Cloud restart for VM failover and capacity management

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11593234-B2
Application number	US-202016744876-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 16, 2020
Priority date	Jan 16, 2020
Publication date	Feb 28, 2023
Grant date	Feb 28, 2023

Abstract

A method of restarting a virtual machine (VM) running in a cluster in a first data center, in a second data center, includes: transmitting images of VMs, including a first VM, running in the cluster of hosts at a first point in time to the second data center for replication in the second data center; generating difference data representing a difference in an image of the first VM at a second point in time and the image of the first VM at the first point in time; transmitting the difference data to the second data center; setting the first VM to be inactive in the first data center; and communicating with a control plane in the second data center to set as active, and power on, a VM in the second data center using the replicated image of the first VM updated with the difference data.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method of restarting a virtual machine running in a cluster of hosts in a first data center, in a second data center, the method comprising:
(a) transmitting images of virtual machines, including a first virtual machine, running in the cluster of hosts at a first point in time to the second data center for replication in the second data center;
(b) in response to determining that one of the hosts in the cluster in which the first virtual machine was running has failed, determining whether or not there are sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster; and
(c) upon determining that there are not sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster, generating difference data representing a difference in an image of the first virtual machine at a second point in time and the image of the first virtual machine at the first point in time, transmitting the difference data to the second data center, setting the first virtual machine to be inactive in the first data center, and communicating with a control plane in the second data center to set as active, and power on, a virtual machine in the second data center using an image of the first virtual machine that has been replicated in the second data center and updated in the second data center based on the difference data.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cluster of hosts is not assigned a spare host in the first data center.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first data center is an on-premises data center serving one tenant and the second data center is a cloud data center serving a plurality of tenants.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
after setting the first virtual machine to be inactive in the first data center, upon detecting that sufficient resources have been freed up in one of the hosts in the cluster of hosts to run the first virtual machine therein, notifying the control plane in the second data center that the sufficient resources have been freed up.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
updating the image of the virtual machine that has been replicated with data received from the second data center in response to said notifying; and
setting as active, and powering on, the first virtual machine using the updated image of the first virtual machine.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein if more than one virtual machine were running in said one of the hosts, steps (b) and (c) are carried out for all of the virtual machines that were running in said one of the hosts, including the first virtual machine.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second data center is a disaster recovery data center and step (a) is repeated according to a recovery point objective that is set for the cluster of hosts.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein steps (b) and (c) are carried out for all of the virtual machines running in the cluster of hosts according to a recovery time objective that has been set for the cluster of hosts.

9. A computer system comprising:
a memory configured to store executable code; and
a processor configured to execute the code to:
(a) transmit images of virtual machines, including a first virtual machine, running in a cluster of hosts at a first point in time to a second data center for replication in the second data center;
(b) in response to determining that one of the hosts in the cluster in which the first virtual machine was running has failed, determine whether or not there are sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster; and
(c) upon determining that there are not sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster, generate difference data representing a difference in an image of the first virtual machine at a second point in time and the image of the first virtual machine at the first point in time, transmit the difference data to the second data center, set the first virtual machine to be inactive in a first data center, and communicate with a control plane in the second data center to set as active, and power on, a virtual machine in the second data center using an image of the first virtual machine that has been replicated in the second data center and updated in the second data center based on the difference data.

10. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein the cluster of hosts is not assigned a spare host in the first data center.

11. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein the first data center is an on-premises data center serving one tenant and the second data center is a cloud data center serving a plurality of tenants.

12. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein the processor is further configured to execute the code to:
after the first virtual machine is set to be inactive in the first data center, upon detecting that sufficient resources have been freed up in one of the hosts in the cluster of hosts to run the first virtual machine therein, notify the control plane in the second data center that the sufficient resources have been freed up.

13. The computer system of claim 12 , wherein the processor is further configured to execute the code to:
updating the image of the virtual machine that has been replicated with data received from the second data center in response to said notifying; and
set as active, and powering on, the first virtual machine using the updated image of the first virtual machine.

14. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein if more than one virtual machine were running in said one of the hosts, steps (b) and (c) are carried out for all of the virtual machines that were running in said one of the hosts, including the first virtual machine.

15. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein the second data center is a disaster recovery data center and step (a) is repeated according to a recovery point objective that is set for the cluster of hosts.

16. The computer system of claim 15 , wherein steps (b) and (c) are carried out for all of the virtual machines running in the cluster of hosts according to a recovery time objective that has been set for the cluster of hosts.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing code for causing, when executed by a processor, restarting of a virtual machine running in a cluster of hosts in a first data center, to a second data center, the processor when executing the code performing the steps of:
(a) transmitting images of virtual machines, including a first virtual machine, running in the cluster of hosts at a first point in time to the second data center for replication in the second data center;
(b) in response to determining that one of the hosts in the cluster in which the first virtual machine was running has failed, determining whether or not there are sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster; and
(c) upon determining that there are not sufficient resources in the cluster to run the first virtual machine in another one of the hosts in the cluster, generating difference data representing a difference in an image of the first virtual machine at a second point in time and the image of the first virtual machine at the first point in time, transmitting the difference data to the second data center, setting the first virtual machine to be inactive in the first data center, and communicating with a control plane in the second data center to set as active, and power on, a

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Agarwal Anant
• Chandrasekaran Rahul
• Desai Aalap
• Nair Vikram
• Pan Zhelong

Classifications

• G06F11/1469

  Backup restoration techniques · CPC title

• G06F2009/45595

  Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances · CPC title

• G06F8/63

  Image based installation; Cloning; Build to order · CPC title

• G06F11/2025 Primary

  using centralised failover control functionality · CPC title

• G06F2201/815

  Virtual · CPC title