Mechanism for Staged Upgrades of a Virtual Machine System

• US 20100235825A1
• Filed: 03/12/2009
• Published: 09/16/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/12/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat Israel Ltd. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Red Hat Israel Ltd. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Azulay, Barak, Kashtan, Yuval
• Granted Patent: US 8,332,848 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/172
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• 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

In one embodiment, a mechanism for staged upgrades of a virtual machine system is disclosed. In one embodiment, a method includes determining a minimum number of virtual desktop servers (VDSs) necessary to host one or more VMs associated with the VDSs, migrating in a live manner the one or more VMs to the minimum number of VDSs, upgrading the non-upgraded VDSs that are not hosting any VMs, repeating the migrating and upgrading until all of the VDSs are upgraded, load balancing the VMs among the upgraded VDSs, and upgrading each of the VMs upon hosting of the VM by an upgraded VDS.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method to upgrade a virtual machine (VM) system, comprising:

determining a minimum number of virtual desktop servers (VDSs) necessary to host one or more VMs associated with the VDSs;

migrating in a live manner the one or more VMs to the minimum number of VDSs;

upgrading the non-upgraded VDSs that are not hosting any VMs;

repeating the migrating and upgrading until all of the VDSs are upgraded;

load balancing the VMs among the upgraded VDSs; and

upgrading each of the VMs upon hosting of the VM by an upgraded VDS.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the live migration includes moving a VM to another VDS without shutting down the VM.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the upgrading of each VM is managed by an upgrader agent of the VM.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein upgrading each of the VMs further includes receiving an upgrade package with a format supported by the one or more VMs.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the VMs receive the upgrade package in response to a request by the VMs for the upgrade package based on signaling received from their associated upgraded VDS, the signaling originating from a virtual desktop controller (VDC) managing the VDSs.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein upgrading each of the VMs further includes verifying a signature of a file in the upgrade package.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein verifying the signature includes matching a private key of the signature file with a public key of the VM.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein upgrading the non-upgraded VDSs further includes the VDS receiving an upgrade file from a storage repository.

9. A system, comprising:

a virtual desktop controller (VDC) to manage a plurality of virtual desktop servers (VDSs), the VDC including a power management agent operable to;

determine a minimum number of the plurality of VDSs necessary to host a plurality of VMs associated with the VDSs;

migrate in a live manner the plurality of VMs to the minimum number of VDSs;

upgrade the non-upgraded VDSs that are not hosting any VMs;

repeat the migrating and upgrading until all of the VDSs are upgraded;

load balance the plurality of VMs among the upgraded VDSs; and

upgrade each of the plurality of VMs.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the live migration includes moving a VM to another VDS without shutting down the VM.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein upgrading of each of the plurality of VMs is managed by an upgrader agent of the VM.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein upgrading each of the plurality of VMs further includes receiving an upgrade package at the upgrader agent of each VM with a format supported by the plurality of VMs.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein upgrading each of the plurality of VMs further includes verifying a signature of a file in the upgrade package by matching a private key of the signature file with a public key of the VM.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the VDC further to instruct each upgraded VDS to signal each upgrader agent of its associated VMs to upgrade the VM via the upgrade package.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein upgrading the non-upgraded VDSs further includes the VDS receiving an upgrade file from a storage repository.

16. An article of manufacture comprising a machine-readable storage medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

determining a minimum number of virtual desktop servers (VDSs) necessary to host one or more VMs associated with the VDSs;

migrating in a live manner the one or more VMs to the minimum number of VDSS;

upgrading the non-upgraded VDSs that are not hosting any VMs;

repeating the migrating and upgrading until all of the VDSs are upgraded;

load balancing the VMs among the upgraded VDSs; and

upgrading each of the VMs upon hosting of the VM by an upgraded VDS.

17. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein the live migration includes moving a VM to another VDS without shutting down the VM.

18. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein upgrading each of the VMs further includes an upgrader agent of the VM receiving an upgrade package with a format supported by the VM.

19. The article of manufacture of claim 18, wherein upgrading each of the VMs further includes verifying a signature of a file in the upgrade package by matching a private key of the signature file with a public key of the VM.

20. The article of manufacture of claim 18, wherein the VMs receive the upgrade package in response to a request by the VMs for the upgrade package based on signaling received from their associated upgraded VDS, the signaling originating from a virtual desktop controller (VDC) managing the VDSs.