METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ALLOCATING A DISTRIBUTED RESOURCE

• US 20100242045A1
• Filed: 03/20/2009
• Published: 09/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/20/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Swamy, Sumedha K., Belgaied, Kais
• Granted Patent: US 8,321,862 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• 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 9/4856 resumption being on a different machine, e.g. task migration, virtual machine migration G06F9/5088 takes precedence

Abstract

A method for migrating a virtual machine executing on a host. The method involves monitoring, by a monitoring agent connected to a device driver, hosts in a network, wherein the device driver is connected to a network interface card, determining a virtual machine to be migrated based on a virtual machine policy, sending, by the host, a request to migrate to at least one of a plurality of target hosts in the network, receiving an acceptance to the request to migrate from at least one of the plurality of target hosts, determining, by the monitoring agent, a chosen target host to receive the virtual machine based on a migration policy, wherein the chosen target host is one of the at least one target hosts that sent the acceptance, sending a confirmation and historical information to the chosen target host, and migrating the virtual machine to the chosen target host.

Claims

1. A method for migrating at least one of a plurality of virtual machines executing on a host, comprising:

monitoring, by a monitoring agent operatively connected to a device driver, a plurality of hosts in a network, wherein the device driver is operatively connected to a network interface card;

determining a virtual machine of the plurality of virtual machines to be migrated based on a virtual machine policy, wherein the virtual machine is operatively connected to the device driver;

sending, by the host, a request to migrate to at least one of a plurality of target hosts in the network;

receiving an acceptance to the request to migrate from at least one of the plurality of target hosts;

determining, by the monitoring agent, a chosen target host to receive the virtual machine based on a migration policy, wherein the chosen target host is one of the at least one of the plurality of target hosts from which the acceptance was received;

sending a confirmation message to the chosen target host;

sending historical information to the chosen target host; and

migrating the virtual machine to the chosen target host.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a rejection message to the plurality of target hosts from which an acceptance was received and that were not selected as the chosen target host.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is a peer-to-peer network.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein monitoring the plurality of hosts in the network, further comprises:

determining to send host information to at least one of the plurality of hosts in the network based on a monitoring policy; and

sending the host information to the at least one of the plurality of hosts in the network.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual machine policy is used to determine the most likely virtual machine on the host to use a pre-determined amount of networking resources in a specified duration of time.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the migrating virtual machine comprises using an algorithm that takes into account predicted network resource demand of the plurality of virtual machines.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the algorithm further takes into account at least one selected from a group consisting of time between migrations, historical data of resource usage by a particular virtual machine, and historical data of target hosts denying migration requests.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein determining the migrating virtual machine comprises using an algorithm that takes into account current network usage pattern of the host.

9. A host comprising:

a processor;

a monitoring agent executing on host;

a device driver configured to interface with the network interface card operatively connected to the host;

memory comprising instructions, which when executed by the processor perform a method, the method comprising;

monitoring, by the monitoring agent operatively connected to a device driver, a plurality of hosts in a network, wherein the device driver is operatively connected to the network interface card, wherein the host is in the network;

determining a virtual machine of the plurality of virtual machines executing on the host to be migrated based on a virtual machine policy, wherein the virtual machine is operatively connected to the device driver;

sending, by the host, a request to migrate to at least one of a plurality of target hosts in the network;

receiving an acceptance to the request to migrate from at least one of the plurality of target hosts;

determining, by the monitoring agent, a chosen target host to receive the virtual machine based on a migration policy, wherein the chosen target host is one of the at least one of the plurality of target hosts from which the acceptance was received;

sending a confirmation message to the chosen target host;

sending historical information to the chosen target host; and

migrating the virtual machine to the chosen target host.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the network is a peer-to-peer network.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein monitoring the plurality of hosts in the network, further comprises:

determining to send host information to the at least one of the plurality of hosts in the network based on a monitoring policy; and

sending the host information to the at least one of the plurality of hosts in the network.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the virtual machine policy is used to determine the most likely virtual machine on the host to use a pre-determined amount of networking resources in a specified duration of time.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein determining the migrating virtual machine comprises using an algorithm that takes into account predicted network resource demand of the plurality of virtual machines.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the algorithm further takes into account at least one selected from a group consisting of time between migrations, historical data of resource usage by a particular virtual machine, and historical data of target hosts denying migration requests.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein determining the migrating virtual machine comprises using an algorithm that takes into account a current network usage pattern of the host and a historical network usage pattern of the host.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the monitoring agent is associated with a first virtual network interface card (VNIC), wherein the virtual machine is associated with a second VNIC, wherein the first VNIC and second VNIC have distinct Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and wherein the first VNIC and the second VNIC are located in the media access control (MAC) layer of the host.

17. A computer readable medium comprising executable instructions executable by a processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

monitoring, by a monitoring agent operatively connected to a device driver, a plurality of hosts in a network, wherein the device driver is operatively connected to a network interface card;

determining a virtual machine of the plurality of virtual machines to be migrated based on a virtual machine policy, wherein the virtual machine is operatively connected to the device driver;

sending, by the host, a request to migrate to at least one of a plurality of target hosts in the network;

receiving an acceptance to the request to migrate from at least one of the plurality of target hosts;

determining, by the monitoring agent, a chosen target host to receive the virtual machine based on a migration policy, wherein the chosen target host is one of the at least one of the plurality of target hosts from which the acceptance was received;

sending a confirmation message to the chosen target host;

sending historical information to the chosen target host; and

migrating the virtual machine to the chosen target host.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the virtual machine policy is used to determine the most likely virtual machine on the host to use maximum networking resources in a specified duration of time.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the algorithm further takes into account at least one selected from a group consisting of time between migrations and historical data of target hosts denying migration requests.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the monitoring agent is associated with a first virtual network interface card (VNIC), wherein the virtual machine is associated with a second VNIC, wherein the first VNIC and second VNIC have distinct Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and wherein the first VNIC and the second VNIC are located in the media access control (MAC) layer of the host.