System and Method for File Injection in Virtual Machine Configuration

• US 20150199211A1
• Filed: 01/13/2015
• Published: 07/16/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/14/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Yang, Shuo, Westphal, Cedric, Xie, Haiyong
• Granted Patent: US 9,626,213 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• 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: H04L 41/0806 for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]

Abstract

An embodiment method for virtual machine file injection includes receiving a request for a first image having an operating system and a first set of injected files for a virtual machine. The first set of injected files is compared with second sets of injected files in second images stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium. In response to the first set and second set of injected files not exactly matching, a nearest non-complete candidate image and third files are transmitted, with the third files being files from the first set of injected files that are not in the second set of injected files of the nearest non-complete candidate image.

Claims

1. A method for virtual machine file injection, comprising:

receiving a request for a first image having an operating system and a first set of injected files for a virtual machine;

comparing the first set of injected files with second sets of injected files in second images stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium; and

transmitting, in response to the first set of injected files and second set of injected files not exactly matching, a nearest non-complete candidate image and third files from the first set of injected files that are not in the second set of injected files of the nearest non-complete candidate image.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, in response to the first set of injected files and second set of injected files not exactly matching, a cost of completion of each of one or more of the second images;

wherein the cost of completion of each of one or more of the second images is a cost to modify the respective one of the second images to have the first set of injected files; and

wherein the nearest non-complete candidate image is the one or more of the second images with a lowest cost of completion.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

transmitting, in response to the first set of injected files and second set of injected files exactly matching, the first image of the operating system and the first set of injected files for launching the virtual machine.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the cost of completion comprises a cost of transmitting third files in the first set of injected files that are missing from the respective one of the second images.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the cost of completion further comprises at least one of an injection cost of the third files.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the cost of completion further comprises a cost of removing fourth files that are not in the first set of injected files from the respective one of the second images.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the request for the first image is a request for at least the first image of the operating system and the first set of injected files and a third image of the operating system and a third set of injected files, and wherein the cost of completion is determined using a graph distance metric calculation.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a fourth image of an operating system having the first set of injected files injected therein; and

storing the fourth image in the non-transitory computer readable medium.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the receiving the request for the first image, the comparing the first set of injected files with the second sets of injected files, and the transmitting the nearest non-complete candidate image and third files are performed by an image service;

and

wherein the fourth image is received by the image service from a virtual machine manager.

10. A method for virtual machine file injection comprising:

sending a request to an image service, wherein the request identifies a first image of an operating system and a first set of files;

receiving, from the image service, a nearest non-complete candidate image and second files, wherein the second files are files from the first set files that are not in the nearest non-complete candidate image;

starting the nearest non-complete candidate image as a first virtual machine on a cloud computing platform; and

modifying the nearest non-complete candidate image with the second files to form a second image.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the modifying the nearest non-complete candidate image comprises injecting the second files into the nearest non-complete candidate image to form the second image.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising removing third files from the nearest non-complete candidate image that are not in the first set of files.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising sending a copy of the second image to an image service for storage.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising starting one or more second virtual machines from the second image.

15. A system comprising:

an image service device comprising a first processor and a first non-transitory computer readable medium connected to the first processor and having stored thereon instructions for causing the first processor to;

receive a request for a first image identifying an operating system and a first set of files that are not part of the operating system;

access one or more second images stored on a second non-transitory computer readable medium;

compare the first set of files with a second set of files in each of the second images;

determine whether one or more the second sets of files matches the first set of files; and

transmit, in response to none of the second sets of files matching the first set of files, a nearest non-complete candidate image and third files, wherein the third files are files from the first set of files that are not in the second set of files of the nearest non-complete candidate image.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

a virtual machine (VM) manager device connected to the image service device, the VM manager device comprising a second processor and a third non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon instructions for causing the second processor to;

send the request for the first image to the image service device;

receive, from the image service device, the nearest non-complete candidate image and third files;

start the nearest non-complete candidate image as a first virtual machine; and

modify the nearest non-complete candidate image with the third files to form a third image.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the VM manager device is a server pool of a cloud computing platform;

wherein the VM manager device is a separate device from the image service device; and

wherein the VM manager device is connected to the image service device by a network.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the instructions to modify the nearest non-complete candidate image comprises instructions causing the processor to perform at least one of injecting the third files into the nearest non-complete candidate image and removing fourth files from the nearest non-complete candidate image that are not in the first set of files.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the third non-transitory computer readable medium further has stored thereon instructions for causing the second processor to:

start one or more second virtual machines from the third image.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the first non-transitory computer readable medium further has stored thereon instructions for causing the first processor to:

determine the nearest non-complete candidate image by determining a cost of completion of each of one or more of the second images;

wherein the cost of completion of each of the one or more of the second images is a cost to modify the respective one of the second images to have the first set of files; and

wherein the nearest non-complete candidate image is the one or more of the second images with a lowest cost of completion.