Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for automatically configuring an inventory of hardware to interact seamlessly with a datacenter are provided. Initially, customer-specific specifications are collected from a user, which are automatically supplemented with platform-specific specifications. These specifications are used to select the hardware inventory from a set of predefined hardware clusters, where each of the predefined hardware clusters represents compatible configurations of hardware assets and logical assets that have been demonstrated to function congruently. A cluster-configuration file is derived from data held within a stock-keeping unit (SKU) that describes the selected hardware inventory. The cluster-configuration file is populated with abstract symbolic representations that act as placeholders for expected values that are presently unknown. Network resources are assigned by automated conversion of the abstract symbolic representations into concrete values.

Abstract: Building binary packages for software products, particularly large-scale software products, is a highly computation intensive process. Thus, it is desirable to distribute the workload over a large number of computing nodes so as to have the build process complete in an optimal period of time. One environment providing compute resources that can be utilized for a highly available and dynamically scalable distributed build process is an elastic compute cloud. In such an environment, virtual machines can be instantiated and destroyed as the resource requirements of the build process dictate. This has the advantage that dedicated hardware is unneeded, and excess capacity on the hardware employed can be employed for other computation tasks when the build process is idle. Presented herein are systems, methods and computer storage media for distributing a highly available and scalable build service, suitable for use in an elastic compute environment or other distributed environment.