Vmware, Inc.

Vui Chiap Lam

Amar Padmanabhan

Vadim Spivak

Maithem Munshed

Marius Popa

Luca Castellano

Michi Mutsuzaki

Mihnea Olteanu

Anfernee Yongkun Gui

Xin Yao

Badhri Sampathkumar

Bharath Siravara

The current document is directed to methods and systems that efficiently distribute virtual-machine images ('VM images') among servers within large, distributed-computer-system-implemented IAAS platforms to facilitate temporally and computationally efficient instantiation of virtual machines within the servers. In implementations discussed below, VM images are stored in a distributed fashion throughout one or more distributed computing systems, using several different VM-image-distribution models, in order to balance computational-resource usage, temporal constraints, and other factors and considerations related to VM-image distribution and VM instantiation.

Methods and subsystems that efficiently distribute VM images in distributed computing systems

Techniques disclosed herein provide an approach for assigning resource consumers to available resources. In one embodiment, components of a distributed scheduler are organized into a hierarchy, such as a tree. A placement request received at a root scheduler of the hierarchy is propagated down the hierarchy, either to all children or to randomly selected subsets of children of each scheduler in the hierarchy. Leaf schedulers in the hierarchy that receive the request each propagate back up a score indicating the amount of free resources in its corresponding resource bucket. Branch schedulers then compare scores that they receive, and each further propagate one of the received scores, such as the highest score, based on the comparison, until the root scheduler is reached. The root scheduler makes an additional comparison and returns one of the resource buckets in response to the received placement request.

Distributed hierarchical scheduler

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Vui Chiap Lam