Vmware, Inc.

Vishnu Mohan Sekhar

Mukund Gunti

Adrian Drzewiecki

Patrick William Penzias Dirks

Aravinda Haryadi

Ashish Kaila

Naga Ullas Vankayala Harinathagupta

Tobias Franz Rolf Stumpf

Stanley Zhang

Shaw Chuang

Greg Hutchins

An image of a virtualization software and firmware in a plurality of hosts are upgraded by performing the steps of: in response to a user input, generating a software specification that specifies a desired state of the virtualization software and a desired state of the firmware; based on the software specification, preparing a desired image of the virtualization software that includes software components of a desired version of the firmware; and coordinating an upgrade to the desired image of the virtualization software and the desired version of the firmware in the hosts. The upgrade includes an upgrade in each of the hosts to the desired version of the firmware, and an upgrade in each of the hosts to the desired image of the virtualization software that includes the software components of the desired version of the base image and the software components of the desired version of the firmware.

Software and firmware updates in a combined single pane of glass interface

The disclosure provides an approach for a non-disruptive system upgrade. Embodiments include installing an upgraded version of an operating system (OS) on a computing system while a current version of the OS continues to run. Embodiments include entering a maintenance mode on the computing system, including preventing the addition of new applications and modifying the handling of storage operations on the computing system for the duration of the maintenance mode. Embodiments include, during the maintenance mode, configuring the upgraded version of the OS. Embodiments include, after configuring the upgraded version of the OS, suspending a subset of applications running on the computing system, transferring control over resources of the computing system to the upgraded version of the OS, and resuming the subset of the applications running on the computing system. Embodiments include exiting the maintenance mode on the computing system.

Techniques for non-disruptive operating system upgrade

An image of a virtualization software and firmware in a plurality of hosts are upgraded by performing the steps of: in response to a user input, generating a software specification that specifies a desired state of the virtualization software and a desired state of the firmware; based on the software specification, preparing a desired image of the virtualization software that includes software components of a desired version of the firmware; and from a virtual machine management server that is programmed to deploy virtual machines in the hosts, coordinating an upgrade to the desired image of the virtualization software and the desired version of the firmware in the hosts by (1) instructing a hardware support manager to upgrade the hosts to the desired version of the firmware, and (2) instructing each of the hosts to upgrade to the desired image of the virtualization software.

In a virtualization computer system, a method and system that does not exclusively allocate I/O devices, for example, storage and networking devices, to a commodity operating system (COS) when mainly used for booting the virtualization system. Those I/O devices needed by the COS are accessed via virtual machine kernel drivers, thereby giving the COS the benefits of operation derived from features in the virtual machine kernel that is provided for these I/O devices.

Growing community of inventors

Chennai, India

Vishnu Mohan Sekhar