DATA STORAGE RESOURCE ALLOCATION BY PERFORMING ABBREVIATED RESOURCE CHECKS OF CERTAIN DATA STORAGE RESOURCES TO DETERMINE WHETHER DATA STORAGE REQUESTS WOULD FAIL

• US 20150331899A1
• Filed: 07/21/2015
• Published: 11/19/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Gokhale, Parag, Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Karandikar, Amey Vijaykumar, Wang, Yu
• Granted Patent: US 9,823,979 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0727 in a storage system, e.g. in a DASD or network based storage system drivers for digital recording or reproducing units G06F3/06; circuits for error detection or correction within digital recording or reproducing units G11B20/18; 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], H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1458 Management of the backup or restore process
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2365 Ensuring data consistency and integrity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0622 in relation to access
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• 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: G06F 9/4818 Priority circuits therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4881 Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5016 the resource being the memory
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/805 QOS or priority aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/101 Access control lists [ACL]

Abstract

A resource allocation system begins with an ordered plan for matching requests to resources that is sorted by priority. The resource allocation system optimizes the plan by determining those requests in the plan that will fail if performed. The resource allocation system removes or defers the determined requests. In addition, when a request that is performed fails, the resource allocation system may remove requests that require similar resources from the plan. Moreover, when resources are released by a request, the resource allocation system may place the resources in a temporary holding area until the resource allocation returns to the top of the ordered plan so that lower priority requests that are lower in the plan do not take resources that are needed by waiting higher priority requests higher in the plan.

Claims

1. A method for performing abbreviated resource checks to determine whether data storage requests would fail in a data storage management environment, the method comprising:

maintaining an ordered list of data storage requests to be performed in the data storage management environment,

wherein each data storage request requires multiple data storage resources to perform the respective data storage request, and

wherein the list of data storage requests comprises a first data storage request associated with a first position in the ordered list;

performing an abbreviated resource check to determine whether the first data storage request would fail if attempted, wherein the abbreviated resource check comprises;

(i) determining which of the data storage resources of the multiple data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request are physical resources as opposed to logical resources,

(ii) performing one or more physical checks of the resources determined to be physical resources before attempting to check any of the logical resources, and

(iii) identifying at least one physical resource that, based on the one or more physical checks, would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted; and

based on the identifying of the at least one physical resource, updating the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the ordered list,

wherein the updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting any further physical checks of other physical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request,

wherein the updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting any checks of logical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request, and

wherein the updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting to perform the first data storage request.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more physical checks are performed in an order based on relative chances of failure of the respective physical resources.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more physical checks are performed in an order based on relative scarcity of the respective physical resources in the data storage management environment.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the updating of the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the ordered list comprises (a) removing the first data storage request from the ordered list and (b) performing at least one other data storage request in the ordered list without performing the first data storage request.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the updating of the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the ordered list comprises deferring the first data storage request until at least one other data storage request in the ordered list has been performed.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

matching one or more data storage resources to a third data storage request having a lower position on the ordered list of data storage requests than the first data storage request; and

performing the third data storage request before the first data storage request may be attempted.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

matching one or more data storage resources to a third data storage request having a lower position on the ordered list of data storage requests than the first data storage request; and

performing the third data storage request before performing another abbreviated resource check to determine whether the first data storage request would fail if attempted.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

based on the identifying of the at least one physical resource that would cause the first data storage request to fail, (a) identifying, in the ordered list of data storage requests, one or more second data storage requests that have a category the same as the first data storage request, and (b) further updating the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the ordered list,

wherein the further updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting any abbreviated resource check to determine whether the one or more second data storage requests would fail if attempted, and

wherein the further updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting to perform the one or more second data storage requests.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the further updating of the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the ordered list comprises (A) removing the first data request and the one or more second data storage requests from the ordered list and (B) not performing the first data request and the one or more second data storage requests.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

classifying each data storage request in the ordered list of data storage requests into a category from among multiple categories; and

based on the identifying of the at least one physical resource that would cause the first data storage request to fail, further updating the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that one or more second data storage requests that have the same category as the first data storage request should not be performed according to their respective positions in the ordered list,

wherein the further updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting any abbreviated resource check to determine whether the one or more second data storage requests would fail if attempted, and

wherein the further updating of the ordered list occurs without attempting to perform the one or more second data storage requests.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

classifying each data storage requests in the ordered list of data storage requests into a category from among multiple categories; and

based on the identifying of the at least one physical resource that would cause the first data storage request to fail, further updating the ordered list of data storage requests to indicate that one or more second data storage requests that have the same category as the first data storage request should not be performed according to their respective positions in the ordered list,

wherein the updating of the ordered list and the further updating of the ordered list results in at least one of;

(a) deferring performing the first data storage request and the one or more second data storage requests, and (b) canceling the first data storage request and the one or more second data storage requests.

12. A method for performing abbreviated resource checks in a data storage management environment, the method comprising:

in regard to a queue of data storage requests to be performed in the data storage management environment,

wherein each data storage request requires multiple data storage resources to perform the respective data storage request,

performing an abbreviated resource check to determine whether a first data storage request in the queue of data storage requests would fail if attempted, wherein the abbreviated resource check comprises;

(i) determining which of the data storage resources of the multiple data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request are physical resources as opposed to logical resources, and

(ii) performing one or more physical checks of the resources determined to be physical resources before attempting to check any of the logical resources; and

if, based on the one or more physical checks, at least one physical resource is identified which would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, removing the first data storage request from the queue of data storage requests,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any further physical checks of other physical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any checks of any logical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request, and

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting to perform the first data storage request.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the one or more physical checks are performed in an order based on one or more of:

(a) relative chances of failure of the respective physical resources, and (b) relative scarcity of the respective physical resources in the data storage management environment.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein the queue of data storage requests comprises a default priority ordering of the data storage requests, and

wherein the removing of the first data storage request from the queue changes the default priority ordering of the data storage requests by one of:

(a) deferring the first data storage request, and (b) canceling the data storage request.

15. The method of claim 12 wherein the removing of the first data storage request from the queue results in the first data storage request being deferred.

16. The method of claim 12 wherein the removing of the first data storage request from the queue results in the first data storage request being canceled.

17. The method of claim 12 wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) if the one or more physical checks of the resources determined to be physical resources indicate that the physical resources would not cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, performing one or more logical checks of the resources determined to be logical resources for the first data storage request; and

if, based on the one or more logical checks, at least one logical resource is identified which would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, removing the first data storage request from the queue of data storage requests,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any further logical checks of other logical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request, and

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting to perform the first data storage request.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the one or more logical checks are performed in an order based on relative scarcity of the respective logical resources in the data storage management environment.

19. A computer-readable medium, excluding transitory propagating signals, storing instructions that, when executed by a server in a data storage management environment, cause the server to perform operations comprising:

in regard to a queue of data storage requests to be performed in the data storage management environment,

wherein each data storage request requires multiple data storage resources to perform the respective data storage request,

performing an abbreviated resource check of a first data storage request in the queue, wherein the abbreviated resource check comprises;

(i) determining which of the data storage resources of the multiple data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request are physical resources as opposed to logical resources, and

(ii) performing one or more physical checks of the resources determined to be physical resources before attempting to check any of the logical resources; and

if at least one physical resource is identified which, based on the one or more physical checks, would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, removing the first data storage request from the queue of data storage requests,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any further physical checks of other physical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any checks of any logical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request, and

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting to perform the first data storage request.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 19 wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) if the one or more physical checks of the resources determined to be physical resources indicate that the physical resources would not cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, performing one or more logical checks of the resources determined to be logical resources for the first data storage request; and

wherein the instructions cause the server to perform operations further comprising;

if at least one logical resource is identified which, based on the one or more logical checks, would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, removing the first data storage request from the queue of data storage requests,

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting any further logical checks of other logical data storage resources needed to perform the first data storage request, and

wherein the removing from the queue occurs without attempting to perform the first data storage request.