INSTANTIATING A TOPOLOGY-BASED SERVICE USING A BLUEPRINT AS INPUT

1 . A method of instantiating a topology-based service using a blueprint as input, comprising:

with a topology designer, modeling the blueprint as a topology;

with a resource offering manager, associating a number of policies and a number of lifecycle management actions (LCMAs) with a number of nodes within the topology; and

with a lifecycle management (LCM) engine, instantiating the topology based on the policies and LCMAs.

2 . The method of claim 1 , in which modeling a blueprint as a topology comprises:

deriving a number of containment relationships from the blueprint, the containment relationships defining a number of hierarchical relationships between a number of objects within the blueprint.

3 . The method of claim 1 , in which modeling a blueprint as a topology comprises:

deriving a number of temporal dependency relationships from the blueprint, the temporal dependency relationships defining a number of provisioning relationships between a number of objects within the blueprint.

4 . The method of claim 1 , in which modeling a blueprint as a topology comprises:

deriving a number of additional relationships from the blueprint, the additional relationships defining a number of relationships derived from a number of containment relationships, temporal dependency relationships, a number of objects, or combinations thereof; and

adding a number of the additional relationships to the blueprint.

5 . The method of claim 1 , in which instantiating the topology based on the policies and LCMAs comprises:

with a policy provisioning engine, obtaining a number of provisioning policies for a blueprint-derived topology and modifying the blueprint-derived topology based on the provisioning policies; and

with an interpreter, interpreting the provisioning policies to create an execution plan.

6 . A system for instantiating a topology-based service using a blueprint, comprising:

a topology designer to model the blueprint as a topology;

a resource offering manager to associate a number of policies and a number of lifecycle management actions (LCMAs) with a number of nodes within the topology; and

a lifecycle management (LCM) engine to instantiate the topology based on the policies and LCMAs,

in which the blueprint comprises a number of containment relationships, the containment relationships defining a number of hierarchical relationships between objects within the blueprint.

7 . The system of claim 6 , in which the topology designer derives the containment relationships from the blueprint, the containment relationships defining a number of hierarchical relationships between objects within the blueprint.

8 . The system of claim 6 , in which the topology designer derives a number of temporal dependency relationships from the blueprint, the temporal dependency relationships defining a number of provisioning relationships between a number of objects within the blueprint.

9 . The system of claim 6 , in which in which the topology designer derives a number of additional relationships from the blueprint, the additional relationships defining a number of relationships derived from a number of containment relationships, temporal dependency relationships, a number of objects, or combinations thereof.

10 . The system of claim 6 , in which the LCM engine derives a number of scripts for execution, the scripts defining executable logic for instantiating a cloud service based on the topology, policies, and LCMAs.

11 . The system of claim 6 , further comprising a resource offering manager to associate the policies and LCMAs with the topology.

12 . The system of claim 6 , in which the LCM engine to instantiates blueprints.

13 . The system of claim 12 , in which the LCM engine to instantiates blueprints by:

with an interpreter, interpreting the blueprint to create an execution plan.

14 . A computer program product for stitching an application model to a blueprint-derived topology, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium comprising computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code comprising:

computer usable program code to, when executed by a processor, derive a topology from a blueprint to create a blueprint-derived topology;

computer usable program code to, when executed by a processor, stitch the blueprint-derived topology to an application model based on a number of dependencies derived between the nodes of the blueprint to form a stitched topology.

15 . The computer program product of claim 14 , further comprising:

computer usable program code to, when executed by a processor, associate a number of policies with a number nodes within the stitched topology;

computer usable program code to, when executed by a processor, associate a number of LCMAs with a number nodes within the stitched topology; and

computer usable program code to, when executed by a processor, instantiate the stitched topology based on the policies and LCMAs.