VM Spares for Cluster Resource Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
In virtualized computing environments, existing technologies face challenges in ensuring resource availability and efficient management, particularly in scenarios involving VM power-on requests, failed VM restarts, and failover scenarios, where insufficient compatible unfragmented resources can lead to resource allocation failures and inefficient resource utilization.
Innovation Solution
The use of 'VM spares' as placeholders to reserve and manage computing resources within a cluster, allowing for the allocation and reallocation of resources to ensure compatibility and availability for VM power-on requests, failed VM restarts, and failover scenarios, by creating and managing snapshots of resource allocations across hosts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If computing resources are allocated dynamically to VMs based on current availability, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but resource availability for critical operations (VM power-on, failover) cannot be guaranteed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent reserves computing resources in advance by creating VM spares in the snapshot before critical operations occur. This preliminary reservation ensures that when VM power-on or failover operations are needed, pre-allocated resources are immediately available without competing with dynamic allocation demands, thus guaranteeing resource availability while maintaining overall resource utilization efficiency through the snapshot-based reservation mechanism
2Reliability
If resources are reserved in advance for VM spares, then resource availability for failover is improved, but overall resource utilization decreases due to fragmentation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic resource management where VM spares in the snapshot can be automatically replaced by newly powered-on VMs. This dynamic mechanism allows reserved resources to be reclaimed and reallocated when no longer needed for failover protection, thus maintaining resource availability for critical operations while preventing permanent resource fragmentation and improving overall resource utilization through continuous adaptation to changing system states
3Ease of operation
If manual intervention is required for VM restart after failure, then resource allocation control is improved, but response time and system availability worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements automated failover where VM spares in the snapshot are automatically activated and replace failed VMs without manual intervention. The system self-monitors VM health and automatically triggers replacement using pre-reserved resources, eliminating the time loss associated with manual restart operations while maintaining resource allocation control through the structured snapshot-based spare management mechanism
4Reliability
If computing resources must be available in unfragmented form on a single host, then VM admission control reliability is improved, but resource allocation flexibility and productivity worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent resolves the contradiction by adding a temporal dimension to resource allocation through snapshots. Resources are reserved in the snapshot dimension for VM spares, allowing unfragmented resource availability to be guaranteed for admission control, while in the operational dimension, resources can be dynamically allocated and shared across multiple hosts, thus maintaining allocation flexibility and productivity without compromising admission control reliability
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for cluster resource management in virtualized computing environments are described. VM spares are used to reserve (or help discover or otherwise obtain) a set of computing resources for a VM. While VM spares may be used for a variety of scenarios, particular uses of VM spares include using spares to ensure resource availability for requests to power on VMs as well as for discovering, obtaining, and defragmenting the resources and VMs on a cluster, e.g., in response to requests to reserve resources for a VM or to respond to a notification of a failure for a given VM.