Using a delta query to seed live migration

• US 9,898,320 B2
• Filed: 06/26/2015
• Issued: 02/20/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tarasuk-Levin, Gabriel, Dirks, Patrick William Penzias, Langouev, Ilia, Kolovson, Curt
• Primary Examiner(s): Puente, Emerson
• Assistant Examiner(s): DO, STEVEN M
• Application Number:
  US14/752,652
• Publication Number:
  US 20150378771A1
• Time in Patent Office: 970 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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

Abstract

Examples perform live migration of objects such as VMs from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure exposes the contents of the storage disk at the destination host, compares the storage disk of the destination host to the source host, and during migration, migrates only data which is not already stored at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes, with exclusive access to the storage disks.

Claims

1. A system for live migration, said system comprising:

a memory area associated with a computing device, said memory area storing a source object; and

a processor programmed to;

in response to receiving a request to perform a live migration of the source object on a source host to a destination object on a destination host, expose a disk state of one or more disks on the destination host, the source host and the destination host having a block based storage system;

compare the exposed disk state of the destination host with a disk state of disks on the source host;

based on the comparison, identify those memory blocks which have not been transferred from the source host to the destination host; and

perform the live migration of the source object by transferring only the identified memory blocks from the source host to the destination host, wherein the live migration process is performed by;

pre-opening the one or more disks on the destination object in non-exclusive mode,

performing a block based copy of the identified memory blocks from the source object to the pre-opened disks on the destination object,

after copying the identified memory blocks, suspending execution of the source object,

transferring virtual memory of the source object to the destination object while the source object is suspended, and

executing the destination object after transferring the virtual memory.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further programmed to downgrade locks on disks of the source object from an exclusive mode to a non-exclusive mode before opening the one or more disks on the destination object in non-exclusive mode.

3. The system of claim 2, further comprising, after migration, upgrading the locks on the destination object from the non-exclusive mode to the exclusive mode after closing the disks on the source object.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more disks on the destination host are managed by a vendor provider that enables shared access to the one or more disks.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising receiving a request to perform the live migration of the source object on the source host to the destination object on the destination host.

6. The system of claim 2 wherein downgrading the locks comprises changing locks of a proxy file having a universal unique identifier.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the destination host is associated with a hybrid cloud service.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is programmed to open the one or more disks on the destination host via an application programming interface.

9. A method comprising:

in response to receiving a request to perform a live migration of a source object on a source host to a destination object on a destination host, comparing a first disk state of the source object to a second disk state of the destination object, the source host and the destination host having a block based storage system;

identifying a plurality of memory blocks of the first disk state that are not replicated on the second disk state, based on the compared disk states; and

performing the live migration of the source object from the source host to the destination object on the destination host, the live migration including performing a block based copy of only the identified memory blocks from the source host to the destination host.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising receiving the request to perform the live migration.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising notifying the destination object on the destination host that the live migration has completed.

12. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

notifying the source object that the destination object has begun execution.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein data representing the source object is stored on a virtual volume managed by a storage provider.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises downgrading locks on disks of the source object from an exclusive mode to a non-exclusive mode, and opening one or more disks on the destination object in non-exclusive mode.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein after migration, upgrading locks on the destination object from the non-exclusive mode to the exclusive mode after closing the disks of the source object.

16. The method of claim 9, wherein the destination host is associated with a hybrid cloud service.

17. The method of claim 9, wherein identifying the plurality of memory blocks comprises executing a function call via an application programming interface.

18. One or more computer-readable storage media including computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause at least one processor to live migrate an object by:

in response to receiving a request to perform a live migration of a source object on a source host to a destination object on a destination host, exposing a disk state of one or more disks on the destination host, the source host and the destination host having a block based storage system;

comparing the exposed disk state of the disks on the destination host with a disk state of disks on the source host;

based on the comparison, identifying those memory blocks which have not been transferred from the source host to the destination host; and

transferring only the identified memory blocks from the source object to the destination object during the live migration, the live migration including performing a block based copy of the identified memory blocks from the source object to the destination object.

19. The computer-readable storage media of claim 18, wherein the destination host is associated with a hybrid cloud service.

20. The computer-readable storage media of claim 18, wherein identifying those memory blocks which have not been transferred from the source host to the destination host comprises executing a function call via an application programming interface.