Hybrid checkpointed memory

• US 9,678,863 B2
• Filed: 03/05/2013
• Issued: 06/13/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SanDisk Technologies LLC (Western Digital Corporation)
• Original Assignee: SanDisk Technologies LLC (Western Digital Corporation)
• Inventors: Talagala, Nisha, Sundararaman, Swaminathan, Batwara, Ashish, Flynn, David, Piggin, Nick
• Primary Examiner(s): Yi, David X
• Assistant Examiner(s): GOLDSCHMIDT, CRAIG S
• Application Number:
  US13/786,385
• Publication Number:
  US 20130332660A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,561 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1441 Resetting or repowering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0246 in block erasable memory, e.g. flash memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/08 in hierarchically structured memory systems, e.g. virtual memory systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual middleware or OS functionality using virtual machines to implement generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking G06F11/1484
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/82 Solving problems relating to consistency ensuring consistency in mirrored systems G06F11/2064
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

Apparatuses, systems, methods, and computer program products are disclosed for hybrid checkpointed memory. A method includes referencing data of a range of virtual memory of a host. The referenced data is already stored by a non-volatile medium. A method includes writing, to a non-volatile medium, data of a range of virtual memory that is not stored by the non-volatile medium. A method includes providing access to data of a range of virtual memory from a non-volatile medium using a persistent identifier associated with referenced data and written data.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a checkpoint request from a client, the checkpoint request comprising an identifier of an address range of virtual memory of a host to persist, the address range dynamically selected for the checkpoint request by the client, the virtual memory providing access, using volatile memory access semantics, to a non-volatile medium and to volatile memory of the host, the range of virtual memory addresses comprising at least a first set of addresses backed by the non-volatile medium and a second set of addresses backed by the volatile memory of the host and not by the non-volatile medium;

referencing data of the range of virtual memory, the referenced data comprising data already stored by the non-volatile medium, for the first set of addresses;

writing, to the non-volatile medium, data of the range of virtual memory, the written data comprising data stored by volatile memory of the host that is not stored by the non-volatile medium, for the second set of addresses; and

providing access to the data of the range of virtual memory from the non-volatile medium using a persistent identifier associated with the referenced data and the written data.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising copying at least a portion of the data of the range of virtual memory and providing write access to the copy while writing from the range of virtual memory to the non-volatile medium.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the copied at least a portion of the data comprises data of a storage request received during checkpointing, the copied at least a portion of the data copied in response to the storage request.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the copied at least a portion of the data comprises data stored in volatile memory of the host and data stored on the non-volatile medium.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising merging data of the copied at least a portion of the data with the data of the range of virtual memory in response to completing the writing.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing access to a different version of the data of the range of virtual memory using a different persistent storage namespace identifier.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising deleting one or more inconsistent versions of the data in response to recovering from a restart event and providing a consistent version of the data to a client.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the referencing and the writing are in response to the checkpoint request.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein writing the data comprises writing the data not stored by the non-volatile medium from volatile memory of the host to an append point of a sequential log of the non-volatile medium.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein providing access to the data of the range of virtual memory comprises providing access to portions of the data located in the sequential log based on entries for the data in an address mapping structure.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein writing the data comprises copying the data and preserving the copied data on the non-volatile medium.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising mapping multiple clones of the data into the virtual memory of the host.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising merging updates to the multiple clones and storing the merged data on the non-volatile medium.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein merging the updates comprises resolving conflicts in the updates based on a collision detection policy for the data.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising locating dirty pages in the range of virtual memory using a page table to determine which data is not stored by the non-volatile medium.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining a has-been-written data structure indicating which data of the range of virtual memory has been written since a previous checkpoint at a sub-page granularity.

17. An apparatus comprising:

a checkpoint module configured to

receive a checkpoint request from a client, the checkpoint request comprising an identifier of an address range of virtual memory of a host to persist, the address range dynamically selected for the checkpoint request by the client, the virtual memory providing access, using volatile memory access semantics, to a non-volatile medium and to volatile memory of the host, the range of virtual memory addresses comprising at least a first set of addresses backed by the non-volatile medium and a second set of addresses backed by the volatile memory of the host and not by the non-volatile medium,

reference data of the range of virtual memory, the referenced data comprising data already stored by the non-volatile medium, for the first set of addresses, and

write, to the non-volatile medium, data of the range of virtual memory, the written data comprising data stored by volatile memory of the host that is not stored by the non-volatile medium, for the second set of addresses; and

a storage namespace module configured to provide access to the data of the range of virtual memory from the non-volatile medium using a persistent identifier associated with the referenced data and the written data,

wherein the checkpoint module and the storage namespace module comprise one or more of logic hardware and executable code, the executable code stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the checkpoint module is configured to copy at least a portion of the data of the range of virtual memory and provide write access to the copy while writing from the range of virtual memory to the non-volatile medium.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the copied at least a portion of the data comprises data of a storage request received during checkpointing, the copied at least a portion of the data copied in response to the storage request.

20. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer usable program code executable to perform operations, the operations comprising:

receiving a checkpoint request from a client, the checkpoint request comprising an identifier of an address range of virtual memory of a host to persist, the address range dynamically selected for the checkpoint request by the client, the virtual memory providing access, using volatile memory access semantics, to a non-volatile medium and to volatile memory of the host, the range of virtual memory comprising at least a first set of addresses backed by the non-volatile medium and a second set of addresses backed by the volatile memory of the host and not by the non-volatile medium;

referencing data of the range of virtual memory, the referenced data comprising data already stored by the non-volatile medium, for the first set of addresses;

writing, to the non-volatile medium, data of the range of virtual memory, the written data comprising data stored by volatile memory of the host that is not stored by the non-volatile medium, for the second set of addresses; and

providing access to the data of the range of virtual memory from the non-volatile medium using a persistent identifier associated with the referenced data and the written data.

21. The computer program product of claim 20, the operations further comprising copying at least a portion of the data of the range of virtual memory and providing write access to the copy while writing from the range of virtual memory to the non-volatile medium.

22. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the copied at least a portion of the data comprises data of a storage request received during checkpointing, the copied at least a portion of the data copied in response to the storage request.

23. A system comprising:

a non-volatile medium;

a checkpoint module configured to

receive a checkpoint request from a client, the checkpoint request comprising an identifier of an address range of virtual memory of a host to persist, the virtual memory providing access, using volatile memory access semantics, to the non-volatile medium and to volatile memory of the host, the range of virtual memory addresses comprising at least a first set of addresses backed by the non-volatile medium and a second set of addresses backed by the volatile memory of the host and not by the non-volatile medium,

reference data of the range of virtual memory, the referenced data comprising data already stored by the non-volatile medium, for the first set of addresses, and

write, to the non-volatile medium, data of the range of virtual memory, the written data comprising data stored by volatile memory of the host that is not stored by the non-volatile medium, for the second set of addresses; and

a storage namespace module configured to provide access to the data of the range of virtual memory from the non-volatile medium using a persistent identifier associated with the referenced data and the written data.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the checkpoint module is configured to copy at least a portion of the data of the range of virtual memory and provide write access to the copy while writing from the range of virtual memory to the non-volatile medium.