Methods and apparatus for managing multiple user systems
View Patent ↗The techniques of the present invention relate to allocating resources and managing multiple services and multiple users in a multiprocessing computer system. A virtual machine executive is booted on a computer system typically with multiple processors and multiple memory blocks. The virtual machine executive creates multiple virtual machines associated with multiple operating systems. A virtual machine executive provides the illusion that each virtual machine has its own dedicated hardware. The virtual machine executive either behaves as a file server, or hosts an operating system instance that behaves as a file server. System administration of the collection of operating system instances can be achieved by administering the operating system instance that behaves as a file server, rather than by administering each operating system instance alone.
1. A computer system, comprising:
a virtual machine executive running on resources including a processor, memory, and persistent storage, the virtual machine executive configured to allocate resources for a plurality of virtual machines, wherein the allocated resources are used to manage multiple services and multiple users in a multiprocessing computer system;
a first operating system created by the virtual machine executive, the first operating system operating as a file server;
a second operating system created by the virtual machine executive, the second operating system operating as a file server client, wherein the second operating system accesses data in persistent storage through the first operating system, wherein processors are allocated based on the ratio of the number of data requests from the file server client to a total number of requests, multiplied by the difference between the total number of processors and the number of processors allocated to the file server.
2. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the first operating system runs on a first virtual machine partitioned by the virtual machine executive.
3. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the second operating system runs on a second virtual machine partitioned by the virtual machine executive.
4. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the first virtual machine is diskless.
5. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the second operating system maintains coherency through the first operating system.
6. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein resources further include a plurality of processors and network interfaces.
7. The computer System of claim 1 , wherein the first and second operating systems share a single memory space.
8. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the first operating system tracks the number of data access requests.
9. The computer system of claim 8 , wherein the virtual machine executive uses the number of data access requests to allocate resources.
10. The computer system of claim 9 , wherein resources are allocated based on the number of data access requests from a first operating system and the total data access requests from all supported operating systems.