International Business Machines Corporation

Globalfoundries Inc.

David Sherwood

James William Walker

Travis Walton

Geraint M North

Lee Jason Sanders

Ian Boden

Robert John Wallis

An apparatus for balancing consumption of random data, comprising an entropy manager operable to: responsive to receipt of a request for random data, monitor one or more events associated with a plurality of entities and access one or more rules; determine whether a higher level of entropy associated with the random data is required by analyzing the one or more events in accordance with the one or more rules; responsive to a determination that a higher level of entropy is not required, set an entropy state associated with the entropy to a lower level of entropy and obtain random data from an entropy source having a lower level of entropy; and responsive to a determination that a higher level of entropy is required, switch an entropy state associated with the entropy to a higher level of entropy and obtain random data from an entropy source having a higher level of entropy.

Balancing consumption of random data

A method, system and program product for performing a trusted boot of a virtual machine comprises the steps of executing, in turn, a series of components of the trusted boot, performing a function on each component prior to the execution of the respective component, storing the output of the functions in a virtual trusted platform module, detecting that the virtual trusted platform module has not responded to the storing of the output of a function in the virtual trusted platform module, and generating a request that the virtual trusted platform module be disabled.

Trusted boot of a virtual machine

Disclosed is a system for controlling write actions to a plurality of data storage devices, the system comprising a plurality of write caches, wherein each cache is associated with a set of said data storage devices; and a controller adapted to issue write permissions to said data storage devices, said write permissions including a permission to perform a data destage operation from a cache to a data storage device; wherein each cache has a first performance score expressed as the difference between the number of data destage operations said cache has in flight and the maximum number of data destage actions said cache is permitted to issue in parallel; and wherein the controller is adapted to offer a data destage operation permission to the cache in said plurality of caches associated with the highest first performance score.

Write cache destaging

A method and apparatus is disclosed for managing encryption keys in a computer system in which in response to the change of a system key the old key and new key are both maintained for subsequent use.

Managing encryption keys in a computer system

A system and a computer program product for selecting a primary-secondary host pair for mirroring virtual machines. The system includes a processor collecting data related to each of a plurality of potential primary-secondary host pairs in a computer network. The processor analyzes each of the plurality of potential primary-secondary host pairs in the computer network utilizing performance metrics. An ideal primary-secondary host pair in the computer network is determined by the processor based on the analysis of the performance metrics of each of the plurality of potential primary-secondary host pairs. In response to determining the ideal primary-secondary host pair, a primary host virtual machine is mirrored onto the secondary host of the primary-secondary host pair.

Growing community of inventors

Manchester, United Kingdom

David Sherwood