International Business Machines Corporation

James Anthony Pafumi

Vasu Vallabhaneni

Morgan Jeffrey Rosas

Jacob Jason Rosales

Michael Paul Cyr

Anil Kalavakolanu

Vani D Ramagiri

Veena Ganti

Brian W Hart

Veena Patwari

Bruce Gerard Mealey

James P Allen

Robert G Kovacs

David Nevarez

James Britt Partridge

Rupesh Kumar Thota

Chintamani Praksh Siddeshwar

Neal Richard Marion

Robert Paul Stelzer

Naresh Nayar

Ravi Shankar

Carol B Hernandez

Steven Edward Royer

Maria Garza

Renato John Recio

Steven Mark Thurber

Douglas Morgan Freimuth

Richard Loise Arndt

Kyle Alan Lucke

Perinkulam I Ganesh

Rui Yang

Denise Marie Genty

Bryan Mark Logan

Aaron C Brown

Greg Robert Mewhinney

Jes Kiran Chittigala

Stephen M Tee

Evelyn Tingmay Yeung

Esdras E Cruz-Aguilar

Timothy R Marchini

Wei Kuo

Corradino Jones

Michael Burton

Bhyrav M Mutnury

Daniel Gene Eisenhauer

Douglas J Griffith

Peter Joseph Heyrman

Vishal Chittranjan Aslot

Jaya Srikrishnan

Sanket Rathi

Gary Dean Anderson

Jorge Rafael Nogueras

George James Romano

Kiran Kumar Anumalasetty

Sudhir Maddali

Andre Laurent Albot

Chris Alan Schwendiman

Priya Paul

Michael E Lyons

William Alan Wall

Sidney James Manning

Ashu Kohli

Lakshmi Yadlapati

Jeffrey Allan Whaley

Thomas P Lanzoni

Evan Allen Zoss

Ray W Anderson

Wojciech T Stryjewski

Paul Joseph Milot

Carl Duane Bender

Dac D Nguyen

Christopher Edward Koob

Timothy Howard White

For a first virtual machine (VM) executing on a physical machine and virtualizing a set of redundant physical adapters installed in the physical machine, a second VM is instantiated on the physical machine. A first physical adapter is reassigned from the first VM to the second VM, the first physical adapter comprising one of the set of redundant physical adapters, the reassigning performed without rebooting a first operating system executing in the first VM. A second rule configuration of the second VM is updated to match a first rule configuration of the first VM, forming an updated second VM. A hypervisor managing the physical machine is caused to redirect traffic for a first virtual adapter associated with the reassigned first physical adapter to the updated second VM.

Live updating a virtual machine virtualizing physical resources

Examples of techniques for failure detection for central electronics complex (CEC) group management are described herein. An aspect includes issuing a first virtual input/output server (VIOS) probe to a hardware management console (HMC) of a central electronics complex (CEC) group. Another aspect includes receiving a first response packet that includes health data corresponding to a plurality of VIOSes. Another aspect includes determining, based on the first response packet, that cluster down is indicated on a first VIOS. Another aspect includes, based on determining that cluster down is indicated on the first VIOS, getting a VIOS state for the first VIOS from the HMC. Another aspect includes determining based on the VIOS state that the first VIOS is in a down state and determining that the first VIOS is unhealthy. Another aspect includes updating a health data entry corresponding to the first VIOS to indicate that the first VIOS is unhealthy.

Failure detection for central electronics complex group management

A system for monitoring the health of virtual machines associated with a shared storage pool (SSP) includes a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), two or more virtual input/output servers (VIOSes) participating in the SSP, and an orchestration node. Each VIOS in the SSP is associated with a respective set of VMs of the plurality of VMs. Each VM is configured to transmit respective health data describing the VM to its associated VIOS. The orchestration node is in communication with each of the two or more VIOSes participating in the SSP, where each VIOS is configured to transmit to the orchestration node the respective health data of each VM in the respective set of VMs associated with the VIOS. The orchestration node is configured to monitor the health of a plurality of VMs associated with the two or more VIOSes participating in the SSP.

Leveraging a shared storage pool to manage the health of virtual machines

A system includes a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), a shared storage pool (SSP) configured to store health information for the plurality of VMs, and a plurality of virtual input/output servers (VIOSs) participating in the shared storage pool (SSP). Each VIOS is associated with a respective group of VMs of the plurality of VMs and is configured to receive health data for each VM of the respective group of VMs. The system also includes a health information database associated with each VIOS of the plurality of VIOSs, the health information database configured to store a subset of the health data for each VM of the respective group of VMs. Each VIOS is configured to transmit the health data for each VM of the respective group of VM to the SSP, and in parallel, store the subset of the health data in the health information database.

Management of virtual machine health using dual databases

Examples of techniques for failure detection for central electronics complex (CEC) group management are described herein. An aspect includes issuing a first logical partition (LPAR) probe to a hardware management console (HMC) of a central electronics complex (CEC) group, wherein the CEC group comprises a plurality of LPARs. Another aspect includes receiving a first response packet from the HMC corresponding to the first LPAR probe, wherein the first response packet comprises health data corresponding to a first LPAR of the plurality of LPARs. Another aspect includes storing the health data corresponding to the first LPAR in a first health data entry corresponding to the first LPAR. Another aspect includes, for a second LPAR of the plurality of LPARs that was not included in the first response packet, updating a second health data entry corresponding to the second LPAR to indicate that the second LPAR is healthy.

Methods and systems for migrating a virtual machine instance between devices include one or more migration risk rules, each migration risk rule relating to a validation set having one or more validation substasks. A processor is configured to score a received migration request against one or more of the migration risk rules to generate one or more scores for the migration request, to compare each score to a respective threshold to determine if a level of risk according to the respective rule merits performing validation for the validation set, to validate the migration request by only those validation sets that correspond to the scores that exceed the respective threshold, and to trigger migration of a virtual machine to a target device in accordance with the migration request if none of the validation sets fail to validate the migration request.

Risk-appropriate validation for live operating system migration

Methods for migrating a virtual machine instance between devices include scoring a received migration request against one or more rules in a rule database to generate one or more scores for the migration request. Each rule relates to one or more respective validation sets. Each score is compared to a respective threshold. The migration request is validated by only those validation sets that correspond to the scores that exceed the respective threshold. A virtual machine is migrated to a target device in accordance with the migration request responsive to successful validation by the validation sets used.

Methods for migrating a virtual machine instance between devices include scoring a received migration request against one or more rules in a rule database relating to one or more respective validation sets. Each validation set includes one or more validation subtasks. Each score is compared to a respective threshold to determine if a level of risk according to the respective rule merits performing validation. The migration request is validated by one or more validation sets that correspond to the scores that exceed the respective threshold.

Methods and systems for migrating a virtual machine instance between devices include scoring a received migration request against one or more rules in a rule database relating to one or more respective validation sets. Each validation set includes one or more validation subtasks. Each score is compared to a respective threshold to determine if a level of risk according to the respective rule merits performing validation. The migration request is validated by one or more validation sets that correspond to the scores that exceed the respective threshold.

Multipath I/O in a computer system includes: receiving asynchronously, for a single I/O operation by a memory controller from a plurality of I/O adapters, a request to access a memory page, where each request to access the memory page includes an adapter-specific tag; and for each request received by the memory controller: determining, by the memory controller, whether an adapter-specific tag has been assigned to the memory page; if an adapter-specific tag has not been assigned to the memory page: assigning, by the memory controller, the received adapter-specific tag to the memory page; and allowing, by the memory controller, access to the memory page; and if an adapter-specific tag has been assigned to the memory page, granting access to the memory page only when the received adapter-specific tag is the adapter-specific tag assigned to the memory page.

Multipath I/O in a computer system

An approach is provided for migrating a live instance of a virtual machine from a source computer system to a target computer system. The approach operates by creating a consistent snap shot image of an operating system environment that is running the live instance of the virtual machine on the source computer system. A test virtual machine container is created based on an actual virtual machine container that corresponds to the live instance of the virtual machine. Based on the snap shot image of the operating system environment, a test virtual machine is created in the test virtual machine container. The generated test virtual machine is tested with a migration of the live instance of the virtual machine being performed in response to a successful test of the test virtual machine. The migration is aborted in response to an unsuccessful test of the test virtual machine.

Mobility validation by trial boot using snap shot

Disclosed is a computer implemented method, computer program product, and apparatus to establish at least one paging partition in a data processing system. The virtualization control point (VCP) reserves up to the subset of physical memory for use in the shared memory pool. The VCP configures at least one logical partition as a shared memory partition. The VCP assigns a paging partition to the shared memory pool. The VCP determines whether a user requests a redundant assignment of the paging partition to the shared memory pool. The VCP assigns a redundant paging partition to the shared memory pool, responsive to a determination that the user requests a redundant assignment. The VCP assigns a paging device to the shared memory pool. The hypervisor may transmit at least one paging request to a virtual asynchronous services interface configured to support a paging device stream.

Paging partition arbitration of paging devices to shared memory partitions

A mechanism is provided in a data processing system for logical partition migration. Responsive to a virtual machine monitor initiating a logical partition migration operation to move a logical partition from a source system to a destination system, the mechanism reallocates a portion of processing resources from the logical partition to the virtual machine monitor. The virtual machine monitor uses the portion of processing resources to effect the logical partition migration operation. Responsive to completion of the logical partition migration operation, the mechanism returns the portion of processing resources to the logical partition.

Utilizing client resources during mobility operations

With N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), a managed system can be configured so that multiple logical partitions (LPARs) can access independent physical storage through the same physical fiber channel adapter. An NPIV client recovery component of a virtualization management component, such as a Power Hypervisor (pHYP), provides the emulation mapping between server and client virtual fiber channel adapters. The pHYP also provides a mechanism that prevents client partition crashes when the NPIV server (e.g., a VIOS logical partition) goes down. When the NPIV server is rebooted or powers down, the pHYP handles the client LPARs to avoid a crash by removing processing resources from the client logical partition. Thereby, the client logical partition is prevented from attempting to access a root volume group in physical storage via the NPIV server. The pHYP allocates processor resources to the client LPAR when the NPIV server is again available for I/O processing.

Mechanism for NPIV client recovery when NPIV server goes down

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Leander, TX, United States of America

James Anthony Pafumi