Hypervisor Exchange via Virtual Machine Consolidation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Upgrading a hypervisor often requires shutting down virtual machines, which can be costly or unacceptable, especially when a standby machine is not available and migration consumes significant network bandwidth.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves consolidating virtual machines onto a guest hypervisor, allowing for the exchange of hypervisors without shutting down or migrating them, by reducing the number of virtual machines to one and using techniques like loadESX for side-loading the new hypervisor, and then migrating and dissociating them to complete the upgrade.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If virtual machines are migrated to a standby machine to avoid shutting down during hypervisor upgrade, then virtual machine continuity is maintained, but network bandwidth is consumed and standby machine availability is required
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the virtual machines from the old hypervisor and relocates them to a new hypervisor instance running on the same physical host. This extraction allows the hypervisor upgrade to occur without requiring network migration to a standby machine, thereby eliminating network bandwidth consumption while maintaining virtual machine continuity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a new hypervisor instance as an intermediate dimension between the old hypervisor and the final upgraded state. By running both hypervisors simultaneously on the same host and migrating VMs through this intermediate layer, the system achieves seamless upgrade without network bandwidth constraints.
2Ease of operation
If virtual machines are migrated to a standby machine for hypervisor upgrade, then upgrade can be performed without shutdown, but standby machine must be available and migration takes extended duration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the upgrade process with the existing host infrastructure by installing the new hypervisor on the same physical host as the old hypervisor. This consolidation eliminates the need for separate standby machine availability and reduces migration time by avoiding inter-host data transfer.
Solution Approach 2:
The new hypervisor is installed and prepared in advance on the same host before the actual migration of virtual machines. This preliminary preparation ensures that when migration occurs, the destination environment is already ready, significantly reducing the overall upgrade duration.
3Reliability
If all virtual machines are migrated during hypervisor upgrade, then complete upgrade is achieved, but network bandwidth is depleted and other network nodes are deprived of bandwidth
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts virtual machines from the old hypervisor and relocates them locally to the new hypervisor on the same host. This extraction eliminates network bandwidth depletion by replacing network-based migration with local memory-based migration, ensuring network resources remain available for other operations.
4Device complexity
If virtual machines are consolidated to reduce number during hypervisor exchange, then migration complexity is reduced, but virtual machine operation may be affected
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a new hypervisor instance as an intermediary that receives virtual machines from the old hypervisor and presents them to the upgraded environment. This intermediary layer simplifies the migration process by providing a controlled transition path while maintaining virtual machine operation continuity through proper configuration and management.
Data Source
AI summary
A hypervisor exchange, e.g., an upgrade, can include consolidating resident virtual machines into a single host virtual machine, exchanging an old hypervisor with a new (upgraded) hypervisor, and disassociating the virtual resident virtual machines by migrating them to the new hypervisor. The consolidating can involve migrating the resident virtual machines from the old hypervisor to a guest hypervisor on the host virtual machine. The exchange can involve: 1) suspending the host virtual machine before the exchange; and 2) resuming the host virtual machine after the exchange; or migrating the host virtual machine from a partition including the old hypervisor to a partition hosting the new hypervisor. Either way, an exchange (upgrade) is achieve without requiring a bandwidth consuming migration over a network to a standby machine.