Optimizing on demand allocation of virtual machines using a stateless preallocation pool

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9229711-B2
Application number	US-201213611570-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 12, 2012
Priority date	Jul 31, 2009
Publication date	Jan 5, 2016
Grant date	Jan 5, 2016

Abstract

A method, computer system, and computer program product for allocating virtual machines in a stateless preallocation pool on a computing device is provided. In response to determining that a virtual machine is to be removed from an active pool in a computing device, it is determined whether the virtual machine is to be moved to a preallocation pool of the computing device. In response to determining that the virtual machine is to be moved to the preallocation pool, the virtual machine is cleansed of stateful data by removing unique information about the virtual machine's prior allocation while in the active pool. The virtual machine is moved to the preallocation pool. In response to determining that the virtual machine is needed in the active pool, the virtual machine is moved from the preallocation pool to the active pool.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for allocating virtual machines in a stateless preallocation pool on a computing device, comprising:
reducing processing requirements of the computing device and reducing virtual machine instantiation time on the computing device by:
moving a virtual machine to a preallocation pool of a computing device after removal of the virtual machine from an active pool in the computing device in response to determining allocation of the virtual machine based upon predictive data, historical data, load data, and a constant ratio of virtual machines, wherein the virtual machine includes stateful data and non-state data;
cleansing the virtual machine of the stateful data using the computing device, the virtual machine continuing to operate during and after the cleansing by the computing device, the stateful data comprising unique information about the virtual machine's prior allocation while in the active pool of the computing device, wherein the non-state data of the virtual machine is maintained in the virtual machine on the computing device after the cleansing;
moving the virtual machine from the active pool to the preallocation pool after the cleansing; and
moving the virtual machine from the preallocation pool back to the active pool when the virtual machine is needed in the active pool of the computing device.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the virtual machine is moved to the preallocation pool to maintain a constant ratio of different types of virtual machines in the preallocation pool.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the virtual machine moved to the preallocation pool maintains the constant ratio of different types of virtual machines.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein the virtual machine is one of the different types of virtual machines, and wherein moving the virtual machine to the preallocation pool causes the preallocation pool to maintain the constant ratio among the different types of virtual machines.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the different types of virtual machines are configured to respectively have different functionality.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein the constant ratio of different types of virtual machines comprises a first total number of first different virtual machines to a second total number of second different virtual machines to a N total number of N different virtual machines, wherein N represents a last number in a sequence of numbers.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the virtual machine is moved to the preallocation pool to maintain a constant amount of virtual machines in the preallocation pool to support current workload requests and to support future expected workload requests.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the expected workload requests are derived from historical data so that the expected workload requests in the future are predicted based on the historical data.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein when a plurality of virtual machines are moved from the active pool to the preallocation pool, each of the virtual machines in the plurality of virtual machines is cleansed of stateful data.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein cleansing the virtual machine of stateful data comprises removing from the virtual machine at least one of: application data, cache data, or tables.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein after the cleansing of the virtual machine of stateful data, the remaining non-state data comprises an operating system of the virtual machine or a database management system software of the virtual machine.

Assignees

• Arasaratnam Omkharan
• IBM

Inventors

• Arasaratnam Omkharan

Classifications

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G06F9/00 Primary

  Arrangements for program control, e.g. control units (program control for peripheral devices G06F13/10) · CPC title

• G06F9/5077

  Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources (specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455) · CPC title

• G06F2009/45575

  Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances · CPC title