Suspending and resuming virtual machines in a network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10686685-B2
Application number	US-201916295808-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 7, 2019
Priority date	Jul 7, 2016
Publication date	Jun 16, 2020
Grant date	Jun 16, 2020

Abstract

A method is provided for suspending and resuming virtual machines in a network in dependence of network activity. The method includes providing a virtual machine manager. The virtual machine manager monitors network traffic of the virtual machines on a network bridge in a network layer using data packet analysis to detect dedicated network protocol traffic. More particularly, the monitoring of network traffic of the virtual machines may include: logging network addresses of the virtual machines of the network; combining logged network addresses with information about suspending or resuming virtual machines based on filtering rules being provided for such combination; and sending information about the network addresses of active and suspended virtual machines for virtual network adapters assigned to the virtual machines to the virtual machine manager.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
obtaining, by one or more processors of a network bridge, communicatively coupling a hypervisor running a group of virtual machines and an underlying network, from a virtual machine manager communicatively coupled to the hypervisor and the network bridge, identifications of dedicated network protocol traffic in network traffic of the group of virtual machines, to monitor activity or inactivity of each virtual machine in the group of virtual machines;
logging, by the network bridge, the network addresses of the group of virtual machines in a resource of the underlying network, based on intercepting data packets originating from the underlying network and destined for the group of virtual machines;
identifying, by the network bridge, in the logged addresses, active and inactive network addresses for the network traffic; and
facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, suspending of a first portion of the group of virtual machines, wherein the first portion of the group of virtual machines comprise active virtual machines with inactive network addresses.

2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:
facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, resuming of a second portion of the group of virtual machines, wherein the second portion of the group of virtual machines comprise inactive virtual machines with active network addresses.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein the facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, resuming of the second portion of the group of virtual machines further comprises, for each virtual machine of the second portion:
transmitting a connection request to the virtual machine:
delaying a response to the connection request;
resuming the virtual machine; and
forwarding the delayed connection request to an operating system of the virtual machine.

4. The method according to claim 2 , wherein the facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, resuming of the second portion of the group of virtual machines, comprises, for at least one virtual machine of the second portion:
upon the at least one virtual machine, spawning a connection tracking task to monitor a network disconnect of a specific network protocol on the network bridge for the network address of the at least one virtual machine.

5. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, suspending of the first portion of the group of virtual machines, comprises, for at least on virtual machine of the first portion:
stopping the connection tracking task to monitor a network disconnect on the network bridge for the network address of the at least one virtual machine; and
setting up filtering rules for a network connection attempt for the network address of the at least one virtual machine.

6. The method according to claim 5 , further comprising:
stopping the connection tracking task to monitor a network disconnect on the network bridge for the network address of the virtual machine.

7. The method according to claim 2 , wherein network addresses, provided by a server in the network, are dynamically assigned to the virtual network adapters of the virtual machines, and a reassignment of the assigned network addresses due to suspending a virtual machine is prevented by periodically renewing the assigned network addresses via network communication from the respective virtual network adapter to the server in order to prevent the reassignment, the periodically renewing comprising:
based on suspending a virtual machine, starting to periodically send renewals to the server for all its virtual network adapters with dynamically assigned network addresses; and
based on resuming the virtual machine, stopping to send renewals to the server for all its virtual network adapters with dynamically assigned network addresses.

8. The method according to claim 1 , wherein an Ethernet packet filter is used on the network bridge for extracting information from the intercepted data packets.

9. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the virtual machine manager is connected to a virtual machine state table, and the virtual machine manager sends information about suspending or resuming one or more virtual machines to the virtual machine state table, and wherein the virtual machine manager retrieves information about suspended virtual machines from the virtual machine state table.

10. The method according to claim 1 , wherein identifying the active and the inactive network addresses comprises filtering, by the network bridge, the logged addresses.

11. The method according to claim 10 , wherein the filtering is based on pre-determined rules.

12. The method according to claim 11 , wherein the virtual machine manager pushes the pre-determined rules to virtual network adapters assigned to each virtual machine of the group of virtual machines.

13. The method according to claim 11 , wherein the pre-determined rules comprise Open Systems Interconnection Layer Two filtering rules.

14. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the logging further comprises forwarding the intercepted data packets to the virtual machine manager.

15. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the facilitating, via the virtual machine manager, suspending of the first portion of the group of virtual machines further comprises, for each virtual machine of the first portion:
disconnecting an operation of an existing network connection to the virtual machine;
suspending the virtual machine; and
setting up filtering rules for intercepting connection attempts with a network address of the suspended virtual machine.

16. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the data packet analysis comprises inspecting an Open Systems Interconnection Layer Three communication.

17. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the hypervisor comprises an item selected from the group consisting of: the virtual machine manager, the network bridge, and a virtual machine state table.

18. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium readable by one or more processors and storing instructions for execution by the one or more processors for performing a method comprising:
obtaining, by the one or more processors of a network bridge, communicatively coupling a hypervisor running a group of virtual machines and an underlying network, from a virtual machine manager communicatively coupled to the hypervisor and the network bridge, identifications of dedicated network protocol traffic in network traffic of the group of virtual machines, to monitor activity or inactivity of each virtual machine in the group of virtual machines;
logging, by the network bridge, the network addresses of the group of virtual machines in a resource of the underlying network, based on intercepting data packets originating from the underlying network and destined for the group of virtual machines;
identifying, by the network bridge, in the logged addresses, active and inactive network addresses for the network traffic; and
facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine manager, suspending of a first portion of the group of virtual machines, wherein the first portion of the group of virtual machines comprise active virtual machines with inactive network addresses.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 , the method further comprising:
facilitating, by the network bridge, via the virtual machine

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Lang Jakob C
• Nunez-Mencias Angel
• Pohl Thomas
• Troester Martin

Classifications

• H04L41/0896

  Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities (flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76) · CPC title

• H04L43/20

  the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV · CPC title

• H04L41/0895

  Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements · CPC title

• H04L61/5076

  Update or notification mechanisms, e.g. DynDNS · CPC title

• H04L69/324

  in the data link layer [OSI layer 2], e.g. HDLC · CPC title