STORAGE SYSTEM AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT METHOD OF STORAGE SYSTEM

• US 20120246425A1
• Filed: 03/25/2011
• Published: 09/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/25/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Tanaka, Toru, Nakajima, Noriko, Amano, Takashi, Kaneda, Yasunori
• Granted Patent: US 8,949,559 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0623 in relation to content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0647 Migration mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0664 at device level, e.g. emulation of a storage device or system
• 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

Abstract

It is an object to use a storage region in an efficient manner and maintain a performance of a storage system.

A volume group GR11 includes reference volumes 1411, 1413, and 1415 and source volumes 1412, 1414, 1416, and 1417 that derive from the reference volumes. Each of the volumes stores only the difference data from a volume that is a parent thereof. A volume that is a cause of a problem is moved or copied from a pool of the moment 1410 to other pool 1420. A configuration of a volume group is modified.

Claims

1. A storage system comprising a storage apparatus and a management apparatus,

the storage apparatus comprising:

a volume group including a plurality of logical volumes, the logical volumes including one or more first logical volumes to store reference data and a second logical volume to store difference data from the one or more first logical volumes, the second logical volume allocated to a computer; and

a controller,

wherein the controller, on receipt of an I/O request to the second logical volume from the computer,

accesses the difference data in the second logical volume if an access destination of the I/O request is the difference data,

accesses the reference data in the one or more first logical volumes if an access destination of the access request is the reference data, and

measures the number of I/O requests to each of the one or more first logical volumes and the second logical volume; and

the management apparatus identifying a high load volume according to the number of the I/O requests measured by the controller.

2. A storage system according to claim 1, the storage apparatus further comprising:

a storage pool for providing the logical volumes; and

a memory for storing mapping information between logical addresses of each of the logical volumes and addresses of the storage pool;

wherein the controller accesses to each of the logical volumes in the volume group according to the mapping information.

3. A storage system according to claim 2, the logical volumes comprising

a base volume, one or more reference volumes each of which is a snapshot volume of the base volume, and one or more snapshot volumes of the one or more reference volumes.

4. A storage system according to claim 2, wherein

the management apparatus copies or moves the high load volume to another storage pool.

5. A storage system according to claim 4, wherein

a response performance of another storage pool is higher than that of the storage pool.

6. A storage system according to claim 4, wherein

if a plurality of computers accesses the high load volume, the management apparatus allocates I/O requests from some computers of the computers to the copied volume of the high load volume.

7. A storage system according to claim 1, wherein:

the management apparatus identifies a logical volume whose load is higher than a predetermined value as the high load volume.

8. A method of managing a performance of a storage system comprising a volume group that includes a plurality of logical volumes, the logical volumes including one or more first logical volumes to store reference data and a second logical volume to store difference data from the one or more first logical volumes, the second logical volume allocated to a computer,

the method comprising the steps of:

receiving an I/O request to the second logical volume from the computer,

accessing the difference data in the second logical volume if an access destination of the I/O request is the difference data,

accessing the reference data in the one or more first logical volumes if an access destination of the access request is the reference data,

measuring the number of I/O requests to each of the one or more first logical volumes and the second logical volume, and

identifying a high load volume according to the number of the I/O requests measured by the controller.

9. A method for managing a performance of a storage system according to claim 8,

the method further comprising the step of copying or moving the high load volume from a storage pool providing the logical volumes to a different storage pool.