Vmware, Inc.

Jesse Pool

Alexander T Garthwaite

Yury Baskakov

Gabriel Tarasuk-Levin

Adrian Drzewiecki

Nishant Yadav

David A Dunn

Kiran Tati

Abhishek Srivastava

Kevin Scott Christopher

Irene Zhang

Carl Alan Waldspurger

Rajesh Venkatasubramanian

Christoph Klee

Patrick William Penzias Dirks

Ilia Sokolinski

Ishan Banerjee

Derek Uluski

Komal Desai

Tejasvi Aswathanarayana

Li Zheng

Nick Michael Ryan

Sujay Shrikant Godbole

Mohammed Junaid Ahmed

Samyuktha Subramanian

Ka Wing Ho

KaWing Ho

A framework is provided that assigns a digital certificate to each VM-based control plane element and computing node (i.e., worker VM) of a workload orchestration platform implemented in a virtualized environment, where the digital certificate is signed by a trusted entity and provides cryptographic proof that the control plane element/worker VM has been successfully attested by that trusted entity using hardware-based attestation. Each control plane element/worker VM is configured to verify the digital certificates of other platform components prior to communicating with those components. With these digital certificates in place, when an end-user submits to the platform's front-end control plane element a new workload for deployment, the end-user can verify the digital certificate of the front-end control plane element in order to be assured that the workload will be deployed and executed by the platform in a secure manner.

Secure end-to-end deployment of workloads in a virtualized environment using hardware-based attestation

An example method of secure attestation of a workload deployed in a virtualized computing system is described. The virtualized computing system includes a host cluster and a virtualization management server, the host cluster having hosts and a virtualization layer executing on hardware platforms of the hosts. The method includes: launching, in cooperation with a security module of a host, a guest as a virtual machine (VM) managed by the virtualization layer, the security module generating an attestation report from at least a portion of the VM loaded into memory of the host; sending the attestation report from the security module to a trust authority; receiving, in response to verification of the attestation report by the trust authority, a secret from the trust authority at the security module; and providing the secret from the security module to the guest.

Provisioning identity certificates using hardware-based secure attestation in a virtualized and clustered computer system

A method of attestation of a host machine based on runtime configuration of the host machine is provided. The method receives, at an attestation machine, a request from the host machine for attestation of a software executing on the host machine, the request including at least one security-related configuration of the software at launch time and a corresponding runtime behavior of the software when the security-related configuration changes. The method then generates a claim based on evaluating a value associated with the at least one security-related configuration and the corresponding runtime behavior of the software when the value changes. The method also generates an attestation token after a successful attestation of the software and include in the attestation token the generated claim. The method further transmits the attestation token to the host machine.

Remote attestation based on runtime configuration

To create a backup of a live (running) virtual machine, a backup agent may take a snapshot of the virtual machine, backup the virtual machine from the snapshot disk, and delete the snapshot. Deleting the snapshot initiates a snapshot consolidation process where delta disks of the virtual machine are collapsed. A virtual disk layer sets up a mirror driver between a current virtual disk and a target virtual disk. Data sectors of the delta disk are copied over to the target virtual disk in a single pass, while the mirror driver mirrors write request for the current virtual disk to the target virtual disk.

Online snapshot consolidation using I/O mirroring

One or more embodiments provide techniques for accessing a memory page of a virtual machine for which loading might have been deferred, according to an embodiment of the invention, includes the steps of examining metadata of the memory page and determining that a flag in the metadata for indicating that the contents of the memory page needs to be updated is set, and updating the contents of the memory page.

Method for improving memory system performance in virtual machine systems

One or more embodiments provide techniques for promoting a linked clone virtual machine to a full clone virtual machine. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving an instruction to promote the linked clone virtual machine to a full clone virtual machine. The method also includes creating a second base disk for the linked clone virtual machine. The method includes installing a mirror driver between the first delta disk and the second base disk. The method includes copying the contents of the first delta disk to the second base disk with the mirror driver. After the contents of the first delta disk have been copied to the second base disk, the method includes removing the mirror driver and operating the linked clone virtual machine as a full clone virtual machine on the second base disk.

Online promote disk using mirror driver

A method for opening a virtual disk comprises reading information from a metadata file that identifies the current owner of the virtual disk. The method further includes sending a release request to the current owner of the virtual disk to release the virtual disk, writing information to the metadata file identifying the new owner, and then opening the virtual disk.

Collaborative release of a virtual disk

Updating contents of certain memory pages in a virtual machine system is deferred until they are needed. Specifically, certain page update operations are deferred until the page is accessed for a load or store operation. Each page within the virtual machine system includes associated metadata, which includes a page signature characterizing the contents of a corresponding page or a reference to a page with canonical contents, and a flag that indicates the page needs to be updated before being accessed. The metadata may also include a flag to indicate that a backing store of the memory page has contents of a known content class. When such a memory page is mapped to a shared page with contents of that known content class, a flag in the metadata to indicate that contents of the memory page needs to be updated is not set.

When a request is made to retrieve a guest physical page from memory and a page fault occurs, a guest virtual page address that corresponds to the guest physical page is identified along with addresses for guest virtual pages that are near the guest virtual page in the virtual address space. Each identified guest virtual page address is translated into a corresponding guest physical page address and the corresponding guest physical pages are loaded into memory.

Exporting guest spatial locality to hypervisors

Page data of a virtual machine is represented for efficient save and restore operations. One form of representation applies to each page with an easily identifiable pattern. The page is described, saved, and restored in terms of metadata reflective of the pattern rather than a complete page of data reflecting the pattern. During a save or restore operation, however, the metadata of the page is represented, but not the page data. Another form of representation applies to each page sharing a canonical instance of a complex pattern that is instantiated in memory during execution, and explicitly saved and restored. Each page sharing the canonical page is saved and restored as a metadata reference, without the need to actually save redundant copies of the page data.

Method for improving save and restore performance in virtual machine systems

A framework for converting between copy-on-write (COW) and redo-based technologies is disclosed. To take a virtual disk snapshot, disk descriptor files, which include metadata information about data stored in virtual volumes (vvols), are 'swizzled' such that the descriptor file for a latest redo log, to which IOs are currently performed, points to the base vvol of a COW-based vvol hierarchy. A disk descriptor file previously associated with the base vvol may also be updated to point to the vvol newly created by the snapshot operation. To revert to an earlier disk state, a snapshot may be taken before copying contents of a snapshot vvol of the COW-based vvol hierarchy to a base vvol of the hierarchy, thereby ensuring that the reversion can be rolled back if it is unsuccessful. Reference counting is performed to ensure that vvols in the vvol hierarchy are not orphaned in delete and revert use cases. Differences between vvols in the COW-based vvol hierarchy are used to clone the hierarchy and to migrate the hierarchy to a redo-based disk hierarchy.

Conversion of virtual disk snapshots between redo and copy-on-write technologies

A process for lazy checkpointing is enhanced to reduce the number of read/write accesses to the checkpoint file and thereby speed up the checkpointing process. The process for restoring a state of a virtual machine (VM) running in a physical machine from a checkpoint file that is maintained in persistent storage includes the steps of detecting access to a memory page of the virtual machine that has not been read into physical memory of the VM from the checkpoint file, determining a storage block of the checkpoint file to which the accessed memory page maps, writing contents of the storage block in a buffer, and copying contents of a block of memory pages that includes the accessed memory page from the buffer to corresponding locations of the memory pages in the physical memory of the VM. The storage block of the checkpoint file may be compressed or uncompressed.

Method for restoring virtual machine state from a checkpoint file

A process for lazy checkpointing a virtual machine is enhanced to reduce the number of read/write accesses to the checkpoint file and thereby speed up the checkpointing process. The process for saving a state of a virtual machine running in a physical machine to a checkpoint file maintained in persistent storage includes the steps of copying contents of a block of memory pages, which may be compressed, into a staging buffer, determining after the copying if the buffer is full, and upon determining that the buffer is full, saving the buffer contents in a storage block of the checkpoint file.

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Jesse Pool