Vmware, Inc.

Chi-Hsiang Su

Mukesh Baphna

Piyush Kothari

Raju Koganty

Jia Yu

Alex Nhu

Sachin Thakkar

Gabriel Tarasuk-Levin

Mallik Mahalingam

Christoph Klee

Geetha Kakarlapudi

Robert Bosch

Guolin Yang

Akshay Katrekar

Nilesh Ramchandra Nipane

Raju Kaganty

A virtualized computing environment includes a plurality of host computers, each host being connected to a physical network and having a hypervisor executing therein. To provision a virtual machine requiring a connection to a virtual network in one of the hosts, a candidate host for hosting the virtual machine, the candidate host having the virtual network configured therein, is selected. A request is then made for a status of the virtual network to the candidate host. The status of the virtual network is then received from the candidate host. If the virtual network is available, then the virtual machine is deployed to the candidate host. If the virtual network is not available, then a second candidate host is selected for hosting the virtual machine.

Network-based signaling to control virtual machine placement

Methods, computer-readable storage medium, and systems described herein facilitate registering and consuming network services on a virtual network. A virtual machine management server (VMMS) is configured to receive a service definition associated with a network service. The VMMS creates one or more service profiles based on the service definition. The VMMS configures a plurality of hosts based on the one or more service profiles such that the network service is usable, via a virtual network, by one or more virtual machines within the plurality of hosts.

Framework for networking and security services in virtual networks

A method, non-transitory storage medium, and apparatus are presented for configuration management of a distributed virtual switch including components distributed on different entities in a computing system is provided. In an exemplary embodiment, a snapshot of a configuration of the distributed virtual switch is received from a management plane configured to manage the distributed virtual switch. The snapshot may include settings for the configuration at a time of taking the snapshot. A persistent storage location independent from the management plane is designated for storing the received snapshot of the configuration. After the snapshot is taken, the configuration may be retrieved from the persistent storage location and the settings of the configuration may be applied to the distributed virtual switch, a new distributed virtual switch, or an existing distributed virtual switch.

Configuration management of distributed virtual switch

The disclosure provides an approach for dynamically reprogramming network and network infrastructure in response to VM mobility. The approach provides a hypervisor layer that can observe changes in VM-host relationships and reprogram the associated network and network infrastructure to maintain network communication. The hypervisor layer notifies a controller of a data center to migrate an ENI of the migrated VM to the same destination host as the migrated VM, in response to VM migration.

Reprogramming network infrastructure in response to VM mobility

The disclosure provides an approach for dynamically reprogramming network and network infrastructure in response to VM mobility. The approach provides a hypervisor layer that can observe changes in VM-host relationships and reprogram the associated network and network infrastructure to maintain network communication. The hypervisor layer notifies an elastic network interface of a new IP address to include within its whitelist in response to VM migration to that elastic network interface.

Techniques are disclosed for pushing configuration changes of a distributed virtual switch from a management server to a plurality of host servers underlying the distributed virtual switch. The approach includes sending, in parallel, by the management server, a message to each of the plurality of host servers. The message specifies a final configuration state for one or more virtual ports emulated via virtualization layers of the host servers. The approach further includes determining, by each of the plurality of host servers, port state configuration changes to make to the virtual ports to achieve the final configuration state, and reconfiguring, by each of the plurality of host servers, their respective virtual ports, to match the final configuration state.

Distributed virtual switch configuration and state management

Virtual computing instances are provisioned with network resource allocation constraints, which may include hard constraints that must be met in order for the virtual computing instances to be created in a host server. Network resources from multiple hosts may be pooled in a virtual switch, and a cloud management system (CMS) may ensure that a network bandwidth reservation for a new virtual computing instance can be accommodated by network bandwidth in the pool that is reserved for communication endpoint traffic. In addition to such CMS-level constraint enforcement, techniques disclosed herein may also enforce network bandwidths constraints at the host level to guarantee that network bandwidth reservation requirements for communication endpoint(s) of a new virtual computing instance can be satisfied by a particular host before creating the virtual computing instance in that host.

Network bandwidth reservations for system traffic and virtual computing instances

MAC addresses are flexibly and dynamically allocated across groups of devices that need MAC addresses. MAC address pools are defined for the groups by non-overlapping ranges of MAC addresses. The range of MAC addresses defined for any pool may be shrunk to support an expansion of the range of MAC addresses of another pool. The maximum number of universally-administered MAC addresses that can be defined for any MAC address pool is greater than 2, and the maximum number of locally-administered MAC addresses that can be defined for any MAC address pool is greater than 2.

Method and apparatus for managing MAC address generation for virtualized environments

Methods, computer-readable storage medium and systems described herein facilitate registering and consuming network services on a virtual network. A virtual machine management server (VMMS) is configured to receive a service definition associated with a network service. The VMMS creates one or more service profiles based on the service definition. The VMMS configures a plurality of hosts based on the one or more service profiles such that the network service is usable, via a virtual network, by one or more virtual machines within the plurality of hosts.

Techniques are described for migrating virtual machines (VMs) across virtual switches. To migrate a VM, a destination distributed virtual switch module may, prior to migration, instantiate a distributed virtual port on a destination VM host and reserve the distributed virtual port for each virtual network adapter of the VM. Further, a configuration file for the VM specifying the distributed virtual ports reserved for the virtual network adapters may be copied from a source VM host to the destination VM host or created in the destination VM host. As part of the migration, network state data of the distributed virtual ports used by the VM at the source VM host is copied and applied to the appropriate reserved distributed virtual ports on the destination host. Then, when the migrated VM is powered on at the destination host, the VM configuration specifying the reserved distributed virtual ports is used to attach the virtual network adapters of the VM to the reserved distributed virtual ports.

Live migration of virtual machines across virtual switches in virtual infrastructure

Techniques are disclosed for a management application running on a virtualization management platform and a module on a virtual machine host to communicate via an opaque pass-through channel for transporting data through the management platform and intermediate layer(s) of the virtual machine host between the management application and the module. In one embodiment, the data is identified by a key which is unique across management applications and includes a namespace registered by the management application on the management platform and registered by the module on the virtual machine host. In another embodiment, the namespace may indicate an association of the data with one or more entities such as a distributed virtual switch, port groups, ports, and virtual machine hosts. Configuration property settings for an entity may be propagated to its sub-entities based on inheritance. Further, the data may be persisted in database(s) of the management platform and/or the intermediate layer(s).

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Chi-Hsiang Su