Virtual Machine Memory Page Sharing via Tagged Logical Links
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing system resources such as volatile memory in virtual machine environments is challenging due to the inefficiency of existing techniques for identifying and sharing common content across virtual machine instances that do not share physical disk storages, leading to high processing power and resource consumption.
Innovation Solution
Applying data tags to VM image data to identify common content across VM instances, enabling page sharing by creating logical links between storage and memory tags, and using a copy-on-write mechanism for modified pages, thereby reducing memory consumption and improving resource allocation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If traditional memory allocation methods are used for VM instances without shared physical disk storages, then each VM instance requires separate memory allocation, but this leads to high memory consumption and inefficient resource utilization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges memory pages from multiple VM instances by identifying common content and consolidating identical pages into shared memory regions. This allows multiple VMs to reference the same physical memory pages, reducing overall memory consumption while maintaining the illusion of separate memory spaces for each VM instance.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention creates universal memory pages that can be shared across multiple VM instances simultaneously. A single memory page can serve multiple VMs that have identical content requirements, enabling one memory resource to fulfill multiple functions and serve different VM instances based on their common content needs.
2Productivity
If page sharing is implemented across VM instances with different versions of VM images, then resource utilization improves, but data integrity and version management become complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic page sharing that adapts to different VM image versions. The system continuously monitors and identifies common pages between different versions, dynamically creating shared memory regions for compatible pages while maintaining separate memory allocations for version-specific content. This dynamic approach allows resource optimization without compromising data integrity across different VM image versions.
Data Source
AI summary
Various embodiments disclosed herein including systems and methods for improving allocation of computing resources in a virtual machine (VM) environment. Embodiments maintain data relating to how VM image data is stored in storage devices and loaded into volatile memory such as random access memory (RAM). The data is then used to identify common content in the volatile memory that can be shared across VM instances. In some embodiments, multiple VM instances can share at least a portion of a single common VM image loaded into a shared volatile memory.