Management of host physical memory allocation to virtual machines with a balloon application
US8359451B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 23, 2010 |
| Grant date | Jan 22, 2013 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 9, 2031 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2212/151
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Methods and systems for managing distribution of host physical memory (HPM) among virtual machines (VMs) executing on a host via a hypervisor are presented, where each VM has guest system software including an operating system. A method includes an operation for reserving, by a balloon application executing in a first VM, a guest virtual memory (GVM) location in the first VM. The GVM location is mapped to a guest physical memory (GPM) location, which is mapped to a host physical memory (HPM) location. The balloon application is responsive to the hypervisor for reserving memory. Further, the method includes operations for writing a value to the reserved GVM location and for remapping a plurality of GPM locations containing the value to a single HPM location. The remapping is performed by a content-based page sharing component of the hypervisor. Additionally, the method reclaims the HPM location when the HPM location is freed due to the remapping, and assigns the reclaimed HPM location to a different VM or to a pool of available HPM locations.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.