US 8,028,184 B2Granted

Device allocation changing method

AssigneeHitachi, Ltd.

InventorsTomoki Sekiguchi, Sachie Tajima, Hidetoshi Sato

Life of this patent

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Abstract

Switching of the allocation of a device to a guest OS is implemented through transmission of a virtual suspension interrupt to a guest OS in a VMM; a power control notification process module that causes the guest OS to start a return process from a suspended state; a guest power process module that traps a suspension process of the guest OS; an I/O configuration change process module that updates a logical device definition of the VMM in the suspended state of the guest OS; a guest I/O emulation process module that emulates an I/O instruction that is issued by an I/O reconfiguration process module and that is executed when the guest OS has returned from the suspended state, thereby to provide a new logical device configuration to the guest OS.

Claims10

Dependent claims

In a computer system comprising a guest operating system (OS), at least one physical device, and a virtual machine monitor (VMM) which emulates the physical device as a logical device and switches the access target of the OS between the physical device and the logical device, a method comprising steps of:

transmitting a virtual suspend instruction for temporarily suspending the execution of the OS from the VMM to the OS;
after receiving notification that the OS completed the suspension of the execution, the VMM executing an access target changing process for switching the access target of the OS between the physical device and the logical device;
when switching the access target of the OS from the physical device to the logical device, the VMM allowing the OS to access the logical device;
and
when switching the access target of the OS from the logical device to the physical device, the VMM allowing the OS to directly access the physical device corresponding to the logical device.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 12/132,406Filed 3 Jun 2008
Priority: JP 2007-1498816 Jun 2007
Published: US 2008/0307213 A111 Dec 2008
Granted: 27 Sep 2011
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification4 codes

G06F 9/45558
Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors: hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
G06F 2009/45575
Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects: starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
G06F 2009/45579
Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects: i/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
G06F
Computing and data processing