Patent ID: 8850430

Claim:
A data processing system for migrating two active and data-dependent virtual machines in a source hypervisor to a target hypervisor, the data processing system comprising: a processor; a memory coupled to the processor; and an orchestration program stored within the memory and executable on the processor to cause the data processing system to perform: acquiring a migration list of the active and data-dependent virtual machines in the source hypervisor on a source platform that each have a data flow connection with another virtual machine; determining a data flow dependency order of the active virtual machines on the migration list, wherein the data flow dependency order is determined based on a direction of data flow among the virtual machines and ranges from a least dependent sending virtual machine to a most dependent receiving virtual machine; rerouting the data flow connections between the virtual machines on the migration list to a migration buffer, the data flow connections being rerouted so that the virtual machines on the migration list no longer have data communication; buffering data from the data flow connections in the migration buffer, wherein the data is stored in the migration buffer during virtual machine migration; after the rerouting: migrating the virtual machines on the migration list from the source hypervisor on the source platform to the target hypervisor on a target platform in accordance with the data flow dependency order, beginning with the least dependent sending virtual machine and proceeding to the most dependent receiving virtual machine; re-establishing the data flow connections between the migrated virtual machines in the target hypervisor as the data flow connections were in the source hypervisor prior to the rerouting; and migrating the buffered data from the migration buffer to the migrated virtual machines on the target hypervisor.