Adaptive integration of cloud data services with a data storage system

• US 8,825,964 B1
• Filed: 09/26/2011
• Issued: 09/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Riordan, Patrick Brian, Meiri, David, Fitzgerald, John T., Veprinsky, Alex, Sopka, John R., Banker, Yigal
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Denise
• Application Number:
  US13/200,569
• Time in Patent Office: 1,072 Days
• Field of Search: 711/152, 711/100, 711110-112, 711/154, 711/156, 711/165, 711/167, 717/171, 717/174, 709218-219, 709/203, 718/1, 718/105
• US Class Current: 711/152
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/502 Proximity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0647 Migration mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0655 Vertical data movement, i.e. input-output transfer; data movement between one or more hosts and one or more storage devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0671 In-line storage system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44 Arrangements for executing specific programs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4856 resumption being on a different machine, e.g. task migration, virtual machine migration G06F9/5088 takes precedence

Abstract

Described are techniques for performing processing in a data storage system. A client application executing on a host is identified as a candidate for migration to the data storage system. First data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system. The client application is migrated to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system. The client application is executed on the data storage system for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system.

Claims

1. A method for performing processing in a data storage system

identifying a client application executing on a host as a candidate for migration to the data storage system, wherein first data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system;

migrating the client application to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system; and

executing the client application on the data storage system for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system, wherein the first portion of resources is dynamically determined and changes with respect to workload of the client application and workload of other tasks performed on the data age for non-migrated applications.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first portion of resources include any of a processor of the data storage system that executes code, memory of the data storage system, and an amount of bandwidth of an external communications port that communicates with the host.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether to migrate the client application in accordance with current utilization of one or more resources of the data storage system.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the current utilization is utilization of a processor of the data storage system.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the current utilization is utilization of memory.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the current utilization is utilization of a component of the data storage system.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the client application executes in a virtual machine in a virtualized environment on the host and also on the data storage system, said migrating including migrating a first virtual machine of the host to a second virtual machine of the data storage system.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining whether to migrate the client application executing on the data storage system back to the host for execution on the host rather than the data storage system.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying, the migrating and the executing are performed automatically in response to a defined policy.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein, while the client application is executing on the data storage system, the client application accesses first data to perform an operation and sends a result of the operation to the host.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the client application does not execute in a virtual machine of a virtualized environment on the host and does execute in a virtual machine of a virtualized environment on the data storage system.

12. A method for performing processing in a data storage system comprising:

identifying a client executing on a host as a candidate for migration to the data storage system, wherein first data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system;

migrating the client application to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system; and

executing the client application on the data storage systems for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system, wherein the client application is identified using one or more criteria, the criteria including any of a ratio of an amount of data read for performing a first operation to an amount of data output as a result of performing the first operation on the data read, a ratio of an amount of time for the host to obtain data from the data storage system for performing an operation to an amount of time the client application takes to perform the operation on the obtained data, and whether the client application performs sequential data accesses of at least a specified size.

13. A method for performing processing in a data storage system comprising:

identifying a client application executing on a host as a candidate for migration to the data storage system, wherein first data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system;

migrating the client application to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system; and

executing the client application on the data storage system for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system, wherein the client application executes on any of a first processor of a front end adapter of the data storage system and a processor of a back end adapter of the data system, and wherein said front end adaptor communicates with components external with respect to the data storage system and receives I/O requests from the host and wherein said back end adapter directly accesses one or more physical storage devices in connection with performing data reads and writes for processing received I/O requests from the host.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the client application executes on the first processor of the front end adapter and wherein the first portion of resources includes the first processor allocated for exclusive use by the migrated client applications and a portion of memory allocated for private exclusive use by the front end adapter, said first processor being one of a plurality of processors of the front end adapter.

15. A method for performing processing in a data storage system comprising:

identifying a client application executing on a host as a candidate for migration to the data storage system, wherein first data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system;

migrating the client application to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system, and

executing the client application on the data storage system for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system, wherein the resources include memory of the data storage system and a first set of thresholds including a first minimum, first target and first maximum for the client application and a second set of thresholds including a second minimum, second target and second maximum for a second application that is not a migrated client application.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the client application is allocated an amount of memory greater than said first target only if the second application is currently not allocated an amount of memory greater than the second target.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the second application performs processing to service received I/O operations from the host or another external client connected to the data storage system.

18. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising executable code store thereon for performing processing in a data storage system, the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising code that, when executed on a processor, performs a method comprising:

identifying a client application executing on a host as a candidate for migration to the data storage system, wherein first data used by the client application is stored on one or more physical storage devices of the data storage system;

migrating the client application to the data storage system for temporary execution on the data storage system; and

executing the client application on the data storage system for a time period using a first portion of resources of the data storage system allocated for exclusive use by migrated client applications executing on the data storage system, wherein the first portion of resources is dynamically determined and, changes with respect to workload of the client application and workload of other tasks performed on the data storage system for non-migrated applications.