Managing virtual overlay infrastructures

• US 8,544,002 B2
• Filed: 10/28/2005
• Issued: 09/24/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Edwards, Nigel, Baldwin, Adrian John, Goldsack, Patrick, Lain, Antonio
• Primary Examiner(s): Coleman, Eric
• Application Number:
  US11/718,196
• Publication Number:
  US 20090300605A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,888 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• 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

A system has a virtual overlay infrastructure mapped onto physical resources for processing, storage and network communications, the virtual infrastructure having virtual entities for processing, storage and network communications. Each virtual infrastructure can be passivated by suspending applications, stopping operating systems, and storing state, to enable later reactivation. This is simpler for a complete virtual infrastructure than for groups of virtual entities and physical entities. It enables cloned virtual infrastructure to be created for testing, upgrading or sharing without risk to the parent. On failure, reversion to a previous working clone is feasible.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a plurality of physical resources;

a virtual overlay infrastructure comprising virtual machines mapped onto the plurality of physical resources; and

a controller to

passivate the virtual overlay infrastructure by suspending operations of all of the virtual machines in the virtual overlay infrastructure,

during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, determine whether physical resource reservations for the virtual machines are to be changed, and

reactivate the operations of all of the virtual machines in the virtual overlay infrastructure subsequent to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the controller is further to make a clone of the virtual overlay infrastructure by copying a design and any persistent state of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the virtual overlay infrastructure further includes an interface to an external network having externally visible addresses, and

wherein the controller is further to provide externally visible addresses for the clone different from the externally visible addresses of the interface of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the controller is further to suspend operations of all of the applications running on the plurality of physical resources onto which the virtual machines of the virtual overlay infrastructure are mapped and store a state of the applications in virtual storage devices.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein, during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, the controller is further to re-map the virtual machines onto the plurality of physical resources if the physical resource reservations for the virtual machines are determined to be changed.

6. The system of claim 4, wherein the controller is further to revert the virtual overlay infrastructure to a previous state prior to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure by replacing the stored state with a copy of the previous state, then reactivating the virtual overlay infrastructure using the previous state.

7. The system of claim 2, wherein the controller is further to activate the cloned virtual overlay infrastructure and run the cloned virtual overlay infrastructure independently of its parent virtual overlay infrastructure.

8. The system of claim 1, the physical resources comprising a number of different servers, and the controller is to control the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure on the different servers.

9. The system of claim 2, further comprising an interface between the cloned virtual overlay infrastructure and another virtual overlay infrastructure of another user.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one anomaly detector, wherein the at least one anomaly detector is to use a clone of at least part of the virtual overlay infrastructure to create a signature of typical behavior of the virtual overlay infrastructure, and to compare operation of the virtual overlay infrastructure to the created signature to detect anomalous operation.

11. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing machine readable instructions, which when executed by a processor perform a method of managing a virtual overlay infrastructure, wherein the virtual overlay infrastructure comprises virtual machines mapped onto a plurality of physical resources, the machine readable instructions comprising code to:

passivate the virtual overlay infrastructure by suspending operations of all of the virtual machines of the virtual overlay infrastructure;

during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, determine whether physical resource reservations for the virtual machines are to be changed; and

reactivate the operations of all of the virtual machines subsequent to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, further comprising code to make a clone of the virtual overlay infrastructure by copying a design and any persistent state of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, wherein the virtual overlay infrastructure further comprises an interface to an external network having externally visible addresses, and

wherein the machine readable instructions further comprise code to provide externally visible addresses for the clone different from the externally visible address of the interface of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, the machine readable instructions further comprising code to suspend operations of applications running on the physical resources onto which the virtual machines of the virtual overlay infrastructure are mapped and store a state of the applications in virtual storage devices.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, the machine readable instructions further comprising code to, during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, re-map the virtual machines onto the plurality of physical resources if the physical resource reservations for the virtual machines are determined to be changed.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14, further comprising code to revert the virtual overlay infrastructure to a previous state prior to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure by replacing the stored state with a copy of the previous state, then reactivating the virtual overlay infrastructure using the previous state.

17. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, further comprising code to activate the cloned virtual overlay infrastructure and run the cloned virtual overlay infrastructure independently of its parent virtual overlay infrastructure.

18. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, the physical resources comprising a number of different servers, and the machine readable instructions further comprise code to control the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure on the different servers.

19. A method of managing a virtual overlay infrastructure, wherein the virtual overlay infrastructure comprises virtual machines mapped onto a plurality of physical resources, the method comprising:

passivating, by one or more processors, the virtual overlay infrastructure by suspending operations of all of the virtual machines of the virtual overlay infrastructure;

during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, determining whether to maintain the physical resources reserved for the virtual overlay infrastructure; and

reactivating the operations of all of the virtual machines of the virtual overlay infrastructure subsequent to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure.

20. A system comprising:

a plurality of physical resources;

a virtual overlay infrastructure comprising virtual machines mapped onto the plurality of physical resources; and

at least one anomaly detector, wherein the at least one anomaly detector is to use a clone of at least part of the virtual overlay infrastructure to create a signature of a typical behavior of the virtual overlay infrastructure, and to compare an operation of the virtual overlay infrastructure to the created signature to detect anomalous operation.

21. A system comprising:

a plurality of physical resources;

a virtual overlay infrastructure comprising virtual machines mapped onto the plurality of physical resources; and

a controller to

passivate the virtual overlay infrastructure by suspending operations of the virtual machines in the virtual overlay infrastructure,

during the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure, determine whether physical resource reservations for the virtual machines are to be changed, and

reactivate the operations of all of the virtual machines in the virtual overlay infrastructure subsequent to the passivation of the virtual overlay infrastructure.