Systems and methods for caching data on virtualization servers

• US 9,524,190 B1
• Filed: 09/07/2012
• Issued: 12/20/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/07/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Veritas Technologies, LLC (Whitehouse Group Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Veritas Technologies, LLC (Whitehouse Group Ltd.)
• Inventors: Pendharkar, Niranjan
• Primary Examiner(s): Yi, David X
• Assistant Examiner(s): Puche, Tahilba
• Application Number:
  US13/607,434
• Time in Patent Office: 1,565 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• 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
• 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

A computer-implemented method for caching data on virtualization servers may include: 1) providing a virtualization server that executes at least one virtual machine on the virtualization server, 2) intercepting a data operation that includes both basic data and metadata, the data operation being requested by the virtualization server, 3) caching the basic data from the data operation on a solid state drive cache at the virtualization server, and 4) preventing the solid state drive cache from providing metadata from the data operation to the virtualization server. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for caching data on virtualization servers, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising:

providing a virtualization server that executes at least one virtual machine on the virtualization server;

intercepting, by a dynamic multipathing module, at least one data operation that;

comprises at least one cluster virtualization system read and/or write operation;

comprises both basic data and virtual machine file system metadata that maps the basic data to a target virtual machine;

is directed to a storage shared with other virtualization servers of a cluster virtualization system;

caching the basic data from the data operation on a solid state drive cache at the virtualization server;

preventing the solid state drive cache at the virtualization server from providing the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to the virtualization server by filtering the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to prevent the virtual machine file system metadata from being cached on the solid state drive cache such that only the basic data is cached on the solid state drive cache.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein caching the basic data comprises identifying the basic data as high frequency data.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising determining whether an operation to filter the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation is available.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the dynamic multipathing module selects one of different paths between a source and the storage shared with other virtualization servers of the cluster virtualization system.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein caching the basic data is performed according to a caching algorithm.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising

filtering the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation in response to determining that an operation to filter the virtual machine file system metadata is available.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein preventing the solid state drive cache from providing the virtual machine file system metadata comprises distinguishing between the basic data and the virtual machine file system metadata in the at least one data operation.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein distinguishing between the basic data and the metadata in the at least one data operation is performed using a mapping between basic data and metadata that indicates which data operations are directed to metadata and which are directed to basic data.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein distinguishing between the basic data and the virtual machine file system metadata in the at least one data operation comprises:

identifying data blocks that are accessed during a lock on the shared storage;

designating the identified data blocks as virtual machine file system metadata rather than basic data.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein distinguishing between the basic data and the virtual machine file system metadata in the at least one data operation comprises:

identifying at least one I/O operation that is not marked with a virtual machine tag;

designating data blocks within the identified I/O operation as virtual machine file system metadata.

11. A system for caching data on virtualization servers, the system comprising:

a provisioning module programmed to provide a virtualization server that executes at least one virtual machine on the virtualization server;

an interception module programmed to intercept, at a dynamic multipathing stage, at least one data operation that;

comprises at least one cluster virtualization system read and/or write operation;

comprises both basic data and virtual machine file system metadata that maps the basic data to a target virtual machine;

is directed to a storage shared with other virtualization servers of cluster virtualization system;

a caching module programmed to cache the basic data from the data operation on a solid state drive cache at the virtualization server;

a prevention module programmed to prevent the solid state drive cache at the virtualization server from providing the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to the virtualization server by filtering the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to prevent the virtual machine file system metadata from being cached on the solid state drive cache such that only the basic data is cached on the solid state drive cache;

at least one processor configured to execute the provisioning module, the interception module, the caching module, and the prevention module.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to identify an attempt to migrate the virtual machine from the virtualization server to another virtualization server within the cluster virtualization system.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to determine whether the virtualization server was configured to perform write-back caching or write-through caching, wherein:

write-back caching returns success of a data operation after performing the data operation on the solid state drive cache first and then only performs the data operation on the shared storage after a delay,

write-through caching returns success of a data operation after performing the data operation in parallel on both the solid state drive cache and a primary storage device.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to determine that the virtualization server was configured to perform write-back caching.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to perform, in response to the attempt to migrate the virtual machine, at least one pending data operation that is cached on the solid state drive cache on the shared storage.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to clear the solid state drive cache only after performing the pending data operation on the shared storage.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to clear the entire solid state drive cache in response to the attempt to migrate the virtual machine.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the prevention module is further programmed to:

identify data blocks on the solid state drive cache belonging to the virtual machine;

clear only the identified data blocks belonging to the virtual machine without clearing other data blocks on the solid state drive cache that belong to another virtual machine.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein the prevention module intercepts the data operation using a dynamic multipathing module in the cluster virtualization system.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising one or more computer-executable instructions that, when executed by at least one processor of a computing device, cause the computing device to:

provide a virtualization server that executes at least one virtual machine on the virtualization server;

intercept, by a dynamic multipathing module, at least one data operation that;

comprises at least one cluster virtualization system read and/or write operation;

comprises both basic data and virtual machine file system metadata that maps the basic data to a target virtual machine;

is directed to a storage shared with other virtualization servers of a cluster virtualization system;

cache the basic data from the data operation on a solid state drive cache at the virtualization server;

prevent the solid state drive cache at the virtualization server from providing the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to the virtualization server by one-off filtering the virtual machine file system metadata from the data operation to prevent the virtual machine file system metadata from being cached on the solid state drive cache such that only the basic data is cached on the solid state drive cache.