Live Virtual Machine Migration Using Network Address Pools
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing virtual machine migration techniques experience downtime and performance issues due to lost or delayed network notifications during the migration process, leading to negative impacts on end users.
Innovation Solution
Implementing network address pools that provide temporary network addresses for virtual machines, allowing seamless migration by associating these addresses with destination hypervisors and relaying data packets without altering their size, thus minimizing downtime and overhead.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional virtual machine migration techniques are used, then migration can be performed, but downtime and performance issues occur due to lost or delayed network notifications
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing network address pools at destination hypervisors before migration occurs. These pools contain pre-allocated network addresses that can be immediately assigned to migrating virtual machines, eliminating the need for network notification exchanges during migration and thus preventing downtime caused by lost or delayed notifications.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces network address pools as an intermediary mechanism between source and destination hypervisors. Instead of relying on direct network notifications that may be lost or delayed, the system uses pre-allocated addresses from the pool as a mediator to establish connectivity, ensuring reliable migration without communication failures.
2Productivity
If network addresses are reallocated during migration, then migration can proceed, but overhead increases due to notification broadcasts and reconfiguration
Solution Approach 1:
Network addresses are pre-allocated and stored in pools at destination hypervisors before migration begins. This preliminary allocation eliminates the need for real-time address assignment and network reconfiguration during migration, reducing overhead while maintaining high migration speed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the network address allocation process from the migration critical path by pre-allocating addresses in pools. This separates the address management function from the migration process itself, eliminating the overhead of coordination and reconfiguration during the actual migration event.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the disclosure provide for mechanisms for live virtual machine migration. A method of the disclosure includes: performing, by a processing device, at least one operation to migrate a virtual machine from a source computer system to a destination computer system, wherein the virtual machine is associated with a first network address; assigning, to the virtual machine, a second network address from a pool of network addresses, wherein the pool of network addresses is associated with a destination hypervisor running on the destination computer system; receiving, from a source hypervisor running on the source computer system, a data packet directed to the first network address and forwarded to the destination hypervisor using the second network address; and forwarding, by the destination hypervisor, the data packet to the virtual machine.