Dynamic memory management in a virtualized computing environment

A memory management system in a virtualized computing environment, the memory management system comprising:

• a hypervisor implementing at least a virtual machine (VM) over a host machine having one or more processors on which the VM is executed, wherein a guest operating system (OS) is executed over the VM and an application supporting memory management capabilities is executed over the guest OS;
• a logic unit for invoking a first memory manager implemented by the application to deallocate memory allocated to a first application running on the guest OS, so that the deallocated memory is reserved for use by the hypervisor such that the hypervisor is enabled to allocate the reserved memory to a second application running on the host machine, by way of a request submitted by the hypervisor to the first memory manager to reserve memory space,
• wherein the memory space is reserved by way of the first memory manager creating one or more balloon objects that are pinned in the memory space,
• wherein the reserved memory space is identified as allocated to one or more balloon objects so that the reserved memory space is not subject to removal from a memory management data structure utilized by the first memory manager by way of a garbage collection process;
• a logic unit for invoking a second memory manager implemented over the guest operating system to deallocate memory allocated to the guest OS, in response to a request submitted by the hypervisor to the second memory manager to facilitate deflation of the one or more balloon objects in the reserved memory space by unpinning the one or more balloon objects from the memory space;
• and
• wherein the first memory manager (java balloon) releases the references to memory allocated to the one or more balloon objects associated with the first memory manager so the associated memory space may be used by the application.

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program, wherein a memory management system in a virtualized computing environment is provided in which a hypervisor implements at least a virtual machine (VM) over a host machine, wherein a guest operating system (OS) is executed over the VM and an application supporting memory management capabilities is executed over the guest OS, and wherein the computer readable program when executed on a computer causes the computer to:

• invoke a first memory manager implemented by the application to deallocate memory allocated to a first application running on the guest OS, so that the deallocated memory is reserved for use by the hypervisor such that the hypervisor is enabled to allocate the reserved memory to a second application running on the host machine, by way of a request submitted by the hypervisor to the first memory manager to reserve memory space,
• wherein the memory space is reserved by way of the first memory manager creating one or more balloon objects that are pinned in the memory space,
• wherein the reserved memory space is identified as allocated to one or more balloon objects so that the reserved memory space is not subject to removal from a memory management data structure utilized by the first memory manager by way of a garbage collection process;
• invoke a second memory manager implemented over the guest operating system to deallocate memory allocated to the guest OS, in response to a request submitted by the hypervisor to the second memory manager to facilitate deflation of the one or more balloon objects in the reserved memory space by unpinning the one or more balloon objects from the memory space;
• and
• wherein the first memory manager (java balloon) releases the references to memory allocated to the one or more balloon objects associated with the first memory manager so the associated memory space may be used by the application.