Patent ID: 8468533

Claim:
A virtual machine control device, comprising: a plurality of virtual machines each having an operating system that carries out scheduling of tasks to be executed according to priorities of the tasks; and a virtual machine control unit that controls switching of the plurality of virtual machines, wherein at least one of the plurality of virtual machines includes: a switching task generation unit that generates a switching task that performs a process of notifying the virtual machine control unit of a switching indication for switching a virtual machine currently in operation to another virtual machine as a switching target, a priority setting unit that sets a priority of the switching task generated by the switching task generation unit to a priority of a task having a highest priority among tasks for the another virtual machine, and a task execution unit that sequentially executes one or more tasks including the switching task according to the priorities preset for each of the tasks, wherein the task execution unit executes the switching task in a case where a priority set for the switching task is higher than a priority set for another task in the virtual machine including the switching task to thereby notify the virtual machine control unit of the switching indication, and wherein the virtual machine control unit receives the notified switching indication and switches the currently running virtual machine to the another virtual machine.