Patent Application
20120266163
1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for virtual machine migration.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Modern computing systems often include virtual machines (‘VMs’) that execute on actual physical devices. In systems with multiple VMs, a variety of resources are provided by the physical device that supports the VMs. These resources are required by and consumed by the VMs. For example, VMs consume network bandwidth, storage interface bandwidth, processor cycles, memory capacity, and so on. As the VMs are activated and applications are started, the resource utilization will begin to climb. This could result in poor performance due to unbalanced workload distribution where VMs on a particular device are over-utilizing the device's resources. In these situations, VMs may be moved to another device. However, current approaches typically wait for a resource over allocation condition to occur and then take action to rebalance the workloads—leading to delays and sub-optimal performance. In order to accommodate the likelihood of stalling a resource, the workload balancing thresholds are set extremely low, thereby not making as good a use of physical resources as possible.
Methods, apparatus, and products for virtual machine migration, including: monitoring, by a management agent, the utilization of a system resource in a computing system; determining, by the management agent, a rate of change in the utilization of the system resource over a predetermined period of time; comparing, by the management agent, the rate of change in the utilization of the system resource over a predetermined period of time to a predetermined maximum allowable rate of change in the utilization of the system resource over the predetermined period of time; and taking, by the management agent, corrective action upon determining that the rate of change in the utilization of the system resource over the predetermined period of time exceeds the predetermined maximum allowable rate of change in the utilization of the system resource over the predetermined period of time.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular descriptions of example embodiments of the invention as illustrated in the accompanying drawings wherein like reference numbers generally represent like parts of example embodiments of the invention.
Example methods, apparatus, and products for virtual machine migration in accordance with the present invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with
Stored in RAM (168) is a management agent application (101), a module of computer program instructions improved for virtual machine migration according to embodiments of the present invention. Also stored in RAM (168) is an operating system (154). Operating systems useful for virtual machine migration according to embodiments of the present invention include UNIX™, Linux™, Microsoft XP™, AIX™, IBM's i5/OS™, and others as will occur to those of skill in the art. The operating system (154) and management agent application (101) in the example of
The computer (152) of
The example computer (152) of
The example computer (152) of
In the example of
In the example of
‘Migration,’ as the term is used in this specification, is the effective movement of a virtual machine (308) from one physical machine to another physical machine. Migration is descried here in terms of an ‘effective’ move of a VM from one physical machine to another, because migration refers not to the means of movement, but to the end result of the movement. That is, migration describes two states, one state in which a particular VM is executing on a particular physical machine, and a second state in which the particular VM is no longer executing on the particular physical machine but is instead executing on another physical machine. From the first state to the second state, therefore, one may describe the particular VM as having been moved from the particular physical machine to the other physical machine. The means by which such a ‘movement’ of a VM is carried out, however, may vary greatly within the scope of the present invention. Migrating a VM from a particular physical machine to another physical machine may include, for example, copying data representing the VM executing on the particular physical machine from the particular physical machine's memory to memory of another physical machine, uploading to and executing on another physical machine, a previously established image of the VM executing on the particular physical machine and halting execution of the VM executing on the particular physical machine, establishing a default image of a virtual machine in another physical machine and executing in the default image of the VM of instances of the same user-level applications executing in the VM of the particular physical machine, and so on.
For further explanation,
In the example of
In the Resource Utilization Table above, the table is used to track the extent to which two system resources, in this case a CPU identified as CPU1 and a CPU identified as CPU2. The Resource Utilization Table above tracks the extent to which the system resources are utilized over multiple periods of time that are identified as time periods 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Each period of time may be 1 microsecond, 1 second, 1 minute, or any other unit of time as will occur to those of skill in the art. The Resource Utilization Table above also tracks the extent to the system resource is being utilized as a percentage of total resource capacity. For example, in time period 1, 5% of all available processing cycles for CPU1 were utilized.
The example of
For example, using the historical data contained in the Resource Utilization Table described above, the rate of change in the utilization of CPU1 can be determined (208). In the Resource Utilization Table described above, the usage of CPU1 was 5% in time period 1, 11% in time period 2, 16% in time period 3, 24% in time period 4, and 33% in time period 5. In such an example, the rate of change in the utilization of CPU1 over a predetermined time period, such as from time period 1 to time period 5, is 660% (33% usage of all CPU1 cycles in time period 5 divided by 5% of all CPU1 cycles in time period 5). That is, the number of CPU cycles provided by CPU1 that were utilized in time period 5 was 6.6 times greater that than the number of CPU cycles provided by CPU1 that were utilized in time period 1. By contrast, over the same period of time there was no rate of change in the usage of CPU2, as 8% of the cycles provided by CPU2 were utilized in each of the time periods.
The example of
For example, consider a situation in which the predetermined maximum allowable rate of change in the utilization of a computer processor was 50%. In such an example, the rate of change in the utilization of CPU1 has exceeded the predetermined maximum allowable rate of change, while the rate of change in the utilization of CPU2 has not exceeded the predetermined maximum allowable rate of change. In such an example, the rapidly increasing utilization of CPU1 may need to be addressed otherwise CPU1 will be over-utilized if the rate of change in its utilization continues. In the example of
The example of
For further explanation,
The example of
The example of
In the example of
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present invention may be embodied as a system, method or computer program product. Accordingly, aspects of the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Furthermore, aspects of the present invention may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable medium(s) having computer readable program code embodied thereon.
Any combination of one or more computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer readable medium may be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storage medium may be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium may be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
Program code embodied on a computer readable medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing.
Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of the present invention may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).
Aspects of the present invention are described above with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer readable medium that can direct a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instructions which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other devices to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
It will be understood from the foregoing description that modifications and changes may be made in various embodiments of the present invention without departing from its true spirit. The descriptions in this specification are for purposes of illustration only and are not to be construed in a limiting sense. The scope of the present invention is limited only by the language of the following claims.
