Virtual computing infrastructure

• US 8,719,914 B2
• Filed: 10/28/2005
• Issued: 05/06/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Edwards, Nigel, Dalton, Christopher I
• Primary Examiner(s): Rahman, Mohammad L
• Assistant Examiner(s): CHANG, KENNETH W
• Application Number:
  US11/718,126
• Publication Number:
  US 20110119748A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,112 Days
• Field of Search: 726/12
• US Class Current: 726/12
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• 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. Virtual infrastructures of different users share physical resources but are isolated and have their own management entities. An interface between infrastructures allows controlled relaxation of the isolation, using a gateway between virtual nets, or shared virtual storage devices. This can allow businesses to share data or applications, while maintaining control of security.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

physical resources for data processing, for data storage and for network communications to couple the physical resources for data processing and data storage, the physical resources including one or more servers, each server from the one or more servers configured to run virtual machines and a storage manager arranged to handle access requests from the virtual machines at that server to shared virtual storage and, depending on a mapping of the shared virtual storage, to pass the access request to a storage manager at another server from the one or more servers;

two or more virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising one or more virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities and one or more virtual network entities arranged to couple others of the virtual entities of that virtual overlay infrastructure, the overlay infrastructures being isolated from each other; and

an inter-infrastructure interface for providing a controlled interaction between different ones of the isolated virtual overlay infrastructures.

2. The system of claim 1, the interface comprising a gateway to allow communication between virtual machines in the different virtual infrastructures according to an interface policy.

3. The system of claim 2, the gateway being coupled between virtual networks in the different infrastructures.

4. The system of claim 3, the gateway comprising a gateway virtual machine for each of the two virtual overlay infrastructures, and a virtual network between the gateway virtual machines.

5. The system of claim 3 comprising a virtual firewall.

6. The system of claim 2, the interface comprising a shared virtual storage entity providing shared virtual storage.

7. The system of claim 1, the shared virtual storage being read only for all but one of the different infrastructures.

8. A system, comprising:

physical resources for data processing, for data storage and for network communications to couple the physical resources for data processing and data storage the physical resources including one or more servers, each server from the one or more servers configured to run virtual machines and a storage manager arranged to handle access requests from the virtual machines at that server to shared virtual storage and, depending on a mapping of the shared virtual storage, to pass the access request to a storage manager at another server from the one or more servers;

a plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising a plurality of virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities, and one or more virtual networks defined by plurality of virtual network entities arranged to couple virtual entities from the plurality of virtual entities of that virtual overlay infrastructure, each virtual overlay infrastructure being isolated from each other virtual overlay infrastructure from the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures, at least two virtual overlay infrastructures from the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto a common physical resource from the physical resources; and

a gateway to provide controlled interaction between different virtual overlay infrastructures of the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures, the gateway being coupled between the virtual networks of at least two virtual overlay infrastructures from the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the gateway includes a gateway virtual machine for each of the at least two virtual overlay infrastructures and a virtual network between the gateway virtual machines.

10. A system, comprising:

physical resources for data processing, for data storage and for network communications to couple the physical resources for data processing and data storage, the physical resources including one or more servers, each server from the one or more servers configured to run virtual machines and a storage manager arranged to handle access requests from the virtual machines at that server to shared virtual storage and, depending on a mapping of the shared virtual storage, to pass the access request to a storage manager at another server from the one or more servers;

a plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto the physical resources, each virtual overlay infrastructure comprising a plurality of virtual entities for data processing, one or more virtual data storage entities, and a plurality of virtual network entities arranged to couple virtual entities from the plurality of virtual entities of that virtual overlay infrastructure, each virtual overlay infrastructure being isolated from each other virtual overlay infrastructure from the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures, at least two virtual overlay infrastructures from the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures mapped onto a common physical resource from the physical resources; and

a shared virtual storage entity to provide shared virtual storage and to provide controlled interaction between different virtual overlay infrastructures of the plurality of virtual overlay infrastructures.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the shared virtual storage is read-only for all but one of the different virtual overlay infrastructures.