Live-Update: An Update on the Journey to Replace the Hypervisor with Limited Downtime

on YouTube ↗28m

" summary

AWS ships a seven-step live-update that loads a new Xen binary into free RAM, preserves domain page metadata, and resumes guests after transferring a compact live-update with memory blob. The system writes a stream page list of MFNs, schedules pre- and post-save tasklets on CPU0, and jumps to Xen2 with a command‑line pointer. On c5.metal QEMU tests it achieves <1s downtime on c5.metal for an 8GB dom0 and 64GB host; sorting reduced page-list entries from ~1,270 to 9 and brought 730ms to ~670ms.

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" chapters (7)

1. 0:00Introduction to Live Update
2. 1:04Why Live Update is needed
3. 3:56Live Update process overview
4. 15:14Live Update downtime metrics
5. 16:17Optimizing memory transfer
6. 20:57Alternative: Never pausing domains
7. 23:03Conclusion and future work

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