Canonical Architectural Description for Virtual Machine Relocation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Virtual machine mobility is hindered when relocating across hypervisors with differing architectural and cryptographic capabilities, leading to potential loss of access to facilities and restrictive eligibility checks, which limits managed inclusion and migration of new systems and workloads.
Innovation Solution
The method involves calculating a canonical architectural description and effective cryptographic characteristics for each subdomain, allowing for dynamic relocation and reverse transitions by integrating shared cryptographic adapters into the facility management schemes, and using legacy indicators to ensure compatibility and preserve cryptographic capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If virtual machines are relocated across hypervisors with differing architectural and cryptographic capabilities, then virtual machine mobility is improved, but facility access may be lost and compatibility issues arise
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculations of the canonical architectural description and effective cryptographic characteristics before relocation occurs. By pre-computing these descriptions for each subdomain and comparing them against the virtual machine's requirements, the system determines eligibility in advance, ensuring facility access is maintained during the relocation process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces intermediary structures including the canonical architectural description as a standardized interface between heterogeneous hypervisors and virtual machines. This intermediary layer translates diverse architectural capabilities into a common representation, enabling compatibility assessment without requiring direct knowledge of all underlying hardware differences.
2Reliability
If strict eligibility checks are performed for virtual machine relocation, then facility access is maintained, but system flexibility and managed inclusion are restricted
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameters used for eligibility assessment by introducing the canonical architectural description as a standardized metric. Instead of checking for exact matches of all hardware characteristics, the system compares virtual machine requirements against the canonical description's key parameters (such as cryptographic capabilities), allowing flexible matching while maintaining essential facility access.
3Productivity
If new hypervisors are added to the relocation domain, then system capacity increases, but compatibility issues may arise with existing virtual machines
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements universality by creating a unified eligibility assessment mechanism that works across all hypervisors in the relocation domain. The canonical architectural description serves as a universal reference that new hypervisors must conform to, ensuring they are compatible with existing virtual machines while still allowing the system to accommodate diverse hardware configurations.
Data Source
AI summary
Dynamic relocation of virtual machines among hypervisors in a relocation domain is provided. A hypervisor is initialized in a subdomain of the relocation domain. A record of architecture characteristics is retrieved for each hypervisor in the relocation domain. A new canonical architectural description (ARD) is created for each subdomain in the relocation domain. An effective adapter characteristic representation is created for each virtual machine defined to the hypervisor. The record of architecture characteristics for each hypervisor in the relocation domain is updated.