Write bandwidth management for flashdevices

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide a flash memory device write-access management amongst different virtual machines (VMs) in a virtualized computing environment. In one embodiment, a virtualized computing data processing system can include a host computer with at least one processor and memory and different VMs executing in the host computer. The system also can include a flash memory device coupled to the host computer and accessible by the VMs. Finally, a flash memory controller can manage access to the flash memory device. The controller can include program code enabled to compute a contemporaneous bandwidth of requests for write operations for the flash memory device, to allocate a corresponding number of tokens to the VMs, to accept write requests to the flash memory device from the VMs only when accompanied by a token and to repeat the computing, allocating and accepting after a lapse of a pre-determined time period.

1 . A flash memory device write-access management method for different virtual machines (VMs) in a virtualized computing environment, the method comprising:
 computing a contemporaneous bandwidth of requests for write operations for a flash memory device;   allocating a corresponding number of tokens to virtual machines (VMs) in a virtualized computing environment seeking write access to the flash memory device;   accepting write requests to the flash memory device from VMs only when accompanied by a token; and,   repeating the computing, allocating and accepting after a lapse of a pre-determined time period.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 detecting the lapse of the predetermined time period; and,   re-allocating in response to the detecting of the lapse unused tokens in over-allocated ones of the VMs to under-allocated ones of the VMs for use during a subsequent pre-determined time period.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 identifying ones of the VMs experiencing a burst of requests to write to the flash memory device; and,   allocating in response to the identification of VMs experiencing a burst of requests, additional tokens to the VMs experiencing a burst of requests.   
     
     
         4 - 9 . (canceled)