Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Sushant Pramod Rewaskar

Saad Syed

Ajay Mani

Md Daud Hossain Howlader

Muhammad Umer Azad

Chandramouleswaran Ravichandran

Corey M Sanders

Xinyan Zan

Nisheeth Srivastava

Ashish Bhargava

Jayesh Kumaran

Naveen Prabhat

Akram Hassan

Christopher Paul Almida

Aswin Parthasarathy Akkur Rajamannar

Rishabh Tewari

Abhishek Kumar Singh

Abhishek Shukla

Wei Zhao

Gaurav Jagtiani

Eron D Wright

Thiruvengadam Venketesan

Pavithra Tyamagondlu Nagesharao

Gaurav Gupta

Luis Irun-Briz

Murtaza Muidul Huda Chowdhury

Wakkas Rafiq

Murtuza Rizvi

Akram M H Hassan

Vipul Arunkumar Somani

Douglas William Jordan

Bowen Xu

James Ernest Johnson

Pavel Anatolievich Dournov

Jose Bernabeu-Auban

Ashish B Shah

Todd F Pfleiger

Chetan S Shankar

Charles T Lenzmeier

Ivan Santa Maria Filho

Yu Yao

Umer Azad

Daniel James Pearson

Yitzchok Meir Pinkesz

Maxim Khutomenko

Bruno Korbar

Prajakta Patil

Daud Hossain Howlader

Abhishek Singh

Akram MH Hassan

The disclosed technology is generally directed to virtual machines. In one example of the technology, a first virtual machine executing on a first virtual machine host is reconfigured without rebooting the first virtual machine. The reconfiguring includes controlling the following actions. At least one compute artifact of a plurality of compute artifacts is associated with a first user that is associated with the first virtual machine. At least one compute artifact of the plurality of compute artifacts is modified. A configuration is published to the first virtual machine host.

Virtual machine server-side compute reconfiguration

The disclosed technology is generally directed to virtual machines. In one example of the technology, a network change from a first virtual network to a second virtual network is reconfigured for a first virtual machine that is executing on a first virtual machine host. The reconfiguring includes the following. In the first virtual machine host, a mapping change from the first virtual network to the second virtual network is configured by reprogramming drivers in the first virtual machine host for route mapping for the second virtual network. A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) retrigger is caused without rebooting the first virtual machine. A configuration file is provided to the first virtual machine. The configuration file includes user-specific networking settings. The first virtual machine is reconfigured in accordance with the user-specific networking settings.

Virtual machine client-side virtual network change

Techniques are described herein that are capable of pausing deployment of a pre-provisioned virtual machine. Deployment of a virtual machine on a computing system is initiated. The deployment of the virtual machine is paused, prior to execution of code that depends on a name of the virtual machine, to wait for receipt of user-specific setting(s) of the virtual machine. The deployment of the virtual machine is continued based at least in part on receipt of the user-specific setting(s). Continuing the deployment includes configuring the virtual machine to have at least one of the user-specific setting(s).

Pausing deployment of a virtual machine prior to a machine name dependency

The present disclosure relates to systems, method, and computer-readable media to enable saving and restoring virtual machines (VMs) in a way that reduces time associated with booting VMs and reducing expense of memory resources on a cloud computing system. The systems described herein involve loading or otherwise pre-booting pre-provisioned VMs on server nodes and saving VM states of the pre-provisioned VMs within an accessible storage volume. Responsive to a received customer request, the systems described herein can restore the pre-provisioned VM from the saved VM state by bringing the VM back to a running state (e.g., responsive to a customer request). The systems described herein facilitate aggressive VM deployment prediction at minimal expense to available processing resources.

Saving and restoring pre-provisioned virtual machine states

The disclosed technology is generally directed to virtual machines. In one example of the technology, data associated with a virtual machine configuration request is received. A first virtual machine to be reconfigured is provided. The first virtual machine is booted. The first virtual machine is a system virtual machine, the first virtual machine is re-provisioned into be reconfigured in accordance with the virtual machine configuration request without rebooting the first virtual machine.

Virtual machine compute re-configuration

Techniques are described for improving the boot performance of an operating system (OS) used to launch a virtual machine. In embodiments, a request is received that identifies an OS image and that includes information indicative of when a boot-up process of the OS is complete. A boot-up process of the OS is then performed until complete, as indicated by the information, which includes loading a portion of the OS image from a virtual hard drive. During performance of the process, data is obtained that identifies logical units in the virtual hard drive that are accessed to obtain the portion of the OS image. A copy of the virtual hard drive that include the OS image and the data is then stored so that it can be used to facilitate launching a virtual machine through selective pre-fetching of only the identified logical units from the copy of the virtual hard drive.

Capturing pre-fetch blocks of an operating system to improve boot performance in a cloud environment

The disclosed technology is generally directed to virtual machines. In one example of the technology, generic virtual machine artifacts are created. The generic virtual machine artifacts include at least one generic compute artifact and at least one generic network artifact. A first virtual machine is composed and booted with the generic virtual machine artifacts. The first virtual machine is caused to enter a state in which the first virtual machine is polling for a configuration with user-specific compute settings, user-specific networking settings, and user-specific storage settings.

Deployment of partially provisioned virtual machines

The disclosed technology is generally directed to virtual machines. In one example of the technology, a network change from a first virtual network having a first customer Internet Protocol (IP) address to a second virtual network having a second customer IP address is configured for a first virtual machine. The configuring includes controlling the following actions. The second virtual network is provided. At least one networking artifact is associated with a first user that is associated with the first virtual machine. The at least one networking artifact includes the second virtual network. A directory service is updated to map the second customer IP address to a first physical IP address. The first physical IP address is a physical IP address of the first virtual network.

Virtual machine server-side network adaptation

For each selected category of virtual machine, a cardinality of virtual machines of the category that are requested is recorded over time. For each category of virtual machine, a prediction algorithm is used to predict a cardinality of virtual machines for the selected category to be requested in the future, such that the prediction algorithm weighs under-prediction of the cardinality of virtual machines as costlier than over-prediction. For each category of virtual machine, a cardinality of virtual machines of the category of virtual machines are composed and booted with generic virtual machine artifacts such that the cardinality of virtual machines of the selected categories is the predicted cardinality of requested virtual machines for the selected category. The booted virtual machines are caused to enter a state in which the booted virtual machines are polling for a configuration with user-specific compute settings and user-specific networking settings.

Prediction of virtual machine demand

Embodiments described herein are directed to migrating affected services away from a faulted cloud node and to handling faults during an upgrade. In one scenario, a computer system determines that virtual machines running on a first cloud node are in a faulted state. The computer system determines which cloud resources on the first cloud node were allocated to the faulted virtual machine, allocates the determined cloud resources of the first cloud node to a second, different cloud node and re-instantiates the faulted virtual machine on the second, different cloud node using the allocated cloud resources.

Healing cloud services during upgrades

A system receives a request for a plurality of resources of a cloud computing system to deploy a service. The system selects a portion of the resources and determines whether the selected portion is at least partially available in one or more clusters in parallel. If available, the system reserves the available resources for a predetermined period of time. If unavailable in one of the clusters, the system releases the reserved resources after the predetermined period of time. While or after determining the availability, the system locates at least a portion of the remainder of the resources in the one or more clusters. The system allocates the reserved resources on one of the clusters and the located remainder of the resources to deploy the service and instantiates the service on the one of the clusters using the allocated resources.

Deploying a cloud service with capacity reservation followed by activation

Embodiments provide migration of services across different clusters to balance utilization and meet customer demands. Different service migration options may be performed with or without downtime. The artifacts of the service are moved to a new destination cluster. The service is created on the new destination cluster and staged so that the service is almost ready to start. In one embodiment, the service is stopped on the old cluster and started on the new cluster. After stopping the service, DNS is updated to point to the service on the new cluster. In another embodiment, the service is stopped on the old cluster and started on the new cluster with the same IP address to avoid DNS reprogramming and associated delays. In a further embodiment, the migration is performed without downtime by moving the service part by part from one cluster to another.

Service migration across cluster boundaries

Tenant and server platform coordination of the performance of atomic tasks that are to be performed by the platform, but which have at least a potential impact on the tenant. The server platform allows a particular tenant a timeframe within which the tenant itself may approve of initiation of each of one or more tasks. The server platform may protect itself from delayed action by imposing time constraints on the timeframe such that after the timeframe is elapsed, the tenant no longer has control over triggering the initiation of the particular task. Accordingly, the tenant is provided with flexibility on controlling initiation of a task performed by the server platform, while the server platform maintains a level of control to protect its resources and balances the needs of the various tenants.

Tenant control in initiating atomic platform tasks

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Sushant Pramod Rewaskar