Abstract: Disclosed is an improved approach to implement a mechanism to provide customer control over access to cloud infrastructure by the cloud provider's operator employees. This mechanism allow customer controlled access to any cloud infrastructure that belongs to or is otherwise allocated to the customer.

Abstract: Techniques are described herein for automatically determining optimal placement for VM clusters in multi-device infrastructure. Potential combinations of host nodes for a VM cluster are selected based on applicable constraints on host nodes for the cluster. Further, applicable optimization criteria (OC) for the VM cluster and/or the infrastructure are formally defined and modeled for automatic performance. Application of this placement model to the potential combinations of host nodes results in one or more OC metrics that may be directly compared so that alternate potential host node combinations may be ranked based on the determined OC metrics. The highest-ranked node combination is identified as the optimal VM cluster placement. The placement model can be used to implement initial, incremental, shuffling, or scaling placements of VM clusters. Further, hierarchical decisions may be made based on the determined OC metrics, allowing for application of the placement model to large and complex infrastructures.

Abstract: Disclosed is an improved approach to implement a mechanism to provide customer control over access to cloud infrastructure by the cloud provider's operator employees. This mechanism allow customer controlled access to any cloud infrastructure that belongs to or is otherwise allocated to the customer.

Abstract: Disclosed is an improved approach to implement a cloud access control mechanism. The mechanism provides customer control over access to cloud infrastructure by the cloud provider's operator employees, where the approach provides an override mechanisms for allowing operator access without additional customer approval based upon configured policies/rules.