Nonstop virtual remote direct memory access

A computer system, comprising:

• a first virtual machine, comprising:
• a first operating system associated with a first software layer which emulates a remote direct memory access (RDMA) protocol;
• and
• a second operating system which implements transport control protocol (TCP) and communicates via a first hypervisor with a first Ethernet NIC associated with the second operating system;
• and
• a second virtual machine, comprising:
• a second software layer which emulates the RDMA protocol,
• the second virtual machine implementing TCP and communicating via a second hypervisor with a second Ethernet NIC associated with the second virtual machine.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising:

• establishing, by a remote direct memory access (RDMA) emulation software layer in a first virtual machine, a transport control protocol (TCP) connection with a second virtual machine;
• responsive to establishing the TCP connection, identifying, by the RDMA emulation software layer in the first virtual machine based on socket information received from the second virtual machine, a TCP socket associated with the connection;
• and
• responsive to the first virtual machine initiating an RDMA Write operation:
• prepending, by the RDMA emulation software layer in the first virtual machine, an RDMA Write frame with a protocol header associated with the RDMA emulation software layer;
• and
• transmitting, by the RDMA emulation software layer in the first virtual machine via the TCP socket, the prepended RDMA Write frame, which causes the data associated with the RDMA Write frame to be transferred into an RDMA Write target buffer associated with the second virtual machine;
• and
• receiving, by the first virtual machine from the second virtual machine, a cumulative acknowledgment of the RDMA Write frame and any additional RDMA Write frames associated with the RDMA Write operation,
• the cumulative acknowledgment prepended with a protocol header associated with the RDMA emulation software layer, and the protocol header indicating a size of the cumulative acknowledgment.