Methods and apparatus for managing multiple user systems

• US 20030110173A1
• Filed: 11/21/2002
• Published: 06/12/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 12/11/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Marsland, Timothy
• Granted Patent: US 7,158,972 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users

Abstract

The techniques of the present invention relate to allocating resources and managing multiple services and multiple users in a multiprocessing computer system. A virtual machine executive is booted on a computer system typically with multiple processors and multiple memory blocks. The virtual machine executive creates multiple virtual machines associated with multiple operating systems. A virtual machine executive provides the illusion that each virtual machine has its own dedicated hardware. The virtual machine executive either behaves as a file server, or hosts an operating system instance that behaves as a file server. System administration of the collection of operating system instances can be achieved by administering the operating system instance that behaves as a file server, rather than by administering each operating system instance alone.

Claims

1. A computer system, comprising:

a virtual machine executive running on resources including a processor, memory, and persistent storage, the virtual machine executive configured to allocate resources for a plurality of virtual machines;

a first operating system created by the virtual machine executive, the first operating system operating as a file server;

a second operating system created by the virtual machine executive, the second operating system operating as a file server client, wherein the second operating system accesses data in persistent storage through the first operating system.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the first operating system runs on a first virtual machine partitioned by the virtual machine executive.

3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the second operating system runs on a second virtual machine partitioned by the virtual machine executive.

4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the first virtual machine is diskless.

5. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the second operating system maintains coherency through the first operating system.

6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein resources further include a plurality of processors and network interfaces.

7. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the first and second operating systems share a single memory space.

8. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the first operating system tracks the number of data access requests.

9. The computer system of claim 8, wherein the virtual machine executive uses the number of data access requests to allocate resources.

10. The computer system of claim 9, wherein resources are allocated based on the number of data access requests from a first operating system and the total data access requests from all supported operating systems.

11. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the virtual machine executive uses the number of data access requests to allocate processors and processor time using the following equation:

p_n=(r_n/r_t)*(p_t−

p_s);

where

r_n=the number of requests from the nth file server client;

r_t=the total number of requests from all file server clients;

p_n=the number of processors allocated to the nth file server client;

p_t=the total number of processors;

p_s=the number of processors allocated to the file server.

12. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the virtual machine executive uses the number of data access requests to allocate the amount of memory using the following equation:

m_n=(r_n/r_t)*(m_t−

m_s);

where

r_n=the number of requests from the nth file server client;

r_t=the total number of requests from all file server clients;

m_n=the amount of memory allocated to the nth file server client;

m_t=the total amount of memory;

m_s=the amount of memory allocated to the file server.

13. The computer system of claim 1, wherein resources are allocated using the following equation:

2x₀+x₁+x₂+x₃+x₄+?+x_n=100%;

where

n=number of file server clients;

2x₀=percentage of resources allocated to the file server.

14. A virtual machine executive, comprising:

a virtual machine interface supporting a first operating system running as a file server and a second operating system running as a diskless file server client;

a virtual network configured to allow data access requests from the file server client to the file server;

a resource allocator configured to track the number of data access requests from the first operating system to allow the virtual machine executive to vary resource allocation for the first operating system.

15. A method for administering clients, the method comprising:

booting a file server image on a computer system including a virtual machine executive and a plurality of virtual machines, wherein the computer system uses a single address space;

starting a file server client on the computer system;

providing a network interface for the file server client to communicate with the file server, wherein the file server client permits administration through the network interface by using the file server image.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the network interface is a virtual network interface.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the network interface is a physical network interface.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the file server client is diskless.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the file server image and the file server client use the same physical address space.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the file server image and the file server client run on separate virtual machines using different virtual address spaces.

21. A computer readable medium including computer code for administering clients, the computer readable medium comprising:

computer code for booting a file server image on a computer system including a virtual machine executive and a plurality of virtual machines, wherein the computer system uses a single address space;

computer code for starting a file server client on the computer system;

computer code for providing a network interface for the file server client to communicate with the file server, wherein the file server client permits administration through the network interface by using the file server image.

22. The computer readable medium of claim 21, wherein the network interface is a virtual network interface.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 22, wherein the network interface is a physical network interface.

24. The computer readable medium of claim 21, wherein the file server client is diskless.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 21, wherein the file server image and the file server client use the same physical address space.

26. The computer readable medium of claim 25, wherein the file server image and the file server client run on separate virtual machines using different virtual address spaces.