Method and system for migrating processes between virtual machines

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9817695-B2
Application number	US-41641509-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 1, 2009
Priority date	Apr 1, 2009
Publication date	Nov 14, 2017
Grant date	Nov 14, 2017

Abstract

One or more processes are offloaded from one virtual machine running on one host computer to another virtual machine running on another host computer so that load balancing can be performed on a per process level and physical servers supporting the virtual machines can be more optimally utilized. Migrating one or more processes from a virtual machine running on a first host computer to a second host computer includes replicating the virtual machine on the second host computer, terminating the migrated processes from the virtual machine running on the first host computer, and terminating all user-level processes running on the replicated virtual machine other than the migrated processes.

First claim

I claim:

1. In a computer system having virtual machines instantiated on one or more host computers, a method for offloading one or more user-level processes running on a guest operating system that is running in a first virtual machine, said method comprising:
identifying some but not all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine to be offloaded, each of the identified user-level processes having an associated IP and port address, wherein the user-level processes to be offloaded are identified by examining their resource usage;
replicating the first virtual machine to create a second virtual machine, the second virtual machine having a guest operating system running therein that is replicated from the guest operating system of the first virtual machine and user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that are replicated from all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine, including some that are to be offloaded and remaining user-level processes that are not to be offloaded;
terminating the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine that were identified for offloading while continuing to execute all of the remaining user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine other than ones that were identified for offloading; and
terminating all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that were replicated from the remaining user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine other than the ones that were identified for offloading while continuing to execute the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that were replicated from the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine that were identified for offloading; and
re-routing received IP traffic targeted to the IP and port addresses associated with identified processes on the first virtual machine to the replicated processes running on the second virtual machine that were identified for offloading from the first virtual machine.

2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:
directing data packets to the second virtual machine based on destination IP address and destination port specified in the data packets.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein said directing data packets includes:
reading a destination IP address and a destination port specified in a data packet;
encapsulating the data packet with a MAC address associated with the second virtual machine; and
transmitting the encapsulated data packet to be received by the second virtual machine.

4. The method according to claim 3 , further comprising:
receiving the data packet at a host computer of the second virtual machine; and
modifying the encapsulated data packet to have a different MAC address before sending the encapsulated data packet to an operating system of the second virtual machine.

5. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the different MAC address is a MAC address associated with the first virtual machine.

6. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:
configuring a router to associate a MAC address of the second virtual machine to IP addresses and ports of all processes running on the second virtual machine.

7. The method according to claim 6 , further comprising:
configuring a virtual network card of the second virtual machine to modify MAC addresses of data packets that it receives from and sends to an operating system of the second virtual machine.

8. In a computer system having virtual machines instantiated on one or more host computers, a method for offloading one or more processes running on guest operating system that is running in a first virtual machine instantiated on a first host computer, said method comprising:
identifying some but not all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine to be offloaded, each of the identified user-level processes having an associated IP and port address, wherein the user-level processes to be offloaded are identified by examining their resource usage;
replicating the first virtual machine on a second host computer to create a second virtual machine, the second virtual machine having a guest operating system running therein that is replicated from the guest operating system of the first virtual machine and user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that are replicated from all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine, including the some that are to be offloaded and remaining user-level processes that are not to be offloaded;
terminating some but not all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine and terminating some but not all of the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine, wherein the user-level processes of the guest operating system of the first virtual machine that are terminated are the user-level processes of the guest operating system of the first virtual machine that were identified for offloading, and wherein the user-level processes of the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that are terminated were replicated from the remaining user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine other than ones that were identified for offloading; and
re-routing received IP traffic targeted to the IP and port addresses associated with identified processes on the first virtual machine to the replicated processes running on the second virtual machine that were identified for offloading from the first virtual machine.

9. The method according to claim 8 , wherein the remaining user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine other than the ones that were identified for offloading continue to be executed on the guest operating system of the first virtual machine.

10. The method according to claim 9 , wherein the user-level processes running on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine that were replicated from the user-level processes running on the first virtual machine that were identified for offloading continue to be executed on the guest operating system of the second virtual machine.

11. The method according to claim 8 , further comprising: configuring a router to associate a MAC address of the second virtual machine to IP addresses and ports of all processes running on the second virtual machine.

12. The method according to claim 11 , further comprising: using the router, directing data packets to the second virtual machine based on destination IP addresses and destination ports specified in the data packets.

13. The method according to claim 12 , further comprising:
reading a destination IP address and a destination port number specified in a data packet; encapsulating the data packet with a MAC address associated with the second virtual machine; and
transmitting the encapsulated data packet to be received by the second virtual machine.

14. A computer system comprising:
a first host computer having a plurality of virtual machines running thereon,
the virtual machines of the first host computer including a first virtual machine having a guest operating system on which a first user-lev

Assignees

• Clark Jonathan
• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Clark Jonathan

Classifications

• G06F2009/4557

  Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing · CPC title

• G06F9/5083

  Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system · CPC title

• G06F9/4856 Primary

  resumption being on a different machine, e.g. task migration, virtual machine migration (G06F9/5088 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F9/45558

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title