Rapid Provisioning

How can the provisioning of IT resources be automated and made available to cloud consumers on-demand?

Problem

When a cloud consumer chooses what IT resources it would like to lease, having the actual provisioning of these IT resources performed manually can require too much time and human interaction to be sufficiently effective and responsive.

Solution

A system can be established to execute and coordinate the automation of a range of provisioning tasks and processes.

Application

Complex auto-provisioning systems can be assembled, each generally comprised of a rapid provisioning engine and an automated provisioning program.

Mechanisms

Cloud Storage Device, Hypervisor, Resource Replication, Virtual Server

Compound Patterns

Burst In, Burst Out to Private Cloud, Burst Out to Public Cloud, Cloud Authentication, Cloud Balancing, Elastic Environment, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Isolated Trust Boundary, Multitenant Environment, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Resilient Environment, Resource Workload Management, Secure Burst Out to Private Cloud/Public Cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

The cloud provider creates a deployment repository that stores system components.

A sample cloud architecture resulting from the application of the Rapid Provisioning pattern.

NIST Reference Architecture Mapping

This pattern relates to the highlighted parts of the NIST reference architecture, as follows: