Vmware, Inc.

Sandisk Technologies Inc.

Intelligent Intellectual Property Holdings 2 LLC

Springpath, Inc.

Bhavesh Mehta

Benjamin Charles Serebrin

Vikram Joshi

Yang Luan

Michael F Brown

Prashanth Radhakrishnan

Michael J Brown

David Flynn

Sandip Agarwala

Shravan Gaonkar

Krishna Yadappanavar

Faraz Ahmed Shaikh

Praveen Vegulla

Jyothir Ramanan

Mallikarjunan Mahalingam

Smit Shah

Abhishek Chaturvedi

Brent Lim Tze Hao

Jerene Zhe Yang

In a computer system having virtual machines, one or more unused bits of a guest physical address range are allocated for aliasing so that multiple virtually addressed sub-pages can be mapped to a common memory page. When one bit is allocated for aliasing, dirty bit information can be provided at a granularity that is one-half of a memory page. When M bits are allocated for aliasing, dirty bit information can be provided at a granularity that is 1/(2)-th of a memory page.

Increasing granularity of dirty bit information in hardware assisted memory management systems

The present application is directed to a memory-access-multiplexing memory controller that can multiplex memory accesses from multiple hardware threads, cores, and processors according to externally specified policies or parameters, including policies or parameters set by management layers within a virtualized computer system. A memory-access-multiplexing memory controller provides, at the physical-hardware level, a basis for ensuring rational and policy-driven sharing of the memory-access resource among multiple hardware threads, cores, and/or processors.

Memory-access-resource management

A virtual machine cache provides for maintaining a working set of the cache during a transfer between virtual machine hosts. In response to a virtual machine transfer, the previous host of the virtual machine is configured to retain cache data of the virtual machine, which may include both cache metadata and data that has been admitted into the cache. The cache data may be transferred to the destination host via a network (or other communication mechanism). The destination host populates a virtual machine cache with the transferred cache data to thereby reconstruct the working state of the cache.

Systems, methods and apparatus for cache transfers

An I/O manager may be configured to service I/O requests pertaining to ephemeral data of a virtual machine using a storage device that is separate from and/or independent of a primary storage resource to which the I/O request is directed. Ephemeral data may be removed from ephemeral storage in response to a removal condition and/or trigger, such as a virtual machine reboot. The I/O manager may manage transfers of ephemeral virtual machine data in response to virtual machines migrating between host computing devices. The I/O manager may be further configured to cache virtual machine data, and/or manage shared file data that is common to two or more virtual machines operating on a host computing device.

Systems and methods for storage virtualization

A cache log module stores an ordered log of cache storage operations sequentially within the physical address space of a non-volatile storage device. The log may be divided into segments, each comprising a set of log entries. Data admitted into the cache may be associated with respective log segments. Cache data may be associated with the log segment that corresponds to the cache storage operation in which the cache data was written into the cache. The backing store of the data may be synchronized to a particular log segment by identifying the cache data pertaining to the segment (using the associations), and writing the identified data to the backing store. Data lost from the cache may be recovered from the log by, inter alia, committing entries in the log after the last synchronization time of the backing store.

Systems and methods for persistent cache logging

A de-duplication is configured to cache data for access by a plurality of different storage clients, such as virtual machines. A virtual machine may comprise a virtual machine de-duplication module configured to identify data for admission into the de-duplication cache. Data admitted into the de-duplication cache may be accessible by two or more storage clients. Metadata pertaining to the contents of the de-duplication cache may be persisted and/or transferred with respective storage clients such that the storage clients may access the contents of the de-duplication cache after rebooting, being power cycled, and/or being transferred between hosts.

Systems and methods for a de-duplication cache

A virtual machine cache provides for maintaining a working set of the cache during a transfer between virtual machine hosts. In response to the transfer, a previous host retains cache data of the virtual machine, which is provided to the new host of the virtual machine. The cache data may be transferred via a network transfer.

Systems, methods and apparatus for a virtual machine cache

One or more unused bits of a virtual address range are allocated for aliasing so that multiple virtually addressed sub-pages can be mapped to a common memory page. When one bit is allocated for aliasing, dirty bit information can be provided at a granularity that is one-half of a memory page. When M bits are allocated for aliasing, dirty bit information can be provided at a granularity that is 1/(2)-th of a memory page.

Increasing granularity of dirty bit information

A distributed storage system that performs automated load balancing is described. In an exemplary embodiment, a storage controller server determines if there is duplicative data in a distributed storage system. In this embodiment, the storage controller server detects a load balancing event in the distributed storage system, where the distributed storage system includes a plurality of virtual nodes distributed across a plurality of physical nodes. In response to detecting the load balancing event, the storage controller server determines that a current virtual node is to move from a source physical node to a destination physical node. In addition, the current virtual node is one of the plurality of virtual nodes and the source and destination physical nodes are in the plurality of physical nodes. The storage controller server further moves the current virtual node from the source physical node to the destination physical node.

Automated load balancing across the distributed system of hybrid storage and compute nodes

In a technique for creating a secure snapshot of a virtual machine, a guest operating system of the virtual machine is caused to enter a locked state prior to the snapshot of the virtual machine being created. When the snapshot is subsequently used to restore the virtual machine, the guest operating system of the virtual machine is restored in a locked state and credentials are required to access the guest operating system.

Method for generating secure snapshots

In a computer system having virtual machines, one or more unused bits of a guest virtual address range are allocated for aliasing so that multiple virtually addressed sub-pages can be mapped to a common memory page. When one bit is allocated for aliasing, sub-pages can be virtually addressed at a granularity that is one-half of a memory page. When M bits are allocated for aliasing, sub-pages can be virtually addressed at a granularity that is 1/(2)-th of a memory page. The granularity of page sizes can be selected according to particular use cases. In the case of COW optimization, page sizes can be set statically between 4 KB and 2 MB or configured dynamically among multiple page sizes.

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Bhavesh Mehta