Abstract: The current document is directed to an alternative control interface provided to infrastructure-as-a-service (“IaaS”) clients that provides a comprehensive collection of monitoring and control features to allow IaaS clients to monitor their distributed applications running within execution environments provided by an IaaS and to optimize execution of their distributed applications using the control features provided by the alternative control interface. In addition, the alternative control interface provides process-automation features and services that allow IaaS clients to automate monitoring and control tasks. In the described implementations, the currently disclosed alternative control interface is based on a graph database and a metrics database. The graph database stores a current representation of the infrastructure leased from an IaaS system by an IaaS client and the metrics database continuously collects and stores metric values scraped from components of the infrastructure leased by the IaaS client.

Abstract: Assessing the need for disaster recovery (DR) protection for a virtual application may include accessing resource consumption history for constituent VMs that support the virtual application. The resource consumption history may include usage metrics corresponding to resources used by each VM. A change in a cost of downtime of the given virtual application may be produced and used to assess criteria or rules. The given virtual application may be designated for DR protection based on an assessment of the criteria. DR protection may be activated for the designated virtual applications. The DR protection may automatically expire after a period of time.

Abstract: Assessing the need for disaster recovery (DR) protection for a virtual application may include accessing resource consumption history for constituent VMs that support the virtual application. The resource consumption history may include usage metrics corresponding to resources used by each VM. A change in a cost of downtime of the given virtual application may be produced and used to assess criteria or rules. The given virtual application may be designated for DR protection based on an assessment of the criteria. DR protection may be activated for the designated virtual applications. The DR protection may automatically expire after a period of time.