Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Attilio Mainetti

Scott Chao-Chueh Lee

Andrew J Ritz

Pankaj Garg

Steve Pronovost

Jason Stewart Wohlgemuth

Matthew David Kurjanowicz

Aditya Bhandari

Jin Lin

Michael Bishop Ebersol

Nihar Niranjan Shah

Murtaza Ghiya

Kapil Vaswani

Antoine Jean Denis Delignat-lavaud

Steven Adrian West

Alexander Daniel Grest

Emily Cara Clemens

Edward J Reed

Vinod K K L Swamy

Dexuan Cui

Michael Halstead Kelley

Sarah Elizabeth Stephenson

Carolina Cecilia Perez-vargas

Methods, systems, and computer program products for direct assignment of physical devices to confidential virtual machines (VMs). At a first guest privilege context of a guest partition, a direct assignment of a physical device associated with a host computer system to the guest partition is identified. The guest partition includes the first guest privilege context and a second guest privilege context, which is restricted from accessing memory associated with the first guest privilege context. The guest partition corresponds to a confidential VM, such that a memory region associated with the guest partition is inaccessible to a host operating system. It is determined, based on a policy, that the physical device is allowed to be directly assigned to the guest partition. Communication between the physical device and the second guest privilege context is permitted, such as by exposing the physical device on a virtual bus and/or forwarding an interrupt.

Direct assignment of physical devices to confidential virtual machines

Embodiments described herein relate to adjusting performance of a virtualization layer to reduce underutilization of a physical device. The virtualization layer virtualizes access to the device for a VM. When a guest in the VM makes a request to a virtual device, the virtualization layer and the device work together to satisfy the request. Some time is spent by the virtualization layer (software/CPU time), for instance delivering the request from the VM to the physical device, mapping the request from the virtual device to the physical device, etc. Additional time is spent by the device in performing the request (device time). The software/CPU time relative to the device time serves as a basis for deciding whether to increase or decrease processing capacity of the virtualization layer (or a component thereof), thus reducing underutilization of the device and over-provisioning of processing capacity to the virtualization layer.

Dynamic scheduling for virtual storage devices

Reading and copying data as file data in a persistent memory storage device. A method may be practiced in a virtual machine environment. The virtual machine environment includes a persistent memory storage device. The persistent memory storage device has the ability to appear as a memory device having available memory to a virtual machine on a host and as a file to the host. The method includes acts for copying data stored in the persistent memory storage device for a first virtual machine. The method includes the host reading data from the persistent memory storage device as file data. The method further includes the host writing the data from the persistent memory storage device as file data.

Portable file-backed virtual storage class memory

Systems, methods, and computer storage media are described herein that configure a switch extension associated with a virtual switch with one or more settings. In response to the configuring, the systems, methods, and computer storage media persist the one or more settings and apply the persisted one or more settings to a target switch extension of a target virtual switch. The systems, methods, and computer storage media receive the settings through a management interface. Also, the systems, methods, and computer storage media receive requests for information associated with the switch extension and provide the switch extension information in response.

Unified policy management for extensible virtual switches

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Attilio Mainetti