Managing the sharing of logical resources among separate partitions of a logically partitioned computer system

• US 8,782,024 B2
• Filed: 02/12/2004
• Issued: 07/15/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/12/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Arndt, Richard Louis, Mealey, Bruce G., Thurber, Steven Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): Pham, Hung Q
• Assistant Examiner(s): Black, Linh
• Application Number:
  US10/777,724
• Publication Number:
  US 20050182788A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,806 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1-1041, 707/705, 707/781, 707/802, 709/226
• US Class Current: 707/705
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45541 Bare-metal, i.e. hypervisor runs directly on hardware
• 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 mechanism is provided for sharing resources among logical partitions in a logical partitioned data processing system and for managing the changes to resources in such a way that the sharing operating systems are able to handle the various transitions in a graceful manner. Four hypervisor functions plus a specific return code manage the granting of access of resources owned by one partition to another (client) partition, accepting of granted resources by client partitions, returning of granted resources by client partitions, and rescinding of access by the owning partition. These four hypervisor functions are invoked either explicitly by the owning and client partitions or automatically by the hypervisor in response to partition termination. The hypervisor functions provide the needed infrastructure to manage the sharing of logical resources among partitions.

Claims

1. A method for managing shared resources in a logical partitioned computer, the method comprising:

managing, by a partition manager, a plurality of logical partitions that are included in the computer, wherein each one of the plurality of logical partitions executes one of a plurality of operating systems, and wherein each one of the plurality of logical partitions owns a different plurality of logical resources;

granting, by a server partition to a client partition, access to one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition, wherein the server partition and the client partition are included in the plurality of logical partitions, wherein the client partition is a first client partition;

requesting that the partition manager generate a first identifier that identifies the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition;

generating, by the partition manager, the first identifier;

communicating, by the server partition, the first identifier from the server partition to the first client partition, wherein the first identifier is a cookie that identifies the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition; and

responsive to the first client partition accepting the first identifier, mapping the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition into a logical address space of the first client partition, wherein the mapping is performed by the first client partition;

granting, by the first client partition in the logical partitioned computer, the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition to a second client partition in the logical partitioned data processing system;

requesting that the partition manager generate a second identifier that identifies the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition;

generating, by the partition manager, the second identifier;

communicating the second identifier from the first client partition to the second client partition; and

responsive to the second client partition accepting the second identifier, mapping the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition into a logical address space of the second client partition, wherein the mapping is performed by the second client partition.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first identifier is unique to the first client partition.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first identifier is usable by only the first client partition and cannot be used by any other ones of the plurality of partitions to access the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

returning, by the first client partition, the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition to the server partition.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

rescinding, by the server partition, the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to a determination, at the server partition, that the first client partition is incapable of gracefully returning the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition, performing a forced rescind operation.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

preventing translation tables in the first client partition from containing references to a physical address of the one of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to a failure of the server partition, notifying the first client partition of the failure of the server partition;

recovering outstanding shared ones of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition for the server partition; and

restarting the server partition.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

delaying for a period of time prior to the step of recovering the outstanding shared ones of the plurality of logical resources that are owned by the server partition for the server partition.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

granting access to the one of the plurality of logical resources owned by the server partition to the second client partition that is included in the plurality of partitions by;

generating a second identifier that identifies the one of the plurality of logical resources; and

communicating the second identifier to the second client partition.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the one of the plurality of logical resources owned by the server partition is an input/output adapter.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the one of the plurality of logical resources owned by the server partition is allocated to the server partition.