Method, apparatus and program storage device for providing intelligent copying for faster virtual disk mirroring

• US 20060161808A1
• Filed: 01/18/2005
• Published: 07/20/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 01/18/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Xiotech Corporation
• Original Assignee: Xiotech Corporation
• Inventors: Burkey, Todd R.
• Application Number:
  US11/037,317
• Publication Number:
  US 20060161808A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/6
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2082 Data synchronisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• 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]

Abstract

A method, apparatus and program storage device for providing intelligent copying for faster virtual disk mirroring is disclosed. The present invention provides a mirrored virtual disk by copying on a first virtual disk to a mirrored virtual disk without copying uninitialized regions of the first virtual disk.

Claims

1. A method for providing intelligent copying for faster virtual disk mirroring, comprising:

creating a first virtual disk;

creating a second virtual disk for mirroring the first virtual disk;

tracking sectors that have been written to; and

copying data on the first virtual disk to the second virtual disk without copying uninitialized regions of the first virtual disk.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising tagging all sectors under a source virtual disk high water mark as copied in a resynchronization bitmap.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising validating the high water mark.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the validating the high water mark comprising validating the high water mark via a write access.

5. The method of claim 3 further comprising carrying the validation of the high water mark over reboots of a system.

6. The method of claim 3 further comprising providing a safe mode that assumes all blocks of a virtual disk are dirty and need to be recopied if any sector is written to on the source vdisk prior to the mirror operation.

8. The controller of claim 6, wherein the processor tags all the sectors under a source virtual disk high water mark as copied in a resynchronization bitmap.

7. A disk controller, comprising:

memory for storing data therein; and

a processor, coupled to the memory, for controlling access and configuration of data in a storage array, the processor being configured to create a first virtual disk, create a second virtual disk for mirroring the first virtual disk, track sectors that have been written to and copy data on the first virtual disk to the second virtual disk without copying uninitialized regions of the first virtual disk.

9. The controller of claim 7, wherein the resynchronization bitmap is stored in the memory.

10. The controller of claim 7, wherein the processor validates the high water mark.

11. The controller of claim 9, wherein the processor carries the validation of the high water mark over reboots.

13. The program storage device of claim 11 further comprising tagging all sectors under a source virtual disk high water mark as copied in a resynchronization bitmap.

15. The program storage device of claim 13, wherein the validating the high water mark comprising validating the high water mark via a write access.

16. The program storage device of claim 13 further comprising carrying the validation of the high water mark over reboots of a system.

12. A program storage device, comprising:

program instructions executable by a processing device to perform operations for providing intelligent copying for faster virtual disk mirroring, the operations comprising;

creating a first virtual disk;

creating a second virtual disk for mirroring the first virtual disk;

tracking sectors that have been written to; and

copying data on the first virtual disk to the second virtual disk without copying uninitialized regions of the first virtual disk.

14. The program storage device of claim 12 further comprising validating the high water mark.

17. A disk controller, comprising:

means for storing data; and

means, coupled to the means for storing data, for controlling access and configuration of data in a storage array, the means for controlling being configured to create a first virtual disk, create a second virtual disk for mirroring the first virtual disk, track sectors that have been written to and copy data on the first virtual disk to the second virtual disk without copying uninitialized regions of the first virtual disk.