Quality of Service in Virtual Computing Environments

• US 20110010427A1
• Filed: 04/30/2010
• Published: 01/13/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/07/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Intellectual Ventures II LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: 3leaf Networks Incorporated (Dinglong Culture Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Chitlur Srinivasa, Venkatesh Babu, Jnagal, Rohit
• Application Number:
  US12/771,575
• Publication Number:
  US 20110010427A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/213
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0659 Command handling arrangements, e.g. command buffers, queues, command scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• 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]

Abstract

Methods and apparatus facilitate the management of input/output (I/O) subsystems in virtual I/O servers to provide appropriate quality of services (QoS). A hierarchical QoS scheme based on partitioning of network interfaces and I/O subsystems transaction types are used to classify Virtual I/O communications. This multi-tier QoS method allows virtual I/O servers to be scalable and provide appropriate QoS granularity.

Claims

1. A method, comprising

maintaining a connection, over a network fabric, to a virtual storage network interface layer of an application server, wherein the virtual storage network interface layer is associated with a virtual storage node identifier;

presenting, at a physical storage network interface, the virtual storage node identifier to a storage area network;

enforcing a hierarchical token bucket resource allocation of bandwidth across the physical storage network interface;

receiving, over the connection, a storage command from the virtual storage network interface layer of the application server, wherein the storage command is a command to read data from, or write data to, a target connected to the storage area network;

determining a data transfer size associated with the storage command;

classifying the storage command relative to the hierarchical token bucket resource allocation to determine a current amount of tokens available;

comparing the data transfer size of the storage command to the current amount of tokens available;

processing the storage command, if the current amount of tokens available are sufficient;

forwarding the data associated with the storage command to the destination; and

buffering the storage command, if the current amount of tokens available are insufficient.