System, method, and product in a logically partitioned system for prohibiting I/O adapters from accessing memory assigned to other partitions during DMA

摘要

A method, system, and apparatus for preventing input/output (I/O) adapters used by an operating system (OS) image, in a logically partitioned system, from accessing data from a memory location allocated to another OS image is provided. The system includes logical partitions, operating systems (OSs), memory locations, I/O adapters (IOAs), and a hypervisor. Each operating system image is assigned memory locations and input/output adapter is assigned to a logical partition. Each of the input/output adapters is assigned a range of I/O bus DMA addresses by the hypervisor. When a DMA operation request is received from an OS image, the hypervisor checks that the memory address range and the I/O adapter are allocated to the requesting OS image and that the I/O bus DMA range is within the that allocated to the I/O adapter. If these checks are passed, the hypervisor performs the requested mapping; otherwise the request is rejected.