APPLIANCES IN VIRTUAL COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS

• US 20090150885A1
• Filed: 06/13/2008
• Published: 06/11/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/19/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kubisys, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Kubisys, Inc.
• Inventors: Sawyers, Selvin, Urano, Shinichi, Acharya, Soubir, Safari, Tigran
• Granted Patent: US 9,417,895 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1433 during software upgrading
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/302 where the computing system component is a software system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3664 Environments for testing or debugging software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3684 for test design, e.g. generating new test cases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3688 for test execution, e.g. scheduling of test suites
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3692 for test results analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3696 Methods or tools to render software testable
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in 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 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• 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 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/00 Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/14 Network analysis or design
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/50 : Network service management, e.g. ensuring proper service fulfilment according to agreements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 : Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 : for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 : Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for reconciling data on a set of virtual machines, generating a virtual machine snapshot of the set of shadow virtual machines, identifying a set of virtual disks and containers of the set of virtual disks, wherein the set of virtual disks operates as storage for the set of shadow virtual machines, producing a set of storage snapshots of the containers of the set of virtual disks, identifying data that has changed within the set of storage snapshots, and reconciling the data back to when the virtual machine snapshot was generated. Using the reconciled data to test a computer application having a first instance, generate a cloned instance of the application, wherein the cloned instance sources storage shared with the first instance, interact with the cloned instance to cause a result without interacting with the first instance, and monitor the result.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of reconciling data on a set of virtual machines, the method comprising:

generating a virtual machine snapshot of the set of shadow virtual machines;

identifying a set of virtual disks and containers of the set of virtual disks, wherein the set of virtual disks operates as storage for the set of shadow virtual machines;

producing a set of storage snapshots of the containers of the set of virtual disks;

identifying data that has changed within the set of storage snapshots; and

reconciling the data back to when the virtual machine snapshot was generated.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein identifying the set of virtual disks comprises:

identifying applications within the set of virtual machines.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein producing the set of storage snapshots comprises:

consulting a catalog of information that includes relationships among the virtual machine snapshot, the set of storage snapshots, the set of virtual disks, and the set of shadow virtual machines.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein producing the set of storage snapshots further comprises:

matching unique identifiers of the set of storage snapshots to identifiers in the catalog; and

inspecting the set of storage snapshots if a match is found.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein reconciling the data comprises:

copying the data to original locations within the set of virtual disks.

6. A data center automation system comprising:

an appliance having;

a shadow portal for receiving a user selection; and

a shadow enterprise director for directing sub-systems to render a shadow environment based on the previously-received user selection.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

an intelligent storage adaptor that creates at least one storage check-point, wherein the storage check-point identifies a set of virtual disks.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

an distributed checkpoint generator that creates a directed graph which comprises information needed to create the storage check-point.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

a canonical disk acceleration layer that converts the set of virtual disks into the Appliance'"'"'s namespace as a set of shadow virtual machines.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the canonical disk acceleration layer is configured to attach a write layer to each virtual disk in the set of virtual disks.

11. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

a shadow virtual machine adaptor that refines the set of shadow virtual machines.

12. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

a performance assessor that estimates performance of a job that can be achieved in the shadow environment.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the performance assessor is configured to estimate performance by calculating log growth from a predetermined state if the job requires caching.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the performance assessor is configured to estimate performance by estimating growth rate of storage demand for the job.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the performance assessor is configured to estimate performance by calculating number of writes performed to files, number of file handles opened and closed, amount of temporary files created, and any combination thereof.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the performance assessor is trained by running a synthetic job at different time periods.

17. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

a control component that provides a gateway to launch one or more application-specific workflow tasks.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein each of the one or more application-specific workflow tasks comprises a sequence of tasks specifications, each task specification comprising one of:

a single task and a set of tasks to be executed in parallel.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein at least a first of the one or more application-specific workflow tasks is specified as an XML file.

20. The system of claim 6, wherein the sub-systems comprise:

a network controller for assigning network addresses to each sub-system.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the network addresses are IP addresses.

22. The system of claim 20, wherein the network controller limits network packets so that the network packets only reach sub-systems.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein the network controller uses network address translation to route packets between a sub-system and a network address external to the appliance.

24. The system of claim 20, wherein the network controller acts as network gateway for the sub-systems.

25. The system of claim 20, wherein a network controller sub-systems establishes a virtual network for one or more sub-systems, the network controller acting as a gateway to the virtual network.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the appliance hosts a plurality of virtual networks, each of the plurality having one or more sub-systems.

27. A computer-implemented method of testing a computer application having a first instance, the method comprising:

generating a cloned instance of the application, wherein the cloned instance sources storage shared with the first instance;

interacting with the cloned instance to cause a result without interacting with the first instance; and

monitoring the result.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein interacting with the cloned instance of the application comprises:

altering data relied upon by the cloned instance of the application without altering data relied upon by the first instance of the application.

29. The method of claim 27, wherein interacting with the cloned instance of the application comprises causing the cloned instance of the application to process input.

30. The method of claim 27, wherein interacting with the cloned instance of the application comprises performing one or more interactions specified in a workflow.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein the workflow comprises a sequence of tasks specifications, each task specification comprising either a single task or a set of tasks to be executed in parallel.

32. The method of claim 30, wherein the workflow is recorded in an XML format.

33. A machine-readable medium that stores executable instructions to cause a machine to:

generate a virtual machine snapshot of a set of shadow virtual machines;

identify a set of virtual disks and containers of the set of virtual disks, wherein the set of virtual disks operates as storage for the set of shadow virtual machines;

produce a set of storage snapshots of the containers of the set of virtual disks;

identify data that has changed within the set of storage snapshots; and

reconcile the data back to when the virtual machine snapshot was generated.

34. The machine-readable medium of claim 33, wherein the instructions to identify the set of virtual disks comprises:

identify applications within the set of virtual machines.

35. The machine-readable medium of claim 33, wherein the instructions to produce the set of storage snapshots comprises:

consult a catalog of information that includes relationships among the virtual machine snapshot, the set of storage snapshots, the set of virtual disks, and the set of shadow virtual machines.

36. The machine-readable medium of claim 35, wherein the instructions to produce the set of storage snapshots further comprises:

match unique identifiers of the set of storage snapshots to identifiers in the catalog; and

inspect the set of storage snapshots if a match is found.

37. The machine-readable medium of claim 33, wherein the instructions to reconcile the data comprises:

copy the data to original locations within the set of virtual disks.

38. A machine-readable medium that stores executable instructions to cause a machine to:

generate a cloned instance of a computer application, wherein the application has a first instance and the cloned instance sources storage shared with the first instance;

interact with the cloned instance to cause a result without interacting with the first instance; and

monitor the result.

39. The machine-readable medium of claim 38, wherein the instructions to interact with the cloned instance of the application comprises:

alter data relied upon by the cloned instance of the application without altering data relied upon by the first instance of the application.

40. The machine-readable medium of claim 38, wherein the instructions to interact with the cloned instance of the application comprises:

cause the cloned instance of the application to process input.

41. The machine-readable medium of claim 38, wherein the instructions to interact with the cloned instance of the application comprises:

perform one or more interactions specified in a workflow.

42. The machine-readable medium of claim 41, wherein the workflow comprises a sequence of tasks specifications, each task specification comprising either a single task or a set of tasks to be executed in parallel.

43. The machine-readable medium of claim 41, wherein the workflow is recorded in an XML format.