SCHEDULING UPGRADES IN DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SYSTEMS

• US 20190220271A1
• Filed: 01/16/2018
• Published: 07/18/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 01/16/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nutanix Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Nutanix Incorporated
• Inventors: Olderdissen, Jan, Sudheendra, Manoj, Bhatia, Nikhil, Vaidyanathan, Viswanathan
• Granted Patent: US 10,642,603 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/63 Image based installation; Cloning; Build to order
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/654 using techniques specially adapted for alterable solid state memories, e.g. for EEPROM or flash memories
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/656 while running
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Examples of systems described herein may include virtualized computing environments having one or more upgrade management agents. An upgrade management agent may detect current versions of multiple components in a computing system, including at least one software component and at least one firmware component, obtain a group of updates based on the current versions of the multiple components, and schedule installation of the group of updates including grouping together installation of selected ones of the group of updates for a particular computing node of the computing system, wherein the selected ones each utilize a particular state change of the computing node during the installation. The schedule may also be selected to accommodate dependencies between multiple components which are resolved by the upgrade management agent to obtain the schedule.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

detecting a current versions of a software component and a current version of a firmware component hosted on a computing system having a first computing node and a second computing node, wherein the first computing node is configured to host an upgrade manager;

obtaining a group of updates based on the current version of the software component and the current version of the firmware component; and

scheduling installation of the group of updates including grouping together installation of selected ones of the group of updates for one of the first computing node or the second computing node, wherein the upgrade manager is configured to group the selected ones based on the selected ones each utilizing a particular state change of one of the first computing node or the second computing node during the installation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the particular state change comprises booting into a particular environment, different than a normal operating environment.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the software component comprises a hypervisor.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the software component comprises an operating system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said scheduling installation of the group of updates comprises scheduling the installation in a rolling fashion among the first and the second computing nodes such that one of the first or the second computing nodes remains available during upgrade.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said computing system further comprises a third computing node, wherein said scheduling the installation in the rolling fashion among the first, the second, and the third computing nodes is such that one of the first, the second, or the third computing nodes computing nodes remains available during upgrade.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said detecting a current version of the firmware component comprises interacting with one or more firmware management plug-ins through an abstraction layer, wherein the abstraction layer translates one or more vendor-agnostic firmware messages to one or more vendor-specific firmware operations of the firmware component.

8. At least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that when executed by a computing node in a computing system, cause the computing node to:

detecting a current versions of a software component and a current version of a firmware component hosting on a computing system having a first computing node and a second computing node, wherein the first computing node is configured to host an upgrade manager;

obtaining a group of updates based on the current version of the software component and the current version of the firmware component; and

scheduling installation of the group of updates including grouping together installation of selected ones of the group of updates for one of the first computing node or the second computing node, wherein the upgrade manager is configured to group the selected ones based on the selected ones each utilizing a particular state change of one of the first computing node or the second computing node during the installation.

9. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the particular state change comprises boot into a particular environment, different than a normal operating environment.

10. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the software component comprises a hypervisor.

11. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the software component comprises an operating system.

12. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein said scheduling installation of the group of updates comprises scheduling the installation in a rolling fashion among the first and the second computing nodes such that one of the first or the second computing nodes remains available during upgrade.

13. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein said computing system further comprises a third computing node, wherein said scheduling the installation in the rolling fashion among the first, the second, and the third computing nodes is such that one of the first, the second, or the third computing nodes computing nodes remains available during upgrade.

14. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein said detecting a current version of the firmware component comprises interacting with one or more firmware management plug-ins through an abstraction layer, wherein the abstraction layer translates one or more vendor-agnostic firmware messages to one or more vendor-specific firmware operations of the firmware component.

15. A system comprising:

a storage pool; and

a first computing node and a second computing node each configured to access the storage pool, wherein at least one of the multiple computing nodes includes an upgrade manager, the upgrade manager configured to;

detect a current version of a hardware component and a current version of a software component;

obtain a group of updates based on the current version of the software component and the current version of the hardware component; and

schedule installation of the group of updates including grouping together installation of selected ones of the group of updates for one of the first computing node or the second computing node, wherein the upgrade manage is configured to group the selected ones based on the selected ones each utilizing a particular state change of the one of the first computing node or the second computing node during the installation.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the particular state change comprises booting into a particular environment, different than a normal operating environment.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the software component comprises a hypervisor.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the software component comprises an operating system.

19. The system of claim 15, further comprising an admin system coupled to the first or the second computing node, wherein the admin system is configured to display a user interface, the user interface configured to display a plurality of available upgrades based on the current versions.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the user interface is configured to receive an indication of selected ones of the plurality of available upgrades, and wherein the group of updates is scheduled responsive to the indication.