Dynamic provisioning of a virtual storage appliance

• US 9,473,577 B2
• Filed: 06/09/2015
• Issued: 10/18/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OS NEXUS, Inc.
• Original Assignee: OS NEXUS, Inc.
• Inventors: Umbehocker, Steven Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): PEUGH, BRIAN R
• Application Number:
  US14/734,866
• Publication Number:
  US 20150281358A1
• Time in Patent Office: 497 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/023 Free address space management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0806 for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 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]

Abstract

Systems, methods, and apparatus for facilitating dynamic provisioning of a virtual storage appliance in a cloud computing environment are presented herein. A storage system management component can provision storage from a storage medium to facilitate access of at least a portion of the storage by a virtual storage appliance (VSA) based on a request for at least one resource associated with the VSA. Further, a network management component can provision the VSA to facilitate the access of the portion of the storage by the VSA. Furthermore, a storage fabric management component can configure a network to facilitate the access of the portion of the storage by the VSA via the network.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

at least one memory storing computer-executable instructions; and

at least one processor, communicatively coupled to the at least one memory, which facilitates execution of the computer-executable instructions to at least;

receive, from a customer of a group of customers corresponding to respective virtual storage appliances, a request comprising information representing at least one requirement for a virtual storage appliance (VSA) of the respective virtual storage appliances;

based on the request, provision a license key for the VSA and a newly provisioned portion of storage from a storage system; and

programmatically inject the license key into the VSA to enable access and use of the newly provisioned portion of the storage by the VSA.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the information represents one or more of the VSA or the newly provisioned portion of the storage.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the information represents at least one of a first geographical location of the VSA or a second geographical location of the newly provisioned portion of the storage.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the request defines a performance criterion of at least one resource corresponding to the VSA.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to provision the VSA utilizing the newly provisioned portion of the storage.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to create, based on the newly provisioned portion of the storage, a boot image to facilitate configuration of the VSA.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to dynamically allocate the VSA in a hypervisor cluster as a virtual machine.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to configure a configurable device of a cloud based communication network to facilitate the access of the newly provisioned portion of the storage by the VSA via a storage management service.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to authorize, using the license key, the access of the newly provisioned portion of the storage.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further facilitates the execution of the computer-executable instructions to monitor, based on the access of the newly provisioned portion of the storage, at least one of:

a performance of at least one of the VSA or the newly provisioned portion of the storage, or a status of the at least one of the VSA or the newly provisioned portion of storage.

11. A method, comprising:

receiving, by a system comprising at least one processor, a first request from a customer of customers associated with virtual storage appliances, wherein the first request comprises information representing one or more requirements for a virtual storage appliance (VSA) of the virtual storage appliances;

in response to the receiving, provisioning, by the system, a license key for the VSA and provisioning, by the system, a storage space from a storage system; and

programmatically adding, by the system, the license key into the VSA for facilitating access and use of the storage space by the VSA.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a second request for at least one of the VSA or at least a portion of the storage space.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

allocating, by the system, at least a portion of the storage space to the VSA.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

creating, by the system, a snapshot of a boot drive of the VSA on a tier of storage of the storage system.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

allocating, by the system, the VSA in a hypervisor cluster as a virtual machine.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

monitoring, by the system based on the access, at least one of a performance or a status of at least one of the VSA or the storage space.

17. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, in response to execution, cause a system including at least one processor to perform operations, comprising:

receiving, from a customer of a group of customers associated with respective virtual storage appliances, a request comprising requirements for a virtual storage appliance (VSA) of the respective virtual storage appliances;

provisioning, based on the request, a license key for the VSA and a newly provisioned portion of storage from a storage system; and

programmatically injecting the license key into the VSA for enabling access and use of the newly provisioned portion of the storage by the VSA.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the operations further comprise:

provisioning the VSA utilizing at least a portion of the newly provisioned portion of the storage.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the operations further comprise:

dynamically configuring at least one of an encryption component or a quality of service component to facilitate, via the access, compliance to a service level agreement.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the enabling the access comprises dynamically configuring one or more network components of the VSA comprising at least one of a virtual host bus adapter or a virtual network interface card.