METHOD TO ENHANCE THE SCALABILITY OF NETWORK CACHING CAPABILITY IN VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENT

• US 20090210872A1
• Filed: 02/14/2008
• Published: 08/20/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Vallabhaneni, Vasu, Dai, David Z., Vo, Patrick T., Narasimhan, Rashmi
• Granted Patent: US 8,418,174 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

A mechanism is provided to enhance the scalability of network caching capabilities. All network client applications running on a partition in a virtualized environment are configured to query information from a single virtual input/output server (VIOS) network caching daemon. Thus, the illustrative embodiments provide a 1:n model where a VIOS partition has a network caching daemon, and each of the n partitions uses the network caching daemon of the VIOS partition. The mechanism of the illustrative embodiments only requires the system administrator to control one copy of the local files on the VIOS server. The system administrator does not need to monitor all of these local files on each individual partition. The system administrator consolidates the entries used by the different individual partitions into one single file on the VIOS server side.

Claims

1. A method for network caching in a virtualized environment, the method comprising:

configuring a first partition within a plurality of partitions in a virtualized environment with a network caching daemon;

configuring a second partition within the plurality of partitions within the virtualized environment with an address of the network caching daemon; and

responsive to a request to resolve a host from a network application running in the second partition, sending the request to the address of the network caching daemon through a virtualization layer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network caching daemon hashes entries from local file.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the local file consolidates all the local files of the plurality of partitions.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a local way, hashing, by the network caching daemon, the local file.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a non-local way, searching, by the network caching daemon, answers in a cache file; and

if the answer appears in the cache file, returning the answer to the second partition.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

if the answer does not appear in the cache file, sending a request from the network caching daemon to a server through a network layer; and

caching an answer from the server in the cache file.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first partition is a virtual input/output server partition.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first partition and the second partition run on separate computer systems within a subnet.

9. A data processing system, comprising:

a plurality of partitions running in a virtualized environment within the data processing system; and

a virtualization layer,

wherein a first partition within the plurality of partitions is configured with a network caching daemon;

wherein a second partition within the plurality of partitions is configured with an address of the network caching daemon; and

wherein responsive to a request to resolve a host from a network application running in the second partition, the second partition sends the request to the address of the network caching daemon through the virtualization layer.

10. The data processing system of claim 9, wherein the network caching daemon hashes entries from local file.

11. The data processing system of claim 10, wherein the local file consolidates all the local files of the plurality of partitions.

12. The data processing system of claim 10, wherein if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a local way, the network caching daemon hashes the local file.

13. The data processing system of claim 9, wherein if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a non-local way, the network caching daemon searches answers in a cache file;

and

wherein if the answer appears in the cache file, the network caching daemon returns the answer to the second partition.

14. The data processing system of claim 13, wherein if the answer does not appear in the cache file, the network caching daemon sends a request to a server through a network layer and caches an answer from the server in the cache file.

15. The data processing system of claim 9, wherein the first partition is a virtual input/output server partition.

16. A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having a computer readable program, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

configure a first partition within a plurality of partitions in a virtualized environment with a network caching daemon;

configure a second partition within the plurality of partitions within the virtualized environment with an address of the network caching daemon; and

responsive to a request to resolve a host from a network application running in the second partition, send the request to the address of the network caching daemon through a virtualization layer.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the network caching daemon hashes entries from local file;

and

if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a local way, hashing, by the network caching daemon, the local file.

18. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the computer readable program further causes the computing device to:

if the second partition is configured to resolve the host a non-local way, search, by the network caching daemon, answers in a cache file; and

if the answer appears in the cache file, return the answer to the second partition.

19. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the computer readable program comprises instructions that are stored in a computer readable storage medium in a data processing system, and wherein the instructions were downloaded over a network from a remote data processing system.

20. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the computer readable program comprises instructions that are stored in a computer readable storage medium in a server data processing system, and wherein the instructions are downloaded over a network to a remote data processing system for use in a computer readable storage medium with the remote data processing system.