Establishing redundant connections for virtual machine

• US 9,626,214 B2
• Filed: 03/13/2015
• Issued: 04/18/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Gong, Yi Ping, Huang, Yan, Wang, Cheng Li, Yang, Jeffrey, Yu, Yue
• Primary Examiner(s): Swift, Charles
• Application Number:
  US14/657,901
• Publication Number:
  US 20150261562A1
• Time in Patent Office: 767 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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 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 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5005 to service a request
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5022 Mechanisms to release resources
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5061 Partitioning or combining of resources
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5072 Grid computing
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• 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

A method for establishing redundant connections for a virtual machine, which comprises: obtaining a plurality of storage nodes storing a same virtual machine image of the virtual machine; determining at least two storage nodes from the plurality of storage nodes, so that connections between a compute node provisioning the virtual machine and each of the at least two storage nodes have minimum correlation; and establishing connections between the compute node and the at least two storage nodes respectively. The present invention further discloses the corresponding apparatus.

Claims

1. A method for establishing redundant connections for a virtual machine, comprising:

obtaining a plurality of storage nodes storing a same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

determining at least two storage nodes from the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine so that connections between a compute node provisioning the virtual machine and each of the at least two storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine have minimum correlation, wherein the determining further comprises;

obtaining IP addresses of the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

determining a plurality of routing paths from the compute node to the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

selecting at least two routing paths that do not pass through a same intermediate routing device from the plurality of routing paths;

and determining the at least two storage nodes corresponding to the at least two routing paths; and

establishing the redundant connections for the virtual machine by establishing connections between the compute node provisioning the virtual machine and the at least two storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determining at least two storage nodes from the plurality of storage nodes so that connections between a compute node provisioning the virtual machine and each of the at least two storage nodes have minimum correlation further comprises:

selecting at least two routing paths having a shortest response time from the plurality of routing paths if there are not the at least two routing paths that do not pass through the same intermediate routing device in the plurality of routing paths; and

determining the at least two storage nodes corresponding to the at least two routing paths.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the selecting of at least two routing paths that do not pass through the same intermediate routing device from the plurality of routing paths comprises:

selecting at least two routing paths that do not pass through the same intermediate routing device and have a shortest response time.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determining at least two storage nodes from the plurality of storage nodes so that connections between a compute node provisioning the virtual machine and each of the at least two storage nodes have minimum correlation further comprises:

determining network segments to which the IP addresses of the plurality of storage nodes belong;

obtaining location area identifiers of the plurality of storage nodes according to a pre-established network segment-location area mapping table; and

determining at least two storage nodes having different location area identifiers from the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

checking, in response to any one of the redundant connections being disconnected, whether there are remaining storage nodes except the determined at least two storage nodes in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

determining a storage node from the remaining storage nodes; and

establishing a connection between the compute node provisioning the virtual machine and the determined storage node.

6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising:

creating a local copy of the virtual machine image on a local disk of the compute node provisioning the virtual machine if there is no remaining storage node in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine; and

establishing a connection to the local copy on the compute node provisioning the virtual machine.

7. The method according to claim 5, further comprising:

obtaining another compute node storing a local copy of the virtual machine image at the compute node if there is no remaining storage node in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine; and

establishing a connection between the compute node and the another compute node storing the local copy of the virtual machine image.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein obtaining the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine comprises:

receiving an indication from each of the plurality of storage nodes indicating which virtual machine images are stored thereon.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the indication is received in a report provided by the each of the plurality of storage nodes that also includes a respective IP address for each respective one of the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.

10. An apparatus for establishing redundant connections for a virtual machine, comprising:

a node obtaining module configured to obtain a plurality of storage nodes storing a same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

a determining module configured to determine at least two storage nodes from the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine so that connections between a compute node provisioning the virtual machine and each of the at least two storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine have minimum correlation, wherein the determining module comprises;

an address obtaining unit configured to obtain IP addresses of the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

a path determining unit configured to determine a plurality of routing paths from the compute node to the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

a path selecting unit configured to select at least two routing paths that do not pass through a same intermediate routing device from the plurality of routing paths; and

a node determining unit configured to determine the at least storage nodes corresponding to the at least two routing paths; and

a connection establishing module configured to establish the redundant connections for the virtual machine by establishing connections between the compute node provisioning the virtual machine and the at least two storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.

11. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the path selecting unit is further configured to select at least two routing paths having a shortest response time from the plurality of routing paths if there are not the at least two routing paths that do not pass through the same intermediate routing device in the plurality of routing paths.

12. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the path selecting unit is further configured to select at least two routing paths that do not pass through the same intermediate routing device and have a shortest response time from the plurality of routing paths.

13. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the selecting module comprises:

a network segment determining unit configured to determine network segments to which the IP addresses of the plurality of storage nodes belong;

a location area identifier obtaining unit configured to obtain location area identifiers of the plurality of storage nodes according to a pre-established network segment-location area mapping table; and

a node determining unit configured to determine at least two storage nodes having different location area identifiers from the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.

14. The apparatus according to claim 10, further comprising:

a checking module configured to check, in response to any one of the redundant connections being disconnected, whether there are remaining storage nodes except the determined at least two storage nodes in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

wherein the determining module is further configured to determine a storage node from the remaining storage nodes;

the connection establishing module is further configured to establish a connection between the compute node provisioning the virtual machine and the determined storage node.

15. The apparatus according to claim 14, further comprising:

a copy creating module configured to create a local copy of the virtual machine image on a local disk of the compute node provisioning the virtual machine if there is no remaining storage node in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

wherein the connection establishing module is further configured to establish a connection to the local copy on the compute node provisioning the virtual machine.

16. The apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the node obtaining module is configured to obtain another compute node storing a local copy of the virtual machine image if there is no remaining storage node in the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine;

and

the connection establishing module is further configured to establish a connection between the compute node and the another compute node storing the local copy of the virtual machine image.

17. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the node obtaining module is further configured to receive an indication from each of the plurality of storage nodes indicating which virtual machine images are stored thereon.

18. The apparatus according to claim 17, wherein the indication is received in a report provided by the each of the plurality of storage nodes that also includes a respective IP address for each respective one of the plurality of storage nodes storing the same virtual machine image of the virtual machine.