Techniques For Migrating A Virtual Machine Using Shared Storage
First Claim
1. A computer readable storage medium including executable instructions operable to initiate a migration operation to transfer a virtual machine from a source computer system to a target computer system, the computer readable storage medium comprising:
- instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause pages of guest physical memory allocated to a source virtual machine to be copied to a host operating system page file located in a shared storage medium while a guest operating system executes in the source virtual machine;
instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause pages of guest physical memory that the guest operating system changed while the pages are being copied to the host operating system page file to be identified;
instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause the identified pages to be copied to the host operating system page file;
instructions that upon execution by the target computer system cause guest physical memory to be allocated to a target virtual machine; and
instructions that upon execution by the target computer system cause pages to be read into guest physical memory of the target virtual machine from the host operating system page file in response to receiving page faults associated with the pages.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Techniques for providing the ability to live migrate a virtual machine from one physical host to another physical host employ shared storage as the transfer medium for the state of the virtual machine. In addition, the ability for a virtualization module to use second-level paging functionality is employed, paging-out the virtual machine memory content from one physical host to the shared storage. The content of the memory file can be restored on another physical host by employing on-demand paging and optionally low-priority background paging from the shared storage to the other physical host.
131 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A computer readable storage medium including executable instructions operable to initiate a migration operation to transfer a virtual machine from a source computer system to a target computer system, the computer readable storage medium comprising:
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instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause pages of guest physical memory allocated to a source virtual machine to be copied to a host operating system page file located in a shared storage medium while a guest operating system executes in the source virtual machine; instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause pages of guest physical memory that the guest operating system changed while the pages are being copied to the host operating system page file to be identified; instructions that upon execution by the source computer system cause the identified pages to be copied to the host operating system page file; instructions that upon execution by the target computer system cause guest physical memory to be allocated to a target virtual machine; and instructions that upon execution by the target computer system cause pages to be read into guest physical memory of the target virtual machine from the host operating system page file in response to receiving page faults associated with the pages. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A method for migrating a source virtual machine running on a source computer system to a target computer system, comprising:
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copying, while a guest operating system executes in the source virtual machine, pages of guest physical memory allocated to the source virtual machine to a saved-state file located in a networked storage system; identifying pages in the guest physical memory that the guest operating system changed while the pages were being copied to the saved-state file; and copying the identified pages to the saved-state file. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A system for enabling migration of a source virtual machine from a source computer system to a target computer system, comprising:
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the source computer system including a source computer readable storage medium; the target computer system including a target computer readable storage medium; a networked storage system operatively coupled to the source computer system and to the target computer system; wherein the source computer readable storage medium comprises; instructions for causing pages of guest physical memory allocated to the source virtual machine to be copied to a virtualization module page file located in the shared storage medium; instructions for causing pages in the guest physical memory that a guest operating system changed while the pages were being copied to the virtualization module page file to be identified; instructions for causing the identified pages to be copied to the host operating system page file; instructions for causing guest physical memory to be allocated in the target virtual machine; wherein the target computer readable storage medium comprises; instructions for causing pages to be read into guest physical memory of the target virtual machine from the virtualization module page file in response to receiving page faults associated with the pages. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
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Specification