Methods and apparatus for providing hypervisor level data services for server virtualization

• US 10,459,749 B2
• Filed: 08/18/2016
• Issued: 10/29/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/17/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Zerto Ltd (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Inventors: Kedem, Ziv
• Primary Examiner(s): Abad, Farley
• Application Number:
  US15/240,847
• Publication Number:
  US 20160357593A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,167 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/542 Intercept
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0653 Monitoring storage devices or systems
• 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 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/545 where tasks reside in different layers, e.g. user- and kernel-space

Abstract

A hypervisor virtual server system, including a plurality of virtual servers, a plurality of virtual disks that are read from and written to by the plurality of virtual servers, a physical disk, an I/O backend coupled with the physical disk and in communication with the plurality of virtual disks, which reads from and writes to the physical disk, a tapping driver in communication with the plurality of virtual servers, which intercepts I/O requests made by any one of said plurality of virtual servers to any one of said plurality of virtual disks, and a virtual data services appliance, in communication with the tapping driver, which receives the intercepted I/O write requests from the tapping driver, and that provides data services based thereon.

Claims

1. A hypervisor virtual server system, comprising:

a plurality of virtual servers that make I/O requests via an I/O data path;

a plurality of virtual disks that are read from and written to using the I/O requests made by said plurality of virtual servers via the I/O data path;

a physical disk;

an I/O backend coupled with said physical disk and in communication with said plurality of virtual disks that reads from and writes to said physical disk;

a tapping driver in communication with said plurality of virtual servers, the tapping driver having visibility access to the I/O requests of the I/O data path and that intercepts the I/O requests made by one of said plurality of virtual servers to at least one of said plurality of virtual disks;

a virtual data services appliance residing outside the I/O data path, in communication with said tapping driver that receives the intercepted I/O requests from said tapping driver asynchronously and provides data services based on the intercepted I/O requests;

a data services engine in communication with the virtual data services appliance that provides data services based on the intercepted I/O requests; and

a data analyzer in communication with the virtual data services appliance that determines a data state indicating a state of one virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers that made at least one of the intercepted I/O requests based on content of the intercepted I/O requests,

wherein the tapping driver causes the I/O requests to be forwarded along the I/O data path and separately causes the intercepted I/O requests to be forwarded to the virtual data services appliance.

2. The hypervisor virtual server system of claim 1, further comprising a journal manager in communication with said virtual data services appliance that stores intercepted I/O requests as journal entries in at least one of the plurality of virtual disks.

3. The hypervisor virtual server system of claim 2, further comprising a hash generator in communication with said virtual data services appliance and with said journal manager that generates hash values of the intercepted I/O requests, and wherein said journal manager stores the generated hash values.

4. The hypervisor virtual server system of claim 1, further comprising a TCP transmitter in communication with said virtual data services appliance that transmits the intercepted I/O requests to a remote virtual data services appliance.

5. The hypervisor virtual system of claim 1, further comprising a data analyzer in communication with said virtual data services appliance that analyzes an intercepted I/O request and infers therefrom a data state of the virtual server that made the I/O request.

6. The hypervisor virtual system of claim 1, comprising:

the virtual data services appliance configured to generate a copy of the intercepted I/O requests and that performs at least one action of a set of actions based on the copy of the intercepted I/O requests; and

the data services engine configured to provide data services based on the performance of the at least one action of the set of actions by the virtual data services appliance.

7. The hypervisor virtual system of claim 1, comprising:

the tapping driver to forward a copy of the intercepted I/O requests to the virtual data services appliance; and

the data services engine in communication with the virtual data services appliance to provide data services based on the copy of the intercepted I/O requests received by the virtual data services appliance.

8. The hypervisor virtual system of claim 1, comprising:

a plurality of data services engines including the data services engine, each in communication with the virtual data services appliance to provide data services including at least one of replication, monitoring, and quality of service.

9. The hypervisor virtual system of claim 1, comprising:

the virtual data services appliance residing in a virtual I/O data path between the tapping driver and the data services engine, the virtual I/O data path separate from the I/O data path.

15. The method of claim 6, comprising:

copying, by the tapping driver, the intercepted I/O requests from the at least one of the plurality of virtual servers to the at least one of the plurality of virtual disks to generate a copy of the intercepted I/O requests; and

forwarding, by the tapping driver, the copy of the intercepted I/O requests to the virtual data services appliance, receipt of the copy of the intercepted I/O requests causing the virtual data services to provide hypervisor data services via the one or more data services engines based on the copy of the intercepted I/O write request.

10. A method of providing data services within a hypervisor virtual server system, comprising:

intercepting, by a tapping driver having visibility to I/O requests of an I/O data path, the I/O requests from at least one of a plurality of virtual servers to at least one of a plurality of virtual disks via the I/O data path;

sending, by the tapping driver, the intercepted I/O requests to a virtual data services appliance that resides outside the I/O data path, provides hypervisor data services via one or more data services engines based on the intercepted I/O requests asynchronously to processing of the I/O requests in the I/O data path, and is in communication with a data analyzer that determines a data state indicating a state of one virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers that made at least one of the intercepted I/O requests based on content of the intercepted I/O requests; and

causing, by the tapping driver, the I/O request to be forwarded along the I/O data path and separately causes the intercepted I/O requests to be forwarded to the virtual data services appliance.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising journaling, by a journal manager, the intercepted I/O requests.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising generating, by a hash generator, a hash value for the intercepted I/O requests, and wherein said journaling comprises journaling the generated hash values.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising analyzing, by a data analyzer, an intercepted I/O request and inferring therefrom a data state of the virtual server that made the I/O request.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising sending the intercepted I/O requests to a remote computer to provide replication for said plurality of virtual servers.

16. The method of claim 10, comprising:

sending, by the tapping driver, the intercepted I/O requests to the virtual data services appliance, receipt of the intercepted I/O requests causing the virtual data services appliance to generate a copy of the intercepted I/O requests and to perform at least one action of a set of actions based on the copy of the intercepted I/O request to provide hypervisor data services via the one or more data services engines.

17. The method of claim 10, comprising:

sending, by the tapping driver, the intercepted I/O requests to the virtual data services appliance via a virtual I/O data path between the tapping driver and the one or more data services engine, the virtual I/O data path separate from the I/O data path.

18. A system to provide hypervisor data services, comprising:

a virtual server implemented on a hypervisor that reads from and writes to a virtual disk via an I/O data path;

a tapping driver implemented on the hypervisor that is in communication with the virtual server, that has visibility access to the I/O data path, and that intercepts an I/O request from the virtual server to the virtual disk via the I/O data path;

a virtual data services appliance implemented on the hypervisor that is in communication with the tapping driver, that receives the I/O request from the tapping driver, that resides outside the I/O data path, that generates a copy of the I/O request received from the tapping driver, and that performs a set of actions based on the copy of the I/O request;

a data services engine implemented on the hypervisor that is in communication with the virtual data services appliance to provide data services for the hypervisor based on the performance of the set of actions using the copy of the I/O request generated by the virtual data services appliance asynchronously to processing of the I/O request in the I/O data path; and

a data analyzer implemented on the hypervisor that is in communication with the virtual data services appliance that determines a data state indicating a state of one virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers that made at least one of the intercepted I/O requests based on content of the intercepted I/O requests,

wherein the tapping driver causes the I/O requests to be forwarded along the I/O data path and separately causes the intercepted I/O requests to be forwarded to the virtual data services appliance.

19. The system of claim 18, comprising:

a virtual I/O data path implemented on the hypervisor from the tapping driver to the data services engine and including the virtual data services appliance, the virtual I/O data path separate from the I/O data path.

20. The system of claim 18, comprising:

an I/O receiver implemented on the hypervisor that receives the I/O request from the tapping driver for provision to the virtual data services appliance.