Virtual serial ports for virtual machines
AssigneeHewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP
InventorsRobert C. Elliott, Theodore F. Emerson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In some examples, a storage medium to stores information indicating address locations of virtual serial ports, where the virtual serial ports are associated with respective virtual machines (VMs). A controller that is separate from a hypervisor is to detect, based on the information, an access of a first virtual serial port associated with a first VM of the plurality of VMs, and communicate data between the first VM and another entity through the first virtual serial port.
Claims20
A system comprising:
- a storage medium to store information indicating address locations of virtual serial ports, wherein the virtual serial ports are associated with respective virtual machines (VMs) of a plurality of VMs;
- a hypervisor;
- and
- a controller that is separate from the hypervisor, the controller to:
- provide virtual functions (VFs) assigned to the respective VMs, wherein the virtual serial ports are associated with the VFs, and the VFs correspond to virtual serial port controllers that control communications of the virtual serial ports, and wherein the VFs are configurable to different types of virtual serial port controllers associated with first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffers of different sizes,
- detect, based on the information, an access of a first virtual serial port associated with a first VM of the plurality of VMs, and
- communicate data between the first VM and another entity through the first virtual serial port.
A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions that upon execution cause a controller to:
- access information indicating address locations of register sets of virtual serial ports, wherein the virtual serial ports are associated with respective virtual machines (VMs) of a plurality of VMs, wherein the register sets are associated with respective virtual functions (VFs) provided by the controller, and wherein each VF of the VFs has a base class/subclass/programming interface set to a serial port controller;
- detect, based on the information, a write of a register in a register set of the virtual serial port associated with a first VM of the plurality of VMs;
- and
- in response to the detecting, communicate data between the first VM and another entity through the virtual serial port associated with the first VM, without performing serial port emulation by a hypervisor.
A method comprising:
- storing information indicating address locations of virtual serial ports, wherein the virtual serial ports are associated with respective virtual machines (VMs) of a plurality of VMs;
- providing, by a controller, virtual functions (VFs) assigned to the respective VMs, wherein the virtual serial ports are associated with the VFs, and the VFs correspond to virtual serial port controllers that control communications of the virtual serial ports, and wherein the VFs are configurable to different types of virtual serial port controllers associated with first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffers of different sizes;
- detecting, based on the information by the controller, an access of a first virtual serial port associated with a first VM of the plurality of VMs;
- and
- communicating, by the controller, data between the first VM and another entity through the first virtual serial port.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.