Detection and Management of Dynamic Migration of Virtual Environments

• US 20100175063A1
• Filed: 01/05/2009
• Published: 07/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/05/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Salerno, Paolo, Pichetti, Luigi, Ciano, Giuseppe
• Granted Patent: US 9,594,582 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/105 Arrangements for software license management or administration, e.g. for managing licenses at corporate level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4862 the task being a mobile agent, i.e. specifically designed to migrate

Abstract

A mechanism is provided to detect that a dynamic migration of a virtual environment is in progress or has been executed during a hardware or software scan without requiring instrumentation of applications running within the virtual machine. The mechanism relies on a particular sequencing and usage of application programming interfaces and commands that scanning technology provides, associated with the modularity of the scans and on the external virtual machine enabler component running on the host. The mechanism may detect a dynamic migration and take proper actions based on the system configuration. The actions may include discarding the output of the scan executed across a dynamic migration and repeat the scan. The actions may also include notifying the initialization subsystem of the non-migration-safe application to execute a script or program to address migration safety issues. One particular program or script may be an agent ID regeneration program or script.

Claims

1. A method, in a data processing system, for detecting and managing dynamic migration of virtual environments, the method comprising:

retrieving a host component identifier to form a first retrieved host component identifier;

performing a physical environment scan;

retrieving the host component identifier to form a second retrieved host component identifier; and

responsive to the second retrieved host component identifier being different from the first retrieved host component identifier, detecting a dynamic migration of a virtual environment and performing at least one action to manage the dynamic migration of the virtual environment.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one action comprises returning a specific error.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one action comprises repeating the physical environment scan.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one action comprises notifying a non-migration safe application that migration of the virtual environment has been detected.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein notifying the non-migration safe application that migration of the virtual environment has been detected comprises:

triggering an agent identifier regeneration process.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein responsive to triggering the agent identifier regeneration process, the agent identifier regeneration process executes a program or script.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the agent identifier regeneration process further notifies a management infrastructure.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the physical environment scan comprises a hardware scan, a software scan, or an operating system scan.

9. A computer program product comprising a computer recordable medium having a computer readable program recorded thereon, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

retrieve a host component identifier to form a first retrieved host component identifier;

perform a physical environment scan;

retrieve the host component identifier to form a second retrieved host component identifier; and

responsive to the second retrieved host component identifier being different from the first retrieved host component identifier, detect a dynamic migration of a virtual environment and perform at least one action to manage the dynamic migration of the virtual environment.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the at least one action comprises returning a specific error.

11. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the at least one action comprises repeating the physical environment scan.

12. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the at least one action comprises notifying a non-migration safe application that migration of the virtual environment has been detected.

13. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein notifying the non-migration safe application that migration of the virtual environment has been detected comprises:

triggering an agent identifier regeneration process.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein responsive to triggering the agent identifier regeneration process, the agent identifier regeneration process executes a program or script.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the agent identifier regeneration process further notifies a management infrastructure.

16. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the physical environment scan comprises a hardware scan, a software scan, or an operating system scan.

17. An apparatus, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to;

retrieve a host component identifier to form a first retrieved host component identifier;

perform a physical environment scan;

retrieve the host component identifier to form a second retrieved host component identifier; and

responsive to the second retrieved host component identifier being different from the first retrieved host component identifier, detect a dynamic migration of a virtual environment and perform at least one action to manage the dynamic migration of the virtual environment.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the at least one action comprises repeating the physical environment scan.

19. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the at least one action comprises triggering an agent identifier regeneration process.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein responsive to triggering the agent identifier regeneration process, the agent identifier regeneration process executes a program or script.