Virtual machine migration
US7680919B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 12, 2009 |
| Grant date | Mar 16, 2010 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 12, 2029 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L67/148
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A source virtual machine (VM) hosted on a source server is migrated to a destination VM on a destination server without first powering down the source VM. After optional pre-copying of the source VM's memory to the destination VM, the source VM is suspended and its non-memory state is transferred to the destination VM; the destination VM is then resumed from the transferred state. The source VM memory is either paged in to the destination VM on demand, or is transferred asynchronously by pre-copying and write-protecting the source VM memory, and then later transferring only the modified pages after the destination VM is resumed. The source and destination servers preferably share common storage, in which the source VM's virtual disk is stored; this avoids the need to transfer the virtual disk contents. Network connectivity is preferably also made transparent to the user by arranging the servers on a common subnet, with virtual network connection addresses generated from a common name space of physical addresses.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.