Efficient disaster recovery across heterogeneous storage systems

• US 10,120,764 B1
• Filed: 07/29/2016
• Issued: 11/06/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 07/29/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nutanix Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Nutanix Incorporated
• Inventors: Ramachandran, Parthasarathy, Bhattacharyya, Manosiz, Chandrasekaran, Karthik
• Primary Examiner(s): Leibovich, Yair
• Application Number:
  US15/224,206
• Time in Patent Office: 830 Days
• Field of Search: 714 15
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/00 Error detection; Error correction; Monitoring error detection, correction or monitoring in information storage based on relative movement between record carrier and transducer G11B20/18; monitoring, i.e. supervising the progress of recording or reproducing G11B27/36; in static stores G11C29/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1438 Restarting or rejuvenating
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1446 Point-in-time backing up or restoration of persistent data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1484 involving virtual machines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/203 using migration
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/1009 using page tables, e.g. page table structures
• 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 2201/815 Virtual
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1032 Reliability improvement, data loss prevention, degraded operation etc
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Systems for storage system rollover and rollback. A data mover agent is installed on a source storage system to capture disaster recovery data and send to a target system. Upon receiving a rollover event signal, a virtualized controller creates one or more replica user virtual machines running on the target system that serve to replicate functions of the user virtual machines from the source storage system. The virtualized controller on the target system converts the target disaster recovery data from a first format to a second format to facilitate use of the target disaster recovery data by the replica user virtual machines. Rollback is initiated when the target system receives a rollback event signal. Differences in the data that have occurred between the rollover event and the rollback signal are calculated and sent to the rollback system. The calculated differences are applied to a registered snapshot on the rollback system.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

identifying a source storage system and a target storage system that comprises a storage pool comprising a plurality of storage devices distributed across a cluster of nodes, wherein nodes distributed across the cluster of nodes utilize controller virtual machines to read and write to the storage pool comprising the plurality of storage devices;

installing a data mover agent on the source storage system;

capturing target disaster recovery data at the target storage system transmitted from the data mover agent for storage in the storage pool, wherein the target disaster recovery data corresponds to at least one user virtual machine operating on the source storage system;

receiving a failover event signal;

creating at least one replica user virtual machine on a node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, wherein the at least one replica user virtual machine is creatable on any node among the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, the at least one replica user virtual machine serving to replicate functions of the user virtual machine; and

converting, by a controller virtual machine on the node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, at least a portion of the target disaster recovery data in the storage pool from a first format to a second format to facilitate access to the portion of the target disaster recovery data by the node having the replica user virtual machine.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first format corresponds to a first hypervisor and the second format corresponds to a second hypervisor that is different than the first hypervisor.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

updating one or more sets of replica user virtual machine data at the target storage system, the replica user virtual machine data corresponding to the replica user virtual machine operating on the target storage system;

receiving, by the data mover agent, at least a portion of the replica user virtual machine data from the target storage system; and

generating, by the data mover agent, a virtual disk derived from operation of the replica user virtual machine.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein generating the virtual disk is responsive to receiving a failback event signal.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein operation of the replica user virtual machine generates difference data characterizing one or more data changes.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising identifying a snapshot taken from the source storage system.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising applying the difference data to the snapshot.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the portion of the target disaster recovery data is a clone of the user virtual machine.

9. The method of claim 3, further comprising attaching the virtual disk to a service virtual machine comprising the data mover agent.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising starting the user virtual machine on the source storage system.

11. A computer readable medium, embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium, the non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform a set of acts the acts comprising:

identifying a source storage system and a target storage system that comprises a storage pool comprising a plurality of storage devices distributed across a cluster of nodes, wherein nodes distributed across the cluster of nodes utilize controller virtual machines to read and write to the storage pool comprising the plurality of storage devices;

installing a data mover agent on the source storage system;

capturing target disaster recovery data at the target storage system transmitted from the data mover agent for storage in the storage pool, wherein the target disaster recovery data corresponds to at least one user virtual machine operating on the source storage system;

receiving a failover event signal;

creating at least one replica user virtual machine on a node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, wherein the at least one replica user virtual machine is creatable on any node among the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, the at least one replica user virtual machine serving to replicate functions of the user virtual machine; and

converting, by a controller virtual machine on the node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, at least a portion of the target disaster recovery data in the storage pool from a first format to a second format to facilitate access to the portion of the target disaster recovery data by the node having the replica user virtual machine.

12. The computer readable medium of claim 11, wherein the first format corresponds to a first hypervisor and the second format corresponds to a second hypervisor that is different than the first hypervisor.

13. The computer readable medium of claim 11, further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by the one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform acts of:

updating one or more sets of replica user virtual machine data at the target storage system, the replica user virtual machine data corresponding to the replica user virtual machine operating on the target storage system;

receiving, by the data mover agent, at least a portion of the replica user virtual machine data from the target storage system; and

generating, by the data mover agent, a virtual disk derived from operation of the replica user virtual machine.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein generating the virtual disk is responsive to receiving a failback event signal.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein operation of the replica user virtual machine generates difference data characterizing one or more data changes.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by the one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform acts of identifying a snapshot taken from the source storage system.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16, further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by the one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform acts of applying the difference data to the snapshot.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein the portion of the target disaster recovery data is a clone of the user virtual machine.

19. A system comprising:

a storage medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions; and

one or more processors that execute the instructions to cause the one or more processors to perform a set of acts, the acts comprising,

identifying a source storage system and a target storage system that comprises a storage pool comprising a plurality of storage devices distributed across a cluster of nodes, wherein nodes distributed across the cluster of nodes utilize controller virtual machines to read and write to the storage pool comprising the plurality of storage devices;

installing a data mover agent on the source storage system;

capturing target disaster recovery data at the target storage system transmitted from the data mover agent for storage in the storage pool, wherein the target disaster recovery data corresponds to at least one user virtual machine operating on the source storage system;

receiving a failover event signal;

creating at least one replica user virtual machine on a node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, wherein the at least one replica user virtual machine is creatable on any node among the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, the at least one replica user virtual machine serving to replicate functions of the user virtual machine; and

converting, by a controller virtual machine on the node from the cluster of nodes in the target storage system, at least a portion of the target disaster recovery data in the storage pool from a first format to a second format to facilitate access to the portion of the target disaster recovery data by the node having the replica user virtual machine.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the first format corresponds to a first hypervisor type and the second format corresponds to a second hypervisor that is different than the first hypervisor.