VIRTUAL COMPUTER SYSTEM

• US 20080263407A1
• Filed: 04/18/2008
• Published: 10/23/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: YAMAMOTO, Mitsuo
• Granted Patent: US 7,917,811 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/44
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0745 in an input/output transactions management context input/output processing in general G06F13/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0775 Content or structure details of the error report, e.g. specific table structure, specific error fields

Abstract

To improve the maintainability of a virtual machine system, there is provided a mechanism capable of appropriately reporting a failure that occurs in a dedicated PCI device, in a shared PCI device, or in a virtual PCI device. A device for transferring PCI device configuration information between a failure monitoring application and a hypervisor that monitors a PCI device failure is prepared, and the failure monitoring application is operated in a user virtual machine and in a control virtual machine. Based on the above-described PCI device configuration information, the failure monitoring application operating in the user virtual machine monitors a dedicated PCI device failure and a virtual PCI device failure, and the failure monitoring application operating in the control virtual machine monitors a shared PCI device failure, respectively, thereby appropriately reporting a failure of the dedicated PCI device, the shared PCI device, or the virtual PCI device without duplication.

Claims

1. A virtual machine system in which a plurality of virtual machines operate on a real machine under control of a virtual machine controller, the virtual machine system comprising:

an actual device used as a dedicated device only by one user virtual machine; and

an actual device commonly used as a shared device by a plurality of user virtual machines via a control virtual machine, wherein

each of the user virtual machines and the control virtual machine include a fault monitor that monitors a failure of a currently used actual device, wherein

the virtual machine controller holds configuration information of a device that is allocated to each of the virtual machines corresponding to each of the virtual machines, and wherein

each of the fault monitors notifies a system administrator of a device failure in accordance with the device configuration information corresponding to trouble information at the time of device failure detection.

2. The virtual machine system according to claim 1, wherein each of the fault monitors includes a means for reading device configuration information which the virtual machine controller holds, and reads the device configuration information on start-up or at the time of device configuration change.

3. The virtual machine system according to claim 2, wherein the device configuration information contains an identification flag indicating whether a virtual machine currently using the relevant device configuration information is a user virtual machine or a control virtual machine.

4. The virtual machine system according to claim 3, wherein the device configuration information contains a device type indicating whether a device allocated to a virtual machine currently using the relevant device configuration information is a dedicated device or a shared device.

5. The virtual machine system according to claim 4, further comprising a virtual device not having an actual device, the virtual device being controlled by the virtual machine controller, wherein

the device type of the device configuration information contains information indicative of a virtual device, and wherein

the fault monitor determines based on the information whether or not a device, in which a failure has occurred, is a virtual device, and when it is a failure of the virtual device, the fault monitor notifies this to a system administrator of the virtual machine system not as a failure of an actual device but as a failure of the virtual machine controller.

6. The virtual machine system according to claim 5, wherein the device is a PCI device.

7. The virtual machine system according to claim 1, wherein the device is a PCI device.

8. The virtual machine system according to claim 2, wherein the device is a PCI device.

9. The virtual machine system according to claim 3, wherein the device is a PCI device.

10. The virtual machine system according to claim 4, wherein the device is a PCI device.