Patent ID: 10635474

Abstract:
A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to support virtio-based data packet path optimization for live virtual machine (VM) migration for Linux. Specifically, a data packet receiving (Rx) path and a data packet transmitting (Tx) path between a VM running on a host and a virtual function (VF) driver configured to interact with a physical network device of the host to receive and transmit communications dedicated to the VM are both optimized to implement a zero-copy solution to reduce overheads in packet processing. Under the proposed approach, the data packet Tx path utilizes a zero-copy mechanism provided by Linux kernel to avoid copying from virtio memory rings/Tx vrings in memory of the VM. The data packet Rx path also implements a zero-copy solution, which allows a virtio device of the VM to communicate directly with the VF driver of the network device while bypassing a macvtap driver entirely from the data packet Rx path.