Archiving virtual machines in a data storage system

• US 9,286,086 B2
• Filed: 03/11/2013
• Issued: 03/15/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Deshpande, Sumer Dilip, Dornemann, Henry Wallace, Venkatesha, Ananda, Sancheti, Ashwin Gautamchand
• Primary Examiner(s): Kim, Dong
• Application Number:
  US13/793,249
• Publication Number:
  US 20140181812A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,100 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/113 Details of archiving lifecycle management in storage systems G06F3/0649; backup systems G06F11/1446
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/485 Task life-cycle, e.g. stopping, restarting, resuming execution G06F9/4881 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455

Abstract

The data storage system according to certain aspects can manage the archiving of virtual machines to (and restoring of virtual machines from) secondary storage. The system can determine whether to archive virtual machines based on usage data or information. The usage information may include storage usage, CPU usage, memory usage, network usage, events defined by a virtual machine software or application, etc. The system may archive virtual machines that are determined to have a low level of utilization. For example, a virtual machine can be archived when its usage level falls below a threshold level. The system may create a virtual machine placeholder for an archived virtual machine, which may be a “light” or minimal version of the virtual machine that acts as if it is the actual virtual machine. By using a virtual machine placeholder, a virtual machine may appear to be active and selectable by the user.

Claims

1. A method of archiving virtual machines in a networked data storage system, comprising:

using one or more computing devices comprising computer hardware;

monitoring usage of a virtual machine (VM) executing on one or more client computing devices in a primary storage subsystem, the VM associated with a virtualization application, wherein said monitoring is based at least in part on usage of resources associated with the VM, the resources including one or more of;

central processing unit (CPU), memory, storage, or network, and wherein said monitoring is performed according to a storage policy indicating a threshold resource usage value for archiving the VM;

in response to determining that the usage of the VM is less than or equal to the threshold resource usage value, using one or more secondary storage controller computers comprising computer hardware, copying the VM from one or more primary storage devices residing in the primary storage subsystem to one or more secondary storage devices residing in a secondary storage subsystem to create a secondary copy of the VM;

creating a VM placeholder for the VM on the one or more primary storage devices; and

deleting the VM from the one or more primary storage devices,

wherein, subsequent to the deletion of the VM, the VM placeholder is recognized as the VM by the virtualization application and the secondary copy of the VM is accessed using the VM placeholder, and

wherein said monitoring usage of a VM, said copying the VM, said creating the VM placeholder, and said deleting the VM occur during a backup of data from the primary storage subsystem to the secondary storage subsystem.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the VM placeholder interacts with one or more operating systems or the one or more virtualization applications on the one or more client computing devices as if it is the VM.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the VM placeholder comprises a reduced amount of resources in comparison to the VM.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the reduced amount of resources comprises a CPU and a memory.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the VM is selectable by a user after the VM is deleted from the primary storage subsystem.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the VM is selected using the VM placeholder.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the VM is restored to the primary storage subsystem when the VM placeholder is accessed after the VM is deleted.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising deleting the VM placeholder when the VM is restored to the primary storage subsystem.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein data relating to the usage of the VM is obtained from one or more hypervisors associated with the one or more client computing devices.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein data relating to the usage of the VM is obtained from a virtual center that manages and collects information from one or more hypervisors associated with the one or more client computing devices.

11. A data storage system configured for archiving virtual machines, comprising:

one or more computing devices comprising computer hardware configured to;

monitor usage of a virtual machine (VM) executing on one or more client computing devices in a primary storage subsystem, the VM associated with a virtualization application, wherein said monitoring is based at least in part on usage of resources associated with the VM, the resources including one or more of;

central processing unit (CPU), memory, storage, or network, and wherein the monitoring is performed according to a storage policy indicating a threshold resource usage value for archiving the VM;

in response to determining that usage of the VM is less than or equal to the threshold resource usage value, using one or more secondary storage controller computers comprising computer hardware, copy the VM from the one or more primary storage devices residing in the primary storage subsystem to one or more secondary storage devices residing in a secondary storage subsystem to create a secondary copy of the VM;

create a VM placeholder for the VM on the one or more primary storage devices; and

delete the VM from the one or more primary storage devices,

wherein, subsequent to the deletion of the VM, the VM placeholder is recognized as the VM by the virtualization application and the secondary copy of the VM is accessed using the VM placeholder, and

wherein the monitoring of the usage of the VM, the copying of the VM, the creation of the VM placeholder, and the deletion of the VM occur during a backup of data from the primary storage subsystem to the secondary storage subsystem.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the VM placeholder interacts with one or more operating systems or the one or more virtualization applications on the one or more client computing devices as if it is the VM.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the VM placeholder comprises a reduced amount of resources in comparison to the VM.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the reduced amount of resources comprises a CPU and a memory.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the VM is selectable by a user after the VM is deleted from the primary storage subsystem.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the VM is selected using the VM placeholder.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein at least a portion of the VM is restored to the primary storage subsystem when the VM placeholder is accessed after the VM is deleted.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the one or more computing devices are further configured to delete the VM placeholder when the VM is restored to the primary storage subsystem.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein data relating to the usage of the VM is obtained from one or more hypervisors associated with the one or more client computing devices.

20. The system of claim 11, wherein data relating to the usage of the VM is obtained from a virtual center that manages and collects information from one or more hypervisors associated with the one or more client computing devices.