to increase the capacity of the resources being virtualized.

4 . A cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-Service hardware platform system, comprising one or more of the units in claim 3 , interconnected via the internet or an intranet using standard networking protocols.

5 . The cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform of claim 3 where the processing elements used by the one or more virtual appliances are pooled.

6 . The cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform of claim 3 where the storage used by the one or more virtual appliances is clustered.

7 . The cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service hardware platform of claim 3 where network resources teamed.

The cloud-based system of claim 5 with an intelligent DNS system to (i) minimize the network distance between a client and a cloudbank resident resource and (ii) to avoid giving a client the address of a “dead” resource.

Applications are provided in the form of an appliance containing an image of an operating system.

5 . A fast provisioning system for creating an infrastructure-as-a-service virtual computing platform, comprising:

a graphical user interface for creating computing resources;

an image creation mechanism a resource creation module [chef server with roles, cookbooks and recipes for creating particular types of resources (OVF image?)]; and

a service container module comprising a collection of one or more virtual appliances containing applications and services and a communication fabric accessing services.

8 . A fast provisioning system for creating an infrastructure-as-a-service virtual computing platform, comprising:

a graphical user interface for creating computing resources;

a resource creation module that produces

a first prompt including a listing of one or more instruction sets for a virtual machine; and

a second prompt including a listing of one or more roles for a virtual machine, the resource creation module receiving responses from the first prompt and the second prompt and creating a virtual machine in response to the response to the first prompt and the response to the second prompt.

9 . The fast provisioning system of claim 8 wherein the virtual machine created is provided with a domain name by a domain name provisioning module.

10 . The fast provisioning system of claim 9 wherein the domain name provisioning module assigns a domain name to a virtual machine created by the resource creation module.

11 . The fast provisioning system of claim 9 wherein the domain name provisioning module assigns a domain name automatically to a created virtual machine.

12 . The fast provisioning system of claim 9 wherein the domain name provisioning module includes a domain name management tool to minimize the network distance between a client and a cloudbank resident resource.

13 . The fast provisioning system of claim 9 wherein the domain name provisioning module includes a domain name management tool to prevent deployment of an address to a nonfunctioning resource.

14 . The fast provisioning system of claim 9 wherein the resource creation module stores a number of combinations of roles and instruction sets preconfigured as virtual machines.

15 . A method for fast provisioning of cloud based systems including:

prompting the selection of one or more instruction sets for a virtual machine from a first list;

receiving a selection from the first list;

prompting the selection of one or more roles for a virtual machine from a second list;

receiving a selection from the second list;

creating a resource in response to the selection from the first list and the selection of the second list; and

assigning a domain name to the resource.

16 . The method of claim 15 wherein the method is carried out using processors that can be shared with other created resources.

17 . The method of claim 15 wherein a plurality of resources are formulated, the plurality of resources sharing a processor.

18 . The method of claim 15 wherein a plurality of resources are formulated, the plurality of resources sharing a storage device.

19 . The method of claim 15 wherein a plurality of resources are formulated, the plurality of resources sharing a database.

20 . A machine-readable medium that provides instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

prompting the selection of one or more instruction sets for a virtual machine from a first list;

receiving a selection from the first list;

prompting the selection of one or more roles for a virtual machine from a second list;

receiving a selection from the second list;

creating a resource in response to the selection from the first list and the selection of the second list; and

assigning a domain name to the resource.