Delayed boot of a virtual machine in a virtualized computing environment based on a fabric limit

• US 10,002,017 B2
• Filed: 08/28/2015
• Issued: 06/19/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Matzek, Samuel D., Tenner, Jeffrey W., McBrearty, Gerald F.
• Primary Examiner(s): Peugh, Brian
• Application Number:
  US14/839,624
• Publication Number:
  US 20170010908A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,026 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/023 Free address space management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0632 by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

A method manages virtual machines in a virtualized computing environment based at least in part on limitations associated with storage fabrics through which virtual machines may access one or more storage systems in such an environment. The storage fabric limitations may be used, for example, in connection with placing virtual machines on hosts in a virtualized computing environment. As another example, storage fabric limitations may be used in connection with deploying virtual machines into a virtualized computing environment to reduce the likelihood of boot errors. As still another example, storage fabric limitations may be used in connection with load balancing across multiple fabrics in a virtualized computing environment.

Claims

1. A method of deploying a virtual machine on a host in a computing environment of the type including a fabric coupling the host to a storage system, the method comprising, in response to initiation of a deployment of the virtual machine, and using at least one processor:

creating the virtual machine on the host;

determining, for a storage volume allocated for the virtual machine on the storage system, an allocation of a limited fabric resource of the fabric;

determining, based upon the determined allocation, whether the fabric has capacity to boot the virtual machine;

in response to determining that the fabric has sufficient capacity to boot the virtual machine and after creating the virtual machine on the host, initiating a boot of the virtual machine on the host; and

in response to determining that the fabric does not have sufficient capacity to boot the virtual machine and after creating the virtual machine on the host, delaying the boot of the virtual machine on the host.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the fabric includes a Fibre Channel switch, and wherein the fabric limit is an active Fabric Login (FLOGI) limit, an active Fabric Discovery (FDISC) limit, a zone limit, or a host limit.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the fabric has capacity to boot the virtual machine includes determining a fabric limit for the limited fabric resource.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the limited fabric resource comprises a fabric login for a storage switch in the fabric, and wherein the fabric limit comprises an active login limit of the storage switch.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein determining the fabric limit comprises querying the storage switch to retrieve the fabric limit.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein determining the allocation of the limited fabric resource comprises accessing the storage switch to retrieve a current allocation of fabric logins for the storage switch.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein determining the allocation of the limited fabric resource comprises tracking active fabric logins in the computing environment.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein delaying the boot of the virtual machine on the host includes queuing the virtual machine, the method further comprising:

after queuing the virtual machine, determining, for a storage volume allocated for the virtual machine on the storage system, whether the fabric has capacity to boot the queued virtual machine; and

in response to determining that the fabric has capacity to boot the queued virtual machine, dequeuing the queued virtual machine and initiating the boot of the queued virtual machine on the host.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein determining whether the fabric has capacity to boot the queued virtual machine, dequeuing the queued virtual machine and initiating the boot of the queued virtual machine on the host are performed by a monitor process.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the queued virtual machine is among a plurality of queued virtual machines, the method further comprising prioritizing an order of the plurality of queued virtual machines to be booted once the fabric has capacity to boot at least one of the plurality of queued virtual machines.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the storage volume comprises a boot volume.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the virtual machine further includes a data volume allocated thereto, and wherein determining whether the fabric has capacity to boot the virtual machine further includes determining whether the fabric has capacity to connect the virtual machine to the data volume.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein determining whether the fabric has capacity to boot the virtual machine further includes determining from a configuration setting whether boot of the virtual machine is permitted when the fabric does not have capacity to connect the virtual machine to the data volume.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the host is among a plurality of a plurality of hosts in the computing environment, and wherein determining whether the fabric has capacity to boot the virtual machine is performed in response to an instruction to boot the virtual machine, the method further comprising, prior to the instruction to boot the virtual machine:

placing the virtual machine on the host prior to creating the virtual machine; and

copying an image for the virtual machine to the storage volume.