CO-LOCATION OF VIRTUAL MACHINES WITH NESTED VIRTUALIZATION

• US 20140019968A1
• Filed: 07/18/2012
• Published: 01/16/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/13/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Deng, Yu, Karve, Alexei, Kochut, Andrzej, Rendahl, Randy A., Sailer, Anca, Segal, Alla, Shaikh, Hidayatullah H.
• Granted Patent: US 9,122,509 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45566 Nested virtual machines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Co-locating a virtual machine with nested virtualization, in one aspect, may comprise receiving a list of one or more virtual machine instances to co-locate with associated configuration information. A parent virtual machine instance may be identified to host the one or more virtual machine instances. Virtual machine images associated with the one or more virtual machine instances may be consolidated. A composite parent virtual machine image may be created based on the consolidated virtual machine images and the parent virtual machine instance. The parent virtual machine instance may be configured to accommodate for capacity requirement of the one or more child virtual machine instances. The parent virtual machine instance may be started on a processor via the composite parent virtual machine image. The one or more virtual machine instances may be started within the parent virtual machine instance as one or more child virtual machine instances.

Claims

1. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of co-locating a virtual machine with nested virtualization, comprising:

receiving a list of one or more virtual machine instances to co-locate and associated configuration information needed to create the one or more virtual machine instances;

consolidating virtual machine images associated with the one or more virtual machine instances;

creating a composite parent virtual machine image based on the consolidated virtual machine images and a parent virtual machine instance;

setting a configuration of the parent virtual machine instance to accommodate for capacity requirement of the one or more child virtual machine instances;

starting the parent virtual machine instance on a host via the composite parent virtual machine image;

starting the one or more virtual machine instances within the parent virtual machine instance as one or more child virtual machine instances; and

configuring the parent virtual machine instance and the one or more child virtual machine instances on the host.

2. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the list is received as a co-location constraint in a metadata file.

3. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the list is received via a user specifying the one or more VM instances via a graphical user interface.

4. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the consolidating removes duplicate virtual machine image blocks.

5. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein if the list includes multiple virtual machine instances that can be created from a same virtual machine image, said consolidating comprises including only one copy of the same virtual machine image in the composite parent virtual machine image.

6. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein said configuring the parent virtual machine instance and the child virtual machine instances include setting one or more networking parameters, network address translation and firewall parameters.

7. The computer readable storage medium of claim 6, wherein the parent virtual machine instance receives all communications from remote network addressed to the parent virtual machine and the one or more child virtual machines, and forwards the communications to appropriate one or more of the child virtual machines.

8. The computer readable storage medium of claim 6, wherein the parent virtual machine provides firewall protection mechanism for the one or more child virtual machines.

9. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein said starting of the parent virtual machine instance on a processor includes executing one or more configuration scripts on the composite parent virtual machine image.

10. The computer readable storage medium of claim 9, further including the parent virtual machine instance accommodating for capacity of the one or more child virtual machine instances allowing overallocation on hypervisor.

11. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein said starting of the one or more virtual machine instances includes executing the one or more virtual machine images associated with the one or more virtual machine instances in the composite parent virtual machine image.

12. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of co-locating a virtual machine with one or more running child virtual machine instances, comprising:

receiving information associated with a new virtual machine instance to co-locate with other child VM instance;

consolidating a virtual machine image associated with the new virtual machine instance with a list of existing one or more child virtual machine images in the parent virtual machine instance;

updating resource capacity of the parent virtual machine instance to accommodate resource requirement of the new virtual machine instance;

starting the new virtual machine instance from the parent virtual machine instance as a new child virtual instance of the parent virtual machine instance; and

configuring the parent virtual machine instance and the new child virtual machine instance.

13. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein the new virtual machine instance to co-locate is received as a co-location constraint in a metadata file.

14. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein the new virtual machine instance to co-locate is received via an entry in a graphical user interface.

15. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein the consolidating includes:

determining whether a composite parent virtual machine image associated with the parent virtual machine instance already has the virtual machine image associated with the new virtual machine instance, and only if the composite parent virtual machine image does not include the virtual machine image, copying the virtual machine image associated with the new virtual machine from a storage server.

16. The computer readable storage of claim 15, wherein the consolidating further includes:

in response to determining that the composite parent virtual machine image has the virtual machine image, determining whether there are one or more blocks missing from the virtual machine image in the composite parent virtual machine image, and in response to determining that there are one or more blocks missing from the virtual machine image in the composite parent virtual machine image, adding the one or more missing blocks to the composite parent virtual machine image.

17. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein said configuring of the parent virtual machine instance and the new child virtual machine instance includes setting one or more networking parameters, network address translation and firewall parameters.

18. The computer readable storage of claim 17, wherein the parent virtual machine instance is configured to receive communications from remote network addressed to the parent virtual machine and forwarding the communications to the new child virtual machine.

19. The computer readable storage of claim 17, wherein the parent virtual machine instance provides firewall protection mechanism for the new child virtual machine instance.

20. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein a user is enabled to start the new child virtual machine instance by logging onto the parent virtual machine instance.

21. The computer readable storage of claim 12, wherein the new child virtual machine instance is started via a script executed automatically within the parent virtual machine instance.

22. A system for co-locating a virtual machine with nested virtualization, comprising:

a host machine;

a co-location module operable to receive a list of one or more virtual machine instances to co-locate and associated configuration information needed to create the one or more virtual machine instances, the co-location module further operable to consolidate virtual machine images associated with the one or more virtual machine instances and create a composite parent virtual machine image based on the consolidated virtual machine images and a parent virtual machine instance, the co-location module further operable to set a configuration of the parent virtual machine instance to accommodate for capacity requirement of the one or more child virtual machine instances, the co-location module further operable to start the parent virtual machine instance on the host machine via the composite parent virtual machine image and start the one or more virtual machine instances within the parent virtual machine instance as one or more child virtual machine instances, the co-location module further operable to configure the parent virtual machine instance and the one or more child virtual machine instances on the host.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the co-location module is further operable to receive information associated with a new virtual machine instance to co-locate with said one or more virtual machine instances, the co-location module further operable to consolidate a virtual machine image associated with the new virtual machine instance with the composite parent virtual machine image, the co-location module further operable to update resource capacity of the parent virtual machine instance to accommodate resource requirement of the new virtual machine instance, the co-location module further operable to start the new virtual machine instance from the parent virtual machine instance as a new child virtual instance of the parent virtual machine instance, and the co-location module further operable to configure the parent virtual machine instance and the new child virtual machine instance.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein if the list includes multiple virtual machine instances that can be created from a same virtual machine image, the co-location module consolidates by including only one copy of the same virtual machine image in the composite parent virtual machine image.

25. The system of claim 22, wherein the co-location modules configure the parent virtual machine instance and the child virtual machine instances by setting one or more networking parameters, network address translation and firewall parameters, and wherein the parent virtual machine instance receives all communications from remote network addressed to the parent virtual machine and the one or more child virtual machines, and forwards the communications to appropriate one or more of the child virtual machines.