Starting up at least one virtual machine in a physical machine by a load balancer

• US 20080104608A1
• Filed: 10/27/2006
• Published: 05/01/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/27/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Regional Resources Ltd (Imperial Metals Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: McKee, Bret A., Hyser, Chris D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,185,893 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/105
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5015 Service provider selection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5022 Workload threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/508 Monitor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5027 the resource being a machine, e.g. CPUs, Servers, Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5088 involving task migration
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A system has plural physical machines that contain virtual machines. A load balancer receives a request from a client. In response to the request, it is determined whether at least one additional virtual machine should be started up. In response to determining that at least one additional virtual machine should be started up, the load balancer sends at least one command to start up the at least one additional virtual machine in at least one of the physical machines.

Claims

1. A method for use in a system having plural physical machines that contain virtual machines, comprising:

receiving, at a load balancer, a request from a client;

in response to the request, determining whether at least one additional virtual machine should be started up; and

in response to determining that at least one additional virtual machine should be started up, the load balancer sending at least one command to start up the at least one additional virtual machine in at least one of the physical machines.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the at least one command to start up the at least one additional virtual machine comprises sending the at least one command to activate the at least one additional virtual machine that is in a suspend state.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the at least one command to start up the at least one additional virtual machine comprises sending the at least one command to create the at least one additional virtual machine

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

the load balancer balancing workload of the virtual machines in the physical machines, wherein the workload is responsive to requests received over a network from one or more clients.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the load balancer and physical machines are part of a server system, the server system being one of a web server system, application server system, and storage server system.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

a placement controller selecting placement of the virtual machines on the physical machines to achieve a predefined policy.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

the controller modifying placement of the virtual machines on the physical machines in response to a changing condition.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

the controller modifying placement of the virtual machines on the physical machines in response to starting up of the at least one additional virtual machine.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising migrating the at least one additional virtual machine from the at least one physical machine to another physical machine to achieve a predefined policy in the system.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising disabling a selected one of the virtual machines in response to determining that the selected virtual machine is no longer needed,

wherein disabling the selected virtual machine comprises one of turning off the selected virtual machine and placing the selected virtual machine into a low power mode.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein disabling the selected virtual machine is performed in response to a command from the load balancer.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein disabling the selected virtual machine is performed under control of a placement controller that manages placement of virtual machines on physical machines.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein determining that the at least one additional virtual machine should be started up is in response to load conditions of active virtual machines on the plural physical machines.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

determining whether the active virtual machines are able to handle the request; and

in response to determining that the active virtual machines are able to handle the request, sending the request to an identified one of the active virtual machines.

15. An article comprising instructions that when executed cause a system to:

receive a request for a service to be performed by an arrangement of physical machines containing virtual machines;

determining whether active virtual machines in the physical machines are able to handle the request; and

in response to determining that the virtual machines are unable to handle the request, starting up at least one additional virtual machine to handle the request.

16. The article of claim 15, wherein starting up the at least one virtual machine comprises one of (1) activating the at least one additional virtual machine from a suspend state, and (2) creating the at least one additional virtual machine.

17. The article of claim 15, wherein determining that the active virtual machines are unable to handle the request comprises detecting that an average workload per virtual machine has exceeded a predefined threshold.

18. The article of claim 15, wherein the instructions when executed cause the system to migrate virtual machines between or among physical machines to achieve a predefined policy.

19. A request server for use in a server system having physical machines that contain virtual machine, the request server comprising:

a processor; and

a load balancer executable on the processor to;

receive requests from one or more clients;

distribute requests across active virtual machines in the physical machines; and

start up additional virtual machines in response to workload of the active virtual machines exceeding a threshold.

20. The request server of claim 19, further comprising a network monitor executable on the processor to receive workload information from the active virtual machines for use by the load balancer.