Memory swapper for virtualized environments

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10379751-B2
Application number	US-201715723192-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 3, 2017
Priority date	Feb 19, 2014
Publication date	Aug 13, 2019
Grant date	Aug 13, 2019

Abstract

A method for reducing disk read rate by managing dataset mapping of virtual machine (VM) guest memory, comprising: monitoring a plurality of disk read write operations of a VM guest; updating a dataset mapping between disk blocks allocated to the VM guest and corresponding physical addresses of memory pages of the VM guest containing replica of data stored in the disk blocks, based on the plurality of disk read write operations; when identifying writing to one of the memory pages, removing a mapping of corresponding disk block and corresponding physical address of memory page; when reclaiming a mapped memory page of the VM guest by a host of the VM guest, discarding data contained in the memory page; and when the data is requested by the VM guest after it was reclaimed by said host, retrieving the data from corresponding disk block according to the mapping.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for reducing disk read rate by detecting memory reallocation instructions and redirecting them to buffer, comprising:
detecting instructions for reallocating at least one guest physical memory page currently reclaimed by a host of a virtual machine (VM) guest;
preventing said instructions from executing said memory reallocation;
emulating said instructions and writing result on a buffer;
maintaining references to an original memory location of said reclaimed guest physical memory page and to a target memory location of said results; and
when said VM guest instructs read of unavailable data of said reclaimed guest physical memory page, suspending said read instruction until said merging is complete;
when a complete page is written on said buffer, reallocating said results to said reclaimed guest physical memory page; and
when a partial page is written on said buffer, merging said results with data on said reclaimed guest physical memory page.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
monitoring a plurality of memory reallocation instructions of said VM guest.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein said monitoring is done by virtual machine monitor (VMM).

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein said merging is performed after a predetermined time period from last emulated write of said page.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein said merging is performed when predetermined number pages are being emulated.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein said preventing and said emulating are performed selectively for privileged code executed by said VM guest.

7. A system for reducing disk read rate by detecting memory reallocation instructions and redirecting them to buffer, comprising:
a buffer;
a program store storing code; and
at least one hardware processor coupled to the program store, for implementing the stored code, the code comprising:
code for detecting instructions for reallocating at least one guest physical memory page currently reclaimed by a host of a virtual machine (VM) guest;
a virtual machine monitor (VMM) for:
preventing said instructions from executing said memory reallocation;
emulating said instructions and writing result on said buffer;
maintaining references to an original memory location of said reclaimed guest physical memory page and to a target memory location of said results;
when said VM guest instructs read of unavailable data of said reclaimed guest physical memory page, suspending said read instruction until said merging is complete;
reallocating said results to said reclaimed guest physical memory page when a complete page is written on said buffer; and
merging said results with data on said reclaimed guest physical memory page when a partial page is written on said buffer.

Assignees

• Technion Res & Dev Foundation

Inventors

• Schuster Assaf
• Amit Nadav
• Tsafrir Dan

Classifications

• G06F3/0683

  Plurality of storage devices · CPC title

• G06F3/0665

  at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes · CPC title

• G06F3/0608 Primary

  Saving storage space on storage systems · CPC title

• G06F3/0611 Primary

  in relation to response time · CPC title

• G06F3/0647

  Migration mechanisms · CPC title