Implementation of Virtual Machine Operations Using Storage System Functionality

• US 20080155169A1
• Filed: 12/19/2007
• Published: 06/26/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Schmidt, Rene W., Hiltgen, Daniel K.
• Granted Patent: US 9,098,347 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/6
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/1491 in a hierarchical protection system, e.g. privilege levels, memory rings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45587 Isolation or security of virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0664 at device level, e.g. emulation of a storage device or system
• 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 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455

Abstract

One embodiment of the present invention includes a method comprising: (a) representing at least state data of a virtual machine in a unit of network storage of a network storage system; and (b) employing data manipulation functionality of the network storage system to implement a virtual machine operation that manipulates at least the state data of the virtual machine.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

representing at least state data of a virtual machine in a unit of network storage of a network storage system; and

employing data manipulation functionality of the network storage system to implement a virtual machine operation that manipulates at least the state data of the virtual machine.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual machine operation comprises one of virtual machine clone, local move, remote move, and migrate.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the employing comprises providing direct access to an interface to the network storage system without mediation by an intermediary file system.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the employing functionality of the network storage system comprises one of generating and transmitting a command message to the network storage system and executing a function call to an application programming interface for the network storage system.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the direct access is provided to either one or both of a virtualization layer and a virtual machine manager.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the network storage system comprises one of a storage area network and network attached storage.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising employing discovery functionality of the network storage system to discover network storage units marked as provisioned for virtual machines.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising seamlessly provisioning the virtual machine and the network storage unit for the virtual machine.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising conditioning provisioning of the virtual machine on provisioning of the unit of the network storage.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the provisioning of the network storage unit comprises indicating in the network storage unit that the network storage unit supports a virtual machine.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the indicating comprises writing a unique signature into the provisioned network storage unit, the signature corresponding to the virtual machine.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the indicating comprises writing a virtual machine partition type into a partition table of the network storage unit.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the indicating further comprises writing an additional indication that the network storage unit supports a virtual machine in a partition that hosts the state data.

14. A computer program product encoded in one or more machine-readable media, the computer program product comprising:

virtualization code executable to,

implement a virtual machine operation with functionality of a network storage system, and

maintain a mapping between a virtual machine and a storage unit of the network storage system provisioned for the virtual machine.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the virtualization code is executable to implement a virtual machine snapshot operation with snapshot functionality of the network storage system, the virtualization code being executable to,

cause the network storage system to link the storage unit to a second storage unit of the network storage system,

push state data of the virtual machine to the network storage unit, and

trigger the snapshot functionality of the network storage system on the storage unit and the second storage unit.

16. The computer program product of claim 15,

wherein the virtualization code is further executable to,

associate a first indication of the network storage unit to a second indication of the second network storage unit, and

expose the first indication to the virtual machine while utilizing the second indication to access the second network storage unit.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to flush I/O of the virtual machine to a virtual disk of the virtual machine before triggering the snapshot functionality, the virtual disk embodied in a storage unit of the network storage system.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to delete a child snapshot that corresponds to the storage unit of the network storage system.

19. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to incorporate the child snapshot into a parent snapshot prior to deletion of the child snapshot, wherein the child snapshot encodes differences between virtual machine state indicated in the parent snapshot and current virtual machine state.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to incorporate a parent snapshot into one or more snapshots that are children of the parent snapshot prior to deletion of the parent snapshot.

21. The computer program product of claim 14,

wherein the virtualization code is executable to implement a virtual machine move operation using at least one of snapshot functionality and replicate functionality of the network storage system, the virtual machine move operation to move a virtual machine from a first virtual machine host to a second virtual machine host, and

wherein the virtualization code is further executable to preserve identity of a virtual primary disk for a virtual machine being moved and executable to indicate the network storage unit that corresponds to the virtual machine being moved to the second virtual machine host.

22. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to allow the virtual machine to remain active at the first virtual machine host and delay activation of the virtual machine at the second virtual machine host until directed to activate at the second virtual machine host with one of a user request and a heartbeat.

23. The computer program product of claim 22, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to invoke the snapshot functionality to take a snapshot of the virtual machine and temporarily activate the virtual machine at the second virtual machine host for validation, and executable to delete the snapshot after the validation.

24. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to suspend the virtual machine at the first virtual machine host prior activation of the virtual machine at the second virtual machine host.

25. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the virtualization code is further executable to update the mapping to reflect migration of data of the virtual machine from a first network storage system storage unit to a second network storage system storage unit.

26. A computer program product encoded in one or more machine-readable media, the computer program product comprising:

virtual machine management code executable to,

implement virtual machine management operations using functionality of a network storage system, and

manage virtual machines at a granularity of a unit of network storage.

27. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to make one-to-one mappings between virtual machines and network storage units.

28. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to communicate the mappings to corresponding virtual machine hosts.

29. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the virtual machine management code is executable to implement a virtual machine replication operation using replication functionality of the network storage system, the virtual machine replication operation to replicate data in a first network storage system storage unit to a second network storage system storage unit.

30. The computer program product of claim 26,

wherein the virtual machine management code is executable to implement a virtual machine migrate operation using at least one of replication functionality and snapshot functionality, the virtual machine migrate operation to migrate data of a virtual machine from a storage unit of a first network storage system to a storage unit of a second network storage system,

wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to ascertain and communicate identifying information for the storage unit of the second network storage system to a virtualization layer that supports the virtual machine.

31. The computer program product of claim 30, wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to ascertain that the second network storage system is similarly configurable as the first network storage system and to allocate the unit in the second network storage system.

32. The computer program product of claim 28,

wherein the virtual machine management code is executable to implement a virtual machine move operation using at least one of replicate functionality and snapshot functionality, the virtual machine move operation to move a virtual machine from a first virtual machine host to a second virtual machine host,

wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to resume activation of the virtual machine on the second virtual machine host.

33. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the virtual machine management code is further executable to implement a virtual machine discovery operation using discovery functionality of the network storage system.

34. The computer program product of claim 33, wherein the virtual machine discover operation discovers network storage units provisioned for virtual machines based on at least one of a partition type that corresponds to virtual machines and a signature that uniquely corresponds to virtual machines indicated in the network storage units.

35. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the virtual machine management code is executable to implement a virtual machine provisioning operation using functionality of the network storage system that discovers available storage pools in the network storage system, and executable to allocate storage units of the network storage system from discovered storage pools.

36. A computer program product encoded in one or more machine-readable media, the computer program product comprising:

storage virtualization code executable to,

intercept from a virtual machine a storage access request for a virtual primary disk of the virtual machine,

determine first location parameters from the intercepted storage access request, and

cause generation of a network storage system access request with second location parameters that correspond to the first location parameters,

wherein the virtual primary disk maps to a storage unit of a network storage system.

37. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the storage virtualization code is executable to call to a network storage system application programming interface with the second location parameters to cause generation of the network storage system access request.

38. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the storage virtualization code is executable to generate the second location parameters and the network storage system access request with the second location parameters, and executable to submit the generated network storage system access request to an interface for the network storage system.

39. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the storage virtualization code is further executable to aggregate storage access requests from a virtual machine and to cause generation of a single corresponding network storage system access request.

40. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the access requests comprise read requests and write requests.

41. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the network storage access requests are generated without mediation by an intermediary file system.

42. An apparatus comprising:

a communications medium interface; and

means for implementing virtual machine operations with functionality of a network storage system without an intermediary file system mediating between virtual machines and the network storage system.

43. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the virtual machine operations comprise at least one of a virtual machine clone operation, a virtual machine replication operation, a virtual machine migrate operation, a virtual machine local move operation, a virtual machine remote move operation, a virtual machine discovery operation, and a virtual machine snapshot operation.

44. The apparatus of claim 42 wherein the network storage system functionality comprises at least one of replicate functionality, snapshot functionality, and discovery functionality.

45. A system comprising:

a network storage system;

a virtual machine management system allocating storage units of the network storage system for virtual machines, and managing virtual machines at a granularity of the storage units, the virtual machine management system managing virtual machine using functionality of the network storage system; and

a virtual machine host hosting a plurality of virtual machines and accessing storage units of the network storage system without mediation by an intermediary file system.

46. The system of claim 45, wherein the virtual machine management system uses the functionality of the network storage system to implement at least one of clone, replicate, migrate, and move virtual machine operations for management of the virtual machines.

47. The system of claim 45 further comprising the virtual machine management system indicating to the virtual machine host each of the storage units for respective ones of the virtual machines.

48. The system of claim 45 further comprising the virtual machine host using snapshot functionality of the network storage system to implement a virtual machine snapshot operation.

49. A virtual machine stack that includes a virtual machine, a storage virtualization engine, a network storage system manager, and a communications medium interface, the storage virtualization engine communicating directly with the network storage system manager to allow utilization of network storage system functionality to implement virtual machine operations.

50. The virtual machine stack of claim 49, wherein the virtual machine stack does not include a file system that mediates between the virtual machine and either one of the storage virtualization engine and the network storage system manager.