Vmware, Inc.

Pavan Narasimhaprasad

Arunachalam Ramanathan

Yanlei Zhao

Alexander Krits

Gabriel Tarasuk-Levin

Li Zheng

Nathan L Prziborowski

Derek William Beard

Anupama Chandwani

Radhika Vyas

Yixin Zou

Zexing Jiang

Jeffrey W Sheldon

Oleg Zaydman

Siddharth Ekbote

Bhavana Raj Kanthur Murnad

Ali Reza Alibhai

Sampath Kumar Kilaparthi

Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for performing congestion control for a particular packet flow associated with a first machine operating in a network. The method is performed at a first machine executing on a first host computer. The method receives, from multiple machines operating in the network and executing on other host computers, remote state data associated with a first multiplicity of packet flows traversing the multiple machines in the network. The method collects local state data associated with a second multiplicity of packet flows associated with the first machine. Based on the received remote and local state data, the method adjusts an amount of bandwidth allocated to the particular packet flow associated with the first machine.

Bandwidth utilization-based congestion control

Techniques for implementing data plane isolation for VM mobility operations are provided. In one set of embodiments, these techniques include creating a virtual network path between a source host system and a destination host system participating in a VM mobility operation, which allows the host systems to exchange data for carrying out the operation without exposing their physical IP addresses to each other and without requiring the use of intermediate proxies. In certain embodiments, the virtual network path can be dynamically established upon initiation of the VM mobility operation and dynamically rolled back upon operation completion, thereby reducing the overhead of virtual path management.

Data plane isolation for virtual machine (VM) mobility operations

In one set of embodiments, during an initial pre-copying phase, copies of the virtual disks of a VM or VM template can be distributed across one or more datastores, prior to the start of any cloning. This effectively seeds each datastore with a disk pool comprising a certain number of copies of the VM/VM template's virtual disks. Then, at the time of receiving a user request to create k clones from the VM/VM template, up to k copies of the VM/VM template's virtual disks that already reside in the disk pools of one or more target datastores can be moved from those disk pools to the clones' home folders on the target datastores, thereby reducing or eliminating the need to create brand new copies of the virtual disks on demand.

Efficient mass virtual machine (VM) cloning

Techniques for implementing application-assisted VM provisioning operations, and in particular application-assisted live migration, are provided. In one set of embodiments, a hypervisor of a source host system can notify a guest application that the VM within which the guest application runs will be imminently live migrated from the source host system to a destination host system, prior to actually carrying out the live migration. In response, the guest application can execute one or more remedial actions that mitigate or avoid issues which may arise with respect to its runtime operation when the VM is stunned and switched over to the destination host system.

Application-assisted live migration

Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for performing congestion control for a particular packet flow associated with a source first host computer operating in a network. The method is performed at the first source host computer. The method determines a bandwidth threshold specified for the particular packet flow. Based on the bandwidth threshold, the method allocates an amount of bandwidth to the particular packet flow. The method periodically receives sets of contextual data associated with the particular packet flow. For the received sets of contextual data, the method iteratively (1) computes a current bandwidth consumption by the particular packet flow and (2) based on the sets of contextual data and the current bandwidth consumption, adjusts the amount of bandwidth allocated to the particular packet flow.

A method of migrating a network file copy (NFC) operation from a first host computing device to a second host computing device includes the steps of: transmitting a first request to the first host computing device to execute the NFC operation, wherein the NFC operation comprises transferring data from a shared datastore to another datastore; after transmitting the first request, selecting the second host computing device to complete the NFC operation in place of the first host computing device, and transmitting a second request to the first host computing device to stop executing the NFC operation; after transmitting the second request, detecting a message indicating that the first host computing device completed the copying of a first portion of the data; and in response to the detection of the message, transmitting a third request to the second host computing device to perform the remainder of the NFC operation.

Migration of network file copy operations between host computing devices

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Pavan Narasimhaprasad