Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120017031 | ROBUST LIVE MIGRATION USING SHARED FILESYSTEM - A method for transferring guest physical memory from a source host to a destination host during live migration of a virtual machine (VM) involves creating a file on a shared datastore, the file on the shared datastore being accessible to both the source host and the destination host. Pages of the guest physical memory are transferred from the source host to the destination host over a network connection and pages of the guest physical memory are written to the file so that the destination host can retrieve the written guest physical pages from the file. | 01-19-2012 |
20130346613 | SCHEDULING A PROCESSOR TO SUPPORT EFFICIENT MIGRATION OF A VIRTUAL MACHINE - A virtualized computer system implements a process to migrate a virtual machine (VM) from a source host to a destination host. During this process, a processing unit at the source host, which is executing instructions of the VM, is scheduled so that the rate of modification of guest physical memory pages is reduced. The determination of when to schedule the processing unit in this manner may be made based on a current rate of modification of the pages, a transmission rate of guest physical memory pages from the source host to the destination host, or a prior VM migration performance. | 12-26-2013 |
20140189041 | ROBUST LIVE MIGRATION USING SHARED FILESYSTEM - A method for transferring guest physical memory from a source host to a destination host during live migration of a virtual machine (VM) involves (a) transmitting pages of the guest physical memory from the source host to the destination host over a network connection, (b) transferring state information from the source host to the destination host, (c) while performance benefits regarding continued access to the guest physical memory on the source host persist, using the transferred state information to run the VM on the destination host in place of running the VM on the source host, and (d) while the VM is running on the destination host, writing pages of the guest physical memory from the source host to a shared datastore such that the destination host can retrieve the written guest physical pages from the shared datastore. | 07-03-2014 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20150039838 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR RESTORING CONSUMED MEMORY AFTER MEMORY CONSOLIDATION - One embodiment of the system disclosed herein facilitates reduction of latency associated with accessing content of a memory page that has been swapped out by a guest operating system in a virtualized computer system. During operation, a hypervisor detects an I/O write command issued by the guest operating system at a swap location within the guest operating system's swap file and records the swap location. The hypervisor then prefetches contents of a page stored at the swap location within the guest operating system's swap file into a prefetch cache in host machine memory. Subsequently, the hypervisor detects an I/O read command issued by the guest operating system at the swap location within the swap file. In response, the hypervisor provides contents of the page to the guest operating system from the prefetch cache, thereby avoiding accessing the guest operating system's swap file. | 02-05-2015 |
20150109329 | AUGMENTING A PHYSICAL DEVICE WITH VIRTUAL INFORMATION - In a computer-implemented method for augmenting at least one physical device with virtual information indicia corresponding to the at least on physical device supporting a virtualization infrastructure is observed. Based on the observed indicia, virtual information of said virtualization infrastructure correlating to the at least one physical device is displayed. | 04-23-2015 |
20150109334 | AUGMENTED REALITY AIDED NAVIGATION - In a computer-implemented method for augmented reality aided navigation to at least one physical device indicia corresponding to the at least one physical device supporting virtualization infrastructure is observed. Based on the observed indicia, navigational cues correlating to a location of the at least one physical device is generated. Navigational cues are displayed such that augmented reality aided navigation is provided to the at least one physical device. | 04-23-2015 |
20150149999 | VIRTUAL MACHINE GROUP MIGRATION - A plurality of virtual machines (VMs) is migrated from a source group to a destination group in such as way as to achieve consistency and either availability or group preservation. Execution of VMs in the source group is selectively delayed during state migration so that memory transfer of all the VMs in the group will converge roughly at the same time. After VM state transfer to the destination group, execution switch-over is coordinated using different handshake and acknowledgement messages, passed either through a “leader” VM in each group, or directly between source-destination VM pairs. | 05-28-2015 |
20150178107 | Elastic Compute Fabric Using Virtual Machine Templates - Embodiments include an infrastructure shared among cloud services that supports fast provisioning of virtual machines (VMs). A set of powered-on parent VM templates and a set of powered-off child VMs are maintained by the infrastructure in a hierarchy. The child VMs are instantiated from the parent VM templates, and pre-registered to a cloud operating system in some embodiments. In response to requests from the cloud services for the child VMs, where the requests specify child VM configurations, child VMs from the set of powered-off child VMs are selected and customized based on the child VM configurations, and then deployed for use by the cloud services. In some embodiments, the fast provisioning of VMs is supported by forking operations in the infrastructure. | 06-25-2015 |
20150178108 | Fast Instantiation of Virtual Machines - Embodiments support instant forking of virtual machines (VMs) and state customization. Virtual device state and persistent storage of a child VM are defined based on virtual device state and persistent storage of parent VMs. After forking, a state of the child VM is customized based on configuration data. Customizing the state includes configuring one or more identities of the child VM, before bootup completes on the child VM. | 06-25-2015 |
20150178110 | State Customization of Forked Virtual Machines - Embodiments support instant forking of virtual machines (VMs) and state customization. A computing device initiates execution of a first group of services (e.g., identity-independent) in a first VM. A second VM is instantiated from the first VM. The second VM shares memory and storage with the first VM. The computing device customizes the second VM based on configuration data associated with the second VM. A second group of services (e.g., identity-dependent) starts executing on the second VM after configuring the identity of the second VM. Customizing the second VM includes configuring one or more identities of the second VM. In some embodiments, a domain identity is selected from a pool of previously-created identities and applied to the second VM, before bootup completes on the second VM. | 06-25-2015 |
20150301931 | METHOD OF ALLOCATING REFERENCED MEMORY PAGES FROM A FREE LIST - Memory pages that are allocated to a memory consumer and continue to be accessed by the memory consumer are included in a free list, so that they may be immediately allocated to another memory consumer as needed during the course of normal operation without preserving the original contents of the memory page. When a memory page in the free list is accessed to perform a read, a generation number associated with the memory page is compared with a stored copy. If the two match, the read is performed on the memory page. If the two do not match, the read is not performed on the memory page. | 10-22-2015 |
20150324297 | EXPORTING GUEST SPATIAL LOCALITY TO HYPERVISORS - When a request is made to retrieve a guest physical page from memory and a page fault occurs, a guest virtual page address that corresponds to the guest physical page is identified along with addresses for guest virtual pages that are near the guest virtual page in the virtual address space. Each identified guest virtual page address is translated into a corresponding guest physical page address and the corresponding guest physical pages are loaded into memory. | 11-12-2015 |
20150378636 | ONLINE SNAPSHOT CONSOLIDATION USING I/O MIRRORING - To create a backup of a live (running) virtual machine, a backup agent may take a snapshot of the virtual machine, backup the virtual machine from the snapshot disk, and delete the snapshot. Deleting the snapshot initiates a snapshot consolidation process where delta disks of the virtual machine are collapsed. A virtual disk layer sets up a mirror driver between a current virtual disk and a target virtual disk. Data sectors of the delta disk are copied over to the target virtual disk in a single pass, while the mirror driver mirrors write request for the current virtual disk to the target virtual disk. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378759 | DETERMINING STATUS OF MIGRATING VIRTUAL MACHINES - Systems and techniques are described for determining the status of migrating virtual machines. A described technique includes initiating a migration of one or more virtual machines from a source host that is located at a source site to a destination host that is located at a destination site. A determination is made that a fault has occurred during the migration of the one or more virtual machines. In response to determining that the error has occurred, a determination is made, for each virtual machine of the one or more virtual machines, whether the virtual machine has been fully migrated from the source host to the destination host. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378766 | LIVE MIGRATION OF VIRTUAL MACHINES WITH MEMORY STATE SHARING - Embodiments described herein rapidly migrate child virtual machines (VM) by leveraging shared memory resources between parent and child VMs. In a first, proactive phase, parent VMs are migrated to a plurality of potential target hosts. In a second, reactive phase, after a request is received to migrate a child VM to a selected target host, memory blocks that are unique to the child VM are migrated to the selected target host. In some examples, memory blocks are compressed and decompressed as needed. In other examples, the operation environment is modified. Aspects of the disclosure offer a high performance, resource efficient solution that outperforms traditional approaches in areas of software compatibility, stability, quality of service control, resource utilization, and more. | 12-31-2015 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20150378767 | USING ACTIVE/ACTIVE ASYNCHRONOUS REPLICATED STORAGE FOR LIVE MIGRATION - Examples perform live migration of VMs from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure changes the storage environment, directly or through a vendor provider, to active/active synchronous and, during migration, migrates only data which is not already stored at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes, with exclusive access to the storage disks, and the system is returned to the previous storage environment (e.g., active/active asynchronous). | 12-31-2015 |
20150378771 | USING A DELTA QUERY TO SEED LIVE MIGRATION - Examples perform live migration of objects such as VMs from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure exposes the contents of the storage disk at the destination host, compares the storage disk of the destination host to the source host, and during migration, migrates only data which is not already stored at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes, with exclusive access to the storage disks. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378783 | LIVE MIGRATION WITH PRE-OPENED SHARED DISKS - Examples perform live migration of virtual machines (VM) from a source host to a destination host. The live migration performs time-consuming operations before the source host is stunned, reducing the downtime apparent to users. Some examples contemplate pre-copying memory from the source VM to the destination VM, and the opening of disks on the destination VM before stunning the source VM. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378785 | USING ACTIVE/PASSIVE ASYNCHRONOUS REPLICATED STORAGE FOR LIVE MIGRATION - The disclosure describes performing live migration of objects such as virtual machines (VMs) from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure changes the storage environment, directly or through a vendor provider, to active/passive synchronous or near synchronous and, during migration, migrates only data which has not already been replicated at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes with exclusive access to the storage disks, and the system is returned to the previous storage environment of active/passive asynchronous. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378831 | USING A RECOVERY SNAPSHOT DURING LIVE MIGRATION - Examples perform live migration of VMs from a source host to a destination host using destructive consistency breaking operations. The disclosure makes a record of a consistency group of VMs on storage at a source host as a fail-back in the event of failure. The source VMs are live migrated to the destination host, disregarding consistency during live migration, and potentially violating the recovery point objective. After live migration of all of the source VMs, consistency is automatically restored at the destination host and the live migration is declared a success. | 12-31-2015 |
20150378847 | MAINTAINING CONSISTENCY USING REVERSE REPLICATION DURING LIVE MIGRATION - Examples maintain consistency of writes for a plurality of VMs during live migration of the plurality from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure intercepts I/O writes to a migrated VM at a destination host and mirrors the I/O writes back to the source host. This “reverse replication” ensures that the CG of the source host is up to date, and that the source host is safe to fail back to if the migration fails. | 12-31-2015 |
20150381589 | ASYNCHRONOUS ENCRYPTION AND DECRYPTION OF VIRTUAL MACHINE MEMORY FOR LIVE MIGRATION - Examples perform asynchronous encrypted live migration of virtual machines (VM) from a source host to a destination host. The encryption of the memory blocks of the VM is performed optionally before a request for live migration is received or after said request. The more resource intensive decryption of the memory blocks of the VM is performed by the destination host in a resource efficient manner, reducing the downtime apparent to users. Some examples contemplate decrypting memory blocks of the transmitted VM on-demand and opportunistically, according to a pre-determined rate, or in accordance with parameters established by a user. | 12-31-2015 |