Facilitating Customer-Initiated Virtual Machine Migration and Swapping

• US 20140040892A1
• Filed: 08/14/2012
• Published: 02/06/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/03/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Baset, Salman A., Huang, Hai, Kim, Kyung Hwa, Tang, Chunqiang
• Granted Patent: US 9,015,713 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

A system and an article of manufacture for facilitating customer-initiated virtual machine (VM) migration and swapping include obtaining documentation of at least one performance parameter of two or more virtual machines running on two or more physical machines, obtaining a request for a virtual machine exchange from a user of a first virtual machine, wherein the request comprises a preference for at least one desired performance parameter in at least one additional virtual machine, matching the request from the user of the first virtual machine with at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at to least one desired performance parameter without assistance from a cloud provider, and exchanging the first virtual machine with a virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at least one desired performance parameter.

Claims

1. An article of manufacture comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable instructions tangibly embodied thereon which, when implemented, cause a computer to carry out a plurality of method steps comprising:

obtaining documentation of at least one performance parameter of two or more virtual machines running on two or more physical machines;

obtaining a request for a virtual machine exchange from a user of a first virtual machine, wherein the request comprises a preference for at least one desired performance parameter in at least one additional virtual machine;

matching the request from the user of the first virtual machine with at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at least one desired performance parameter; and

exchanging the first virtual machine with a virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at least one desired performance parameter without assistance from a cloud provider;

wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a computer device.

2. The article of manufacture of claim 1, wherein the method steps comprise:

obtaining a second request for a virtual machine exchange from a user of a second virtual machine, wherein the request comprises a preference for at least one desired performance parameter in at least one additional virtual machine.

3. The article of manufacture of claim 2, wherein the method steps comprise:

matching the first request from the user of the first virtual machine with the second request from the user of the second virtual machine if;

the first virtual machine includes the at least one desired performance parameter from the second request; and

the second virtual machine includes the at least one desired performance parameter from the first request.

4. The article of manufacture of claim 3, wherein the method steps comprise:

exchanging the first virtual machine with the second virtual machine.

5. The article of manufacture of claim 4, wherein the method steps comprise:

obtaining assent from the first user and the second user for said exchanging.

6. The article of manufacture of claim 1, wherein the at least one performance parameter comprises central processing unit, memory, network, storage, and/or number of hops between virtual machines.

7. The article of manufacture of claim 1, wherein said exchanging comprises:

starting the first virtual machine and the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine in a stateless mode with each corresponding boot disk being unmounted.

8. The article of manufacture of claim 7, wherein the method steps comprise:

copying each used disk block from the first virtual machine to a temporary storage.

9. The article of manufacture of claim 8, wherein the method steps comprise:

copying the contents of the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine to a storage component of the first virtual machine.

10. The article of manufacture of claim 9, wherein the method steps comprise:

copying the contents of the first virtual machine from the temporary storage to a disk of the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine.

11. The article of manufacture of claim 1, wherein said exchanging comprises using a third party broker.

12. The article of manufacture of claim 11, wherein the method steps comprise:

obtaining assent, via the third party broker, from the user of the first virtual machine and the user of the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine for said exchanging.

13. The article of manufacture of claim 11, wherein the method steps comprise:

revoking, via the third party broker, user access to the first virtual machine and the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine; and

shutting down, via the third party broker, the first virtual machine and the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine.

14. The article of manufacture of claim 13, wherein the method steps comprise:

attaching, via the third party broker, a remote disk to each virtual machine;

setting, via the third party broker, the remote disks as boot; and

unmounting, via the third party broker, each virtual machine disk.

15. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the method steps comprise:

restarting, via the third party broker, each virtual machine; and

swapping, via the third party broker, the virtual machine disks using an intermediary storage controlled by broker.

16. The article of manufacture of claim 15, wherein the method steps comprise:

removing, via the third party broker, the remote disks; and

restoring, via the third party broker, newly copied disks on the virtual machine disks and rebooting the virtual machines.

17. The article of manufacture of claim 1, wherein the method steps comprise:

verifying the documentation of the at least one performance parameter of the two or more virtual machines.

18. The article of manufacture of claim 17, wherein said verifying comprises running at least one micro-benchmark of each virtual machine for comparison with the documentation.

19. The article of manufacture of claim 1 wherein the method steps comprise:

exchanging ownership of the first virtual machine and the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine in connection with exchanging the first virtual machine with the virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine.

20. A system for exchanging two or more virtual machines, comprising:

at least one distinct software module, each distinct software module being embodied on a tangible computer-readable medium;

a memory; and

at least one processor coupled to the memory and operative for;

obtaining documentation of at least one performance parameter of two or more virtual machines running on two or more physical machines;

obtaining a request for a virtual machine exchange from a user of a first virtual machine, wherein the request comprises a preference for at least one desired performance parameter in at least one additional virtual machine;

matching the request from the user of the first virtual machine with at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at least one desired performance parameter; and

exchanging the first virtual machine with a virtual machine from the at least one additional virtual machine that includes the at least one desired performance parameter without assistance from a cloud provider.