Virtual machine initiated memory deduplication
AssigneeRed Hat Israel, Ltd.
InventorsUri Lublin, Michael Tsirkin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods, systems, and computer program products are included for initiating deduplication of memory by virtual machine guests. A method includes providing a virtual machine, by a hypervisor, and running a guest on the virtual machine. The guest sends the hypervisor a scan indicator based on an amount of the virtual machine's memory that has been modified. Responsive to the scan indicator, the hypervisor triggers memory scanning and deduplication of memory pages that are identified by the memory scanning as storing identical content.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- providing, by a hypervisor, a virtual machine that is assigned a portion of a memory;
- running a guest on the virtual machine;
- receiving, by the hypervisor, a scan indicator from the guest of the virtual machine;
- triggering, based on the scan indicator, the hypervisor to perform a memory scan to identify memory pages in the portion of memory that store identical data to other memory pages that are assigned to a second virtual machine;
- and
- deduplicating, by the hypervisor, the identified memory pages.
A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon machine-readable instructions executable to cause a machine to perform operations comprising:
- providing, by a hypervisor, a virtual machine that is assigned a portion of a memory;
- running a guest on the virtual machine;
- receiving, by the hypervisor, a scan indicator from the guest of the virtual machine;
- triggering, based on the scan indicator, the hypervisor to perform a memory scan to identify memory pages in the portion of memory that store identical data to other memory pages that are assigned to a second virtual machine;
- and
- deduplicating, by the hypervisor, the identified memory pages.
A system comprising:
- a non-transitory memory;
- and
- one or more hardware processors coupled to the non-transitory memory that read instructions from the non-transitory memory to cause the system to perform operations comprising:
- providing, by a hypervisor, a virtual machine that is assigned a portion of a memory;
- running a guest on the virtual machine;
- receiving, by the hypervisor, a scan indicator from the guest of the virtual machine;
- triggering, based on the scan indicator, the hypervisor to perform a memory scan to identify memory pages in the portion of memory that store identical data to other memory pages that are assigned to a second virtual machine;
- and
- deduplicating, by the hypervisor, the identified memory pages.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.