International Business Machines Corporation

Peter Joseph Heyrman

Bret Ronald Olszewski

Daniel Charles Birkestrand

Edward Curtis Prosser

Naresh Nayar

Stuart Zachary Jacobs

Paul F Olsen

Qunying Gao

John Clarence Endicott

David A Larson Stanton

Richard G Mustain

Jon H Peterson

Stephen A Dahl

R Karl Kirkman

William Joseph Armstrong

Gary Ross Ricard

Vaijayanthimala K Anand

David Anthony Larson

Anil Kalavakolanu

Adam J McPadden

Fraser Allan Syme

Wade Byron Ouren

Troy David Armstrong

Sergio Reyes

Vani D Ramagiri

Salim Ahmed Agha

David Anthony Larson Stanton

Hemalatha B T

Paul Reuben Day

Warren Edward Maule

James Anthony Pafumi

Douglas J Griffith

Venkat Rajeev Indukuru

Steven Leonard Roberts

David Alan Hepkin

Kenneth Charles Vossen

Henry Joseph May

Aaron Christoph Sawdey

David L Johnson

Philip Lee Vitale

Ram Raghavan

Arnold Flores

Christian Pinto

James Richard Coon

Anjil R Chinnapatlolla

Carl E Love

Hariganesh Muralidharan

Karl Robert Huppler

Satish K Rao

Evan Allen Zoss

Jody E Berk

John John Goodson

Willaim Joseph Armstrong

Tommy Tse

A method and system for estimating upgrade time and mitigating errors when updating a virtualized computing system. Operations of this method include, but are not necessarily limited to the following (and not necessarily in the following order): (i) identify updates needed by a system; (ii) compare the system to be updated to other systems to determine similar systems that already had the similar updates; (iii) project the time to complete the update based on the performance characteristics of the system to be updated, the performance characteristics of the similar systems that have already been updated, and the time taken to update the similar systems; (iv) identify errors that occurred when updating the similar systems and the corresponding error resolutions; and (v) pre-emptively apply configuration changes or other error resolutions to the system to be updated.

Reducing downtime caused by incompatibility issues from upgrading firmware and software

An embodiment includes issuing an indication that a thread is a time-critical thread. The embodiment initiates an active partition migration, from a source server to a destination server, of a source partition on which the program is stored. The embodiment stores, during the migration, records of locations of pages in memory referenced by the time-critical thread. The embodiment detects that a migration threshold has been reached, indicative of a threshold portion of the migration being complete. Responsive to detecting the migration threshold, the embodiment performs a priority migration of the time-critical thread. The priority migration includes suspending execution of the time-critical thread at the source server, retrieving the records of the locations of the pages in memory referenced by the time-critical thread, and issuing a command to transfer content from the pages to the destination server. The embodiment also includes issuing a migration command to complete the migration.

Partition migration with critical task prioritization

A computer system implements a memory unit, which includes first DRAM devices, second DRAM devices, a first memory controller, and a second memory controller. Each of the first DRAM devices have a first individual memory capacity and each of the second DRAM devices have a second individual memory capacity. The first memory controller is in signal communication with the first DRAM devices and the second memory controller is in signal communication with the second DRAM devices. Each of the first DRAM devices and the second DRAM devices are selectively operable as one of an active DRAM device to stare application data or a spare DRAM device reserved to receive the application data from the active DRAM devices to dynamically over-provision a total memory defined by a sum of the first and second individual memory capacities.

System wide memory technology over-provisioning

A data processing system includes a system fabric, a system memory, a memory controller, and a link controller communicatively coupled to the system fabric and configured to be communicatively coupled, via a communication link to a destination host with which the source host is non-coherent. A plurality of processing units is configured to execute a logical partition and to migrate the logical partition to the destination host via the communication link. Migration of the logical partition includes migrating, via a communication link, the dataset of the logical partition executing on the source host from the system memory of the source host to a system memory of the destination host. After migrating at least a portion of the dataset, a state of the logical partition is migrated, via the communication link, from the source host to the destination host, such that the logical partition thereafter executes on the destination host.

Migration of a logical partition between mutually non-coherent host data processing systems

In an approach a request to write data to memory is received, wherein the memory includes: a first set of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) accessible via a first memory channel, and a first set of storage class (SCM) memory accessible via a second memory channel. The data is written to the first set of DRAM via the first memory channel. The data is mirrored to the first set of SCM via the second memory channel.

Hybrid memory mirroring using storage class memory

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

A computer-implemented method and system for affinity based optimization of persistent memory volumes. Responsive to receiving a request for a parent virtual PMEM device, a total memory capacity is apportioned amongst virtual persistent memory (PMEM) resources and physical memory resources. In accordance with a target affinity characteristic, a set of virtual central processor unit (CPU) sockets are assigned. Each virtual CPU socket is configured based on at least one physical central processor unit (CPU) core in conjunction with a subset of the virtual PMEM and physical memory resources. Child virtual PMEM devices are created for respective ones of the virtual CPU sockets, each of the child virtual PMEM devices being dedicated to the parent virtual PMEM device.

Affinity based optimization of virtual persistent memory volumes

A technique for assigning physical resources of a data processing system to a virtual machine (VM) includes reading, by a hypervisor executing on the data processing system, a fold factor attribute for the VM. The fold factor attribute defines an anticipated usage of physical resources of the data processing system by the VM. The technique also includes mapping based on a value of the fold factor attribute, by the hypervisor, allocated virtual processors of the VM to the physical resources to maximize processor core access to local memory for ones of the allocated virtual processors that are anticipated to be utilized.

Techniques for utilizing a resource fold factor in placement of physical resources for a virtual machine

Virtual machines with low active thread counts are prioritized during periods of high system load in a virtualized computing environment to improve the performance of such virtual machines.

Prioritization of low active thread count virtual machines in virtualized computing environment

A program operating to test a computer has a limit to the number of certain components that it can utilize, less than the number of those components included in the computer. A resource allocator program receives a signal to modify allocation of resources to the programs executing in the computer. The resource allocator detects that the computer is operating in a mode for testing and selects a subset of the components not allocated to the program to swap for those presently allocated. The resource allocator can receive the signal repeatedly to complete testing the computer.

Comprehensive testing of computer hardware configurations

Workload, preferably as one or more partitions, is migrated from a source server to one or more target servers by computing a respective projected performance optimization for each candidate partition and target, the optimization being dependent on a projected processor-memory affinity resulting from migrating candidate workload to the candidate target, and selecting a target to receive a workload accordingly. A target may be pre-configured to receive a workload being migrated to it by altering the configuration parameters of at least one workload currently executing on the target according to the projected performance optimization.

Optimization of computer system logical partition migrations in a multiple computer system environment

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Peter Joseph Heyrman