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

• US 20180039550A1
• Filed: 10/17/2017
• Published: 02/08/2018
• 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 10,789,133 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• 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 system for abbreviated resource checking for data storage requests, the system comprising:

a computer comprising one or more processors and computer memory, wherein the computer is configured to;

before attempting a logical check of first physical resources required for performing a first data storage request in a queue of data storage requests that are to be performed in a data storage management environment,

perform one or more physical checks of the first physical resources in an order based on relative scarcity of the physical resources in the data storage management environment; and

based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, and

without attempting any further physical checks and any logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request, and

without attempting to perform the first data storage request,

generate an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the order of performing the one or more physical checks of the first physical resources is further based on relative chances of failure of the first physical resources.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the one or more physical checks indicating that the first physical resources would not cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted,

perform one or more logical checks of the first physical resources; and

based on at least one of the one or more logical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted,

without attempting any further logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request, and

without attempting to perform the first data storage request,

generate an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue;

(a) remove the first data storage request from the queue, and

(b) perform at least one other data storage request in the queue without performing the first data storage request.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue, defer the first data storage request at least until at least one other data storage request in the queue has been performed.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted;

(a) identify one or more second data storage requests in the queue that have a same category code as the first data storage request,

(b) generate an indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue,

(c) without attempting to check whether the one or more second data storage requests would fail if attempted, and

(d) without attempting to perform the one or more second data storage requests.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue, remove the first data request and the one or more second data storage requests from the queue.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue, defer the first data request and the one or more second data storage requests at least until at least one other data storage request in the queue has been performed.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

assign a category code, from among multiple category codes, to each of multiple data storage requests in the queue; and

based on the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue;

(a) generate an indication that one or more second data storage requests that have a same category code as the first data storage request should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue, and

(b) at least one of;

(A) defer performing the first data storage request and the one or more second data storage requests, and

(B) cancel the first data storage request and the one or more second data storage requests.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer is further configured to:

based on the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to its position in the queue, update the queue accordingly, in order to at least one of;

(a) defer performing the first data storage request, and (b) cancel the first data storage request.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising the data storage management environment.

12. A computer-readable medium, excluding transitory propagating signals, storing instructions that, when executed by a computer comprising one or more processors and computer memory, cause the computer to perform operations comprising:

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

wherein the queue comprises a first data storage request having a first position in the queue, and

wherein the first data storage request requires first physical resources to perform the first data storage request;

performing an abbreviated resource check in regard to the first data storage request, comprising;

(i) before attempting a logical check of the first physical resources, performing one or more physical checks of the first physical resources in an order based on relative scarcity of the first physical resources in the data storage management environment, and

(ii) based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, generating an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue; and

based on the abbreviated resource check, not performing the first data storage request according to the first position in the queue, and without attempting any further physical checks and any logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the order of performing of the one or more physical checks of the first physical resources is further based on relative chances of failure of the first physical resources.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) based on the one or more physical checks indicating that the first physical resources would not cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, performing one or more logical checks of the first physical resources, and

(iv) based on at least one of the one or more logical checks indicating that the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, generating an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue; and

wherein the operations further comprise;

based on the abbreviated resource check comprising the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue, not performing the first data storage request according to the first position in the queue, and without attempting any further logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue results in:

(a) removing the first data storage request from the queue, and (b) performing at least one other data storage request in the queue without performing the first data storage request.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue results in deferring the first data storage request until at least one other data storage request in the queue has been performed.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted;

(a) identifying one or more second data storage requests in the queue that have a same category as the first data storage request, and

(b) generating an indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue; and

wherein the operations further comprise;

based on the abbreviated resource check comprising the indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue, not performing the first data storage request and the one or more second data requests according to their respective positions in the queue, and without attempting any further physical checks and any logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources.

18. A method comprising:

maintaining, by a computer comprising one or more processors and computer memory, a queue of data storage requests to be performed in a data storage management environment,

wherein the queue comprises a first data storage request having a first position in the queue, and

wherein the first data storage request requires first physical resources to perform the first data storage request;

performing an abbreviated resource check in regard to the first data storage request, comprising;

(i) before attempting a logical check of the first physical resources, performing one or more physical checks of the first physical resources in an order based on at least one of;

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

(ii) based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, generating an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue; and

based on the abbreviated resource check, not performing the first data storage request according to the first position in the queue, and without attempting any further physical checks and any logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) based on the one or more physical checks indicating that the first physical resources would not cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, performing one or more logical checks of the first physical resources, and

(iv) based on at least one of the one or more logical checks indicating that the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted, generating an indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue; and

further comprising;

based on the abbreviated resource check comprising the indication that the first data storage request should not be performed according to the first position in the queue, not performing the first data storage request according to the first position in the queue, and without attempting any further logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources required to perform the first data storage request.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the abbreviated resource check further comprises:

(iii) based on at least one of the one or more physical checks indicating that at least one of the first physical resources would cause the first data storage request to fail if attempted;

(a) identifying one or more second data storage requests in the queue that have a same category as the first data storage request, and

(b) generating an indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue; and

further comprising;

based on the abbreviated resource check comprising the indication that the one or more second data requests should not be performed according to their respective positions in the queue, not performing the first data storage request and the one or more second data requests according to their respective positions in the queue, and without attempting any further physical checks and any logical checks of other of the first physical data storage resources.