SAVING/RESTORING GUARDED STORAGE CONTROLS IN A VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENT

• US 20180203618A1
• Filed: 01/19/2017
• Published: 07/19/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/19/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Greiner, Dan F., Jacobi, Christian, Osisek, Damian L., Saporito, Anthony, Shum, Chung-Lung K., Slegel, Timothy J.
• Granted Patent: US 10,496,292 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0269 Incremental or concurrent garbage collection, e.g. in real-time systems G06F12/0261 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/152 Virtualized environment, e.g. logically partitioned system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0659 Command handling arrangements, e.g. command buffers, queues, command scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0685 Hybrid storage combining heterogeneous device types, e.g. hierarchical storage, hybrid arrays
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/467 Transactional memory G06F9/528 takes precedence

Abstract

A guarded storage facility sets up a boundary indicating a range of addresses to be guarded or protected. When a program attempts to access an address in a guarded section defined by the boundary, a guarded storage event occurs. Use of this facility facilitates performance of certain tasks within a computing environment, including storage reclamation.

Claims

1. A computer program product for facilitating processing in a computing environment, said computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for performing a method comprising;

providing a data structure designed to include a plurality of ancillary state description structures to be used in a virtualized environment; and

including in the data structure one or more ancillary state description structures, the one or more ancillary state description structures including one or more control registers used in a guarded storage facility to guard one or more sections of memory.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises using the data structure to manage the guarding of the one or more sections of memory in the virtualized environment.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the including comprises including a guarded storage control block in the data structure, the guarded storage control block comprising the one or more control registers.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the one or more control registers comprise one or more registers selected from a group of registers consisting of:

a guarded storage designation register, a guarded storage section mask register, and a guarded storage event parameter list address register.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the data structure is an extension of a state description used to control processing within the virtualized environment.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises locating the data structure, the locating using information in a state description, the state description used to control processing within the virtualized environment.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the information includes a pointer to an origin of the data structure.

8. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the information includes a characteristic used to indicate a size and alignment of the data structure.

9. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the data structure comprises a features indication that indicates validity of contents of the data structure.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises determining whether a requested feature is valid, the determining using the features indication.

11. A computer system for facilitating processing in a computing environment, said computer system comprising:

a memory; and

a processor in communication with the memory, wherein the computer system is configured to perform a method, said method comprising;

providing a data structure designed to include a plurality of ancillary state description structures to be used in a virtualized environment; and

including in the data structure one or more ancillary state description structures, the one or more ancillary state description structures including one or more control registers used in a guarded storage facility to guard one or more sections of memory.

12. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises using the data structure to manage the guarding of the one or more sections of memory in the virtualized environment.

13. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the one or more control registers comprise one or more registers selected from a group of registers consisting of:

a guarded storage designation register, a guarded storage section mask register, and a guarded storage event parameter list address register.

14. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises locating the data structure, the locating using information in a state description, the state description used to control processing within the virtualized environment.

15. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the data structure comprises a features indication that indicates validity of contents of the data structure.

16. A computer-implemented method of facilitating processing in a computing environment, said computer-implemented method comprising:

providing a data structure designed to include a plurality of ancillary state description structures to be used in a virtualized environment; and

including in the data structure, by at least one processor, one or more ancillary state description structures, the one or more ancillary state description structures including one or more control registers used in a guarded storage facility to guard one or more sections of memory.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 16, further comprising using the data structure to manage the guarding of the one or more sections of memory in the virtualized environment.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 16, wherein the one or more control registers comprise one or more registers selected from a group of registers consisting of:

a guarded storage designation register, a guarded storage section mask register, and a guarded storage event parameter list address register.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 16, further comprising locating the data structure, the locating using information in a state description, the state description used to control processing within the virtualized environment.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 16, wherein the data structure comprises a features indication that indicates validity of contents of the data structure.