STORAGE SYSTEM WITH VIRTUAL DISKS

• US 20160004449A1
• Filed: 07/02/2014
• Published: 01/07/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Hedvig Inc. (CommVault Systems Incorporated)
• Inventors: LAKSHMAN, Avinash, LAKSHMAN, Srinivas
• Granted Patent: US 9,798,489 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• 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 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

An administrator provisions a virtual disk in a remote storage platform and defines policies for that virtual disk. A virtual machine writes to and reads from the storage platform using any storage protocol. Virtual disk data within a failed storage pool is migrated to different storage pools while still respecting the policies of each virtual disk. Snapshot and revert commands are given for a virtual disk at a particular point in time and overhead is minimal. A virtual disk is cloned utilizing snapshot information and no data need be copied. Any number of Zookeeper clusters are executing in a coordinated fashion within the storage platform, thus increasing overall throughput. A timestamp is generated that guarantees a monotonically increasing counter, even upon a crash of a virtual machine. Any virtual disk has a “hybrid cloud aware” policy in which one replica of the virtual disk is stored in a public cloud.

Claims

1. A method of cloning a virtual disk within a storage platform, said method comprising:

storing data for said virtual disk onto computer nodes of said storage platform, said stored data stored as blocks of data wherein each block of data includes a version number;

issuing a clone command for said virtual disk in the context of said current version without copying contents of said virtual disk, said clone command indicating a prior version of said virtual disk from which said clone virtual disk should be created;

provisioning said clone virtual disk within said storage platform; and

writing data from a software application on a computer server remote from said storage platform onto said clone virtual disk, said data being written onto storage disks of said storage platform.

2. A method as recited in claim 1 wherein said clone command is performed only by recording a name of said virtual disk and said prior version in association with said clone virtual disk.

3. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising:

recording, on a metadata computer node within said storage platform, a current version of said virtual disk and a version tree of said virtual disk indicating from which version of said virtual disk a later version originates;

4. A method of cloning a virtual disk within a storage platform, said method comprising:

storing data for said virtual disk onto computer nodes of said storage platform, said stored data stored as blocks of data wherein each block of data includes a version number;

recording, on a metadata computer node within said storage platform, a current version of said virtual disk and a version tree of said virtual disk indicating from which version of said virtual disk a later version originates;

issuing a clone command for said virtual disk in the context of said current version without copying contents of said virtual disk, said clone command indicating a prior version of said virtual disk from which said clone virtual disk should be created;

issuing a read request from a software application on a computer server remote from said storage platform for a data range of said clone virtual disk;

reading data from said clone virtual disk within said storage platform when said data range had been written into said clone virtual disk previously; and

reading data from said virtual disk within said storage platform when said data range had not been written into said clone virtual disk previously.

5. A method as recited in claim 4 wherein said clone command is performed only by recording a name of said virtual disk and said prior version in association with said clone virtual disk.

6. A method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

when said data range had not been written into said clone virtual disk previously, reading data from said virtual disk that includes any version number found within a path traversing from said prior version to a root of said version tree, inclusive.