VIRTUAL MACHINE MOBILITY USING RESOURCE POOLS

• US 20130067464A1
• Filed: 09/09/2011
• Published: 03/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shah, Nihar
• Granted Patent: US 9,329,906 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 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

In one embodiment, a portable virtual machine may use a generic resource allocation request to access a host resource. A virtualization host may receive a generic resource allocation request 400 from a portable virtual machine 302. The virtualization host may provide a host resource to the portable virtual machine 302 based on the generic resource allocation request 400.

Claims

1. A machine-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a generic resource allocation request from a portable virtual machine; and

providing a host resource to the portable virtual machine based on the generic resource allocation request.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving the portable virtual machine from a source virtualization host.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a resource pool alias identifying a resource pool from the generic resource allocation request.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a resource pool from the generic resource allocation request.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

allocating the host resource based on a resource pool.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

allocating at least one of a network resource, a processor resource, a memory resource, and a storage resource based on a resource pool.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a configuration specification from the generic resource allocation request.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

configuring the host resource based on the configuration specification.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a resource criterion from the generic resource allocation request.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

selecting the host resource based on the resource criterion.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting the host resource based on a load balancing calculation, a priority calculation, an availability calculation, a consolidation calculation.

12. A tangible machine-readable medium having a set of instructions detailing a method stored thereon that when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to perform the method, the method comprising:

sending a generic resource allocation request from a portable virtual machine to a virtualization host; and

receiving a host resource from the virtualization host based on the generic resource allocation request.

13. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises:

embedding a resource pool alias identifying a resource pool in the generic resource allocation request.

14. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises:

determine a resource type to be used by the portable virtual machine.

15. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises:

identifying a resource pool providing a resource type.

16. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises:

embedding a configuration specification in the generic resource allocation request.

17. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises:

embedding a resource criterion in the generic resource allocation request.

18. A virtualization host, comprising:

a host resource allocated to a portable virtual machine during execution as part of a resource pool; and

a processor that executes a virtualization host environment that receives a generic resource allocation request having a resource pool alias from the portable virtual machine and provides the host resource to the portable virtual machine based on the resource pool alias.

19. The virtualization host of claim 18, wherein the generic resource allocation request has at least one of a configuration specification and a resource criterion.

20. The virtualization host of claim 18, wherein the processor executes at least one of a load balancing calculation, a priority calculation, an availability calculation and a consolidation calculation to select the host resource.