VIRTUAL COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE

• US 20090300605A1
• Filed: 10/28/2005
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Baldwin, Adrian, Edwards, Nigel John, Goldsack, Patrick, Lain, Antonio
• Granted Patent: US 8,544,002 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• 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

Abstract

A system has a virtual overlay infrastructure mapped onto physical resources for processing, storage and network communications, the virtual infrastructure having virtual entities for processing, storage and network communications. Each virtual infrastructure can be passivated by suspending applications, stopping operating systems, and storing state, to enable later reactivation. This is simpler for a complete virtual infrastructure than for groups of virtual entities and physical entities. It enables cloned virtual infrastructure to be created for testing, upgrading or sharing without risk to the parent. On failure, reversion to a previous working clone is feasible.

Claims

1. A system having physical resources for data processing, for data storage resources and for network communications to couple the data processing and data storage resources, the system also having one or more virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising one or more virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities and one or more virtual network entities arranged to couple others of the virtual entities, the system being arranged to passivate any of the virtual overlay infrastructures so as to allow later reactivation.

2. The system of claim 1, arranged to make a clone by copying the design and any persistent state of the virtual infrastructure.

3. The system of claim 2, the virtual infrastructure having an interface to an external network, using externally visible addresses, the system being arranged to provide different externally visible addresses for the clone.

4. The system of claim 1, the virtual infrastructure comprising a number of virtual machines, and the system being arranged to suspend the operation of virtual machines and store their state to passivate the virtual infrastructure.

5. The system of claim 4, arranged to re-activate the passivated infrastructure.

6. The system of claim 4, arranged to revert to a previous state by replacing the stored state with a copy of the previous state, then reactivating the virtual infrastructure using the previous state.

7. The system of claim 2 arranged to reactivate the cloned virtual infrastructure and run it independently of its parent virtual infrastructure.

8. The system of claim 1, the physical resources comprising a number of servers, and the system having an infrastructure controller arranged to control the passivation on the different servers.

9. The system of claim 2, having an interface between the cloned virtual infrastructure and a virtual infrastructure of another user.

10. The system of claim 2, having at least one anomaly detector, the detector being arranged to use a clone of at least part of any of the virtual overlay infrastructures to create a signature of typical behaviour of that part, and to compare operation of the virtual overlay infrastructures to the signature to detect anomalous operation.

11. Management software for a system, the system having physical resources for data processing, for data storage resources and for network communications to couple the data processing and data storage resources, the system also having one or more virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising one or more virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities and one or more virtual network entities arranged to couple others of the virtual entities, the management software being arranged to passivate any of the virtual overlay infrastructures so as to allow later reactivation.

12. The management software of claim 11, arranged to make a clone by copying the design and any persistent state of the virtual infrastructure.

13. The management software of claim 11, the virtual infrastructure having an interface to an external network, using externally visible addresses, the system being arranged to provide different externally visible addresses for the clone.

14. The management software of claim 11, the virtual infrastructure comprising a number of virtual machines, and the system being arranged to suspend the operation of virtual machines and store their state to passivate the virtual infrastructure.

15. The management software of claim 13, arranged to re-activate the passivated infrastructure.

16. The management software of claim 13, arranged to revert to a previous state by replacing the stored state with a copy of the previous state, then reactivating the virtual infrastructure using the previous state.

17. The management software of claim 11 arranged to reactivate the cloned virtual infrastructure and run it independently of its parent virtual infrastructure.

18. The management software of claim 11, the physical resources comprising a number of servers, and the management software having an infrastructure controller arranged to control the passivation on the different servers.

19. A method of using a system, by a user, the system having physical resources for data processing, for data storage resources and for network communications to couple the data processing and data storage resources, the system also having one or more virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising one or more virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities and one or more virtual network entities arranged to couple others of the virtual entities, the user requesting management software to carry out passivation of their virtual overlay infrastructure so as to allow later reactivation.

20. A system having physical resources for data processing, for data storage resources and for network communications to couple the data processing and data storage resources, the system also having one or more virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising one or more virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities and one or more virtual network entities arranged to couple others of the virtual entities, the system having at least one anomaly detector, the detector being arranged to use a clone of at least part of any of the virtual overlay infrastructures to create a signature of typical behaviour of that part, and to compare operation of the virtual overlay infrastructures to the signature to detect anomalous operation.

21. (canceled)