Allocating cost of disk usage to a linked clone virtual machine

• US 9,710,296 B2
• Filed: 12/09/2014
• Issued: 07/18/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Pannem, Hemanth Kumar, Mirajkar, Akshay Prabhakar
• Primary Examiner(s): Truong, Camquy
• Application Number:
  US14/565,135
• Publication Number:
  US 20160162314A1
• Time in Patent Office: 952 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• 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 3/06 Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers , e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

The present disclosure is related to methods, systems, and machine-readable media for allocating cost of disk usage to a linked clone virtual machine (VM). A determination can be made as to a number of disks used by a linked clone VM, among the disks in a software defined data center, over a time period. In some examples, a cost for a total usage of the number of disks over the time period can be allocated to the linked clone VM, regardless of whether the total usage over the time period includes usage by other VMs. In some examples, a cost for a total usage of the number of disks over the time period can be allocated to the linked clone VM, in proportion to the number of VMs that use the disk regardless of relative usage of the disk by each of the number of VMs.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a hardware logic configured to implement;

a disk usage engine configured to determine, for a linked clone virtual machine (VM), a number of disks used by the linked clone VM among a plurality of disks in a software defined data center over a time period; and

a cost engine configured to allocate, to the linked clone VM, a cost for a total usage of the number of disks over the time period, regardless of whether the total usage over the time period includes usage by other VMs,

wherein the cost engine is configured to allocate the cost for the total usage of the number of disks based on a unit rate per unit time that is specific for each of the number of disks.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the disk usage engine is configured to:

build a linked clone tree for a number of VMs that use the plurality of disks during the time period,

wherein each node in the tree represents one of the plurality of disks, and

wherein each leaf in the tree represents a delta disk for one of the number of VMs; and

for each leaf in the tree, determine a path from a root of the tree, wherein a particular path for a particular leaf includes a number of nodes representing disks used by one of the number of VMs corresponding to the particular leaf.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the cost engine is configured to allocate a cost for a total usage of a particular one of the plurality of disks during the time period to each of the number of VMs that use any portion of the particular one of the plurality of disks.

4. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions executable by a processing resource to cause a computing system to:

determine, for a disk among a plurality of disks in a software defined data center, a number of virtual machines (VMs), including at least one linked clone VM, that use the disk over a time period; and

allocate a cost for a total usage of the disk to each of the number of VMs in proportion to the number of VMs that use the disk regardless of relative usage of the disk by each of the number of VMs;

allocate the cost for the total usage of the disk based on a unit rate per unit time that is specific to the disk.

5. The medium of claim 4, including instructions to:

build a linked clone tree for a plurality of VMs that use the plurality of disks during the time period,

wherein each node in the tree represents one of the plurality of disks, and

wherein each leaf in the tree represents a delta disk for one of the plurality of VMs; and

for each leaf in the tree, determine a path from a root of the tree, wherein a particular path for a particular leaf includes a number of nodes representing a particular number of disks used by one of the plurality of VMs corresponding to the particular leaf.

6. The medium of claim 5, including instructions to allocate a cost for a total usage of the particular number of disks in proportion to a number of VMs using each of the particular number of disks to the one of the plurality of VMs corresponding to the particular leaf.

7. The medium of claim 5, wherein the instructions to determine the number of VMs, including the at least one linked clone VM, that use the disk comprise instructions to traverse the linked clone tree to determine a linked clone count for the disk.

8. The medium of claim 4, including instructions to:

determine, for the at least one linked clone VM, a first disk and a second disk among the plurality of disks used by the linked clone VM over the time period;

allocate, to the at least one linked clone VM, a cost for a total usage of the first disk over the time period in proportion to a total number of VMs that use the first disk over the time period; and

allocate, to the at least one linked clone VM, a cost for a total usage of the second disk over the time period in proportion to a total number of VMs that use the second disk over the time period.

9. A system, comprising:

a hardware logic configured to implement;

a disk usage engine configured to;

determine, for a particular linked clone virtual machine (VM), a number of disks, among a plurality of disks in a software defined data center, used by the linked clone VM during a time period;

determine a respective number of linked clone VMs that use each of the number of disks during the time period;

determine a usage of each of the number of disks during the time period; and

a cost engine configured to allocate a cost of the usage of each of the number of disks to the particular linked clone VM in proportion to the respective number of linked clone VMs that use each of the number of disks during the time period.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the cost engine is configured to allocate the cost of the usage of each of the number of disks based on at least one of a common unit rate per unit time for the number of disks and a respective unit rate per unit time specific to each of the number of disks.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the disk usage engine is configured to build a linked clone tree for the number of linked clone VMs,

wherein each node in the tree represents one of the number of disks,

wherein each leaf in the tree represents a delta disk for one of the number of VMs, and

wherein one node in the tree is a root representing a common parent disk for the number of VMs.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the disk usage engine being configured to determine the number of disks used by the linked clone VM comprises the disk usage engine being configured to:

for a particular leaf in the tree, determine a path from a root of the tree, wherein the path includes a number of nodes representing the number of disks used by the linked clone VM.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the disk usage engine being configured to build the linked clone tree comprises the disk usage engine being configured to:

build a separate linked clone tree for each of a plurality of times during the time period; and

superimpose the plurality of linked clone trees into a single linked clone tree.

14. A method, comprising:

determining a first subset of a plurality of disks in a software defined data center, used by a first linked clone virtual machine (VM) during a time period;

determining a second subset of the plurality of disks in the software defined data center used by a second linked clone VM during the time period, wherein the first subset and the second subset include a common disk of the plurality of disks;

allocating a cost of a total usage of the first subset of disks to the first linked clone VM regardless of how many VMs use the first subset of disks; and

allocating a cost of a total usage of the second subset of disks to the second linked clone VM in proportion to a number of VMs using the second subset of disks.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein allocating the cost of the total usage of the first subset of disks to the first linked clone VM comprises allocating the cost regardless of a portion of the total usage of the first subset of disks attributable to the first linked clone VM.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein allocating the cost of the total usage of the second subset of disks to the second linked clone VM comprises allocating the cost regardless of a portion of the total usage of the second subset of disks attributable to the second linked clone VM.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein allocating the cost of the total usage of the first and the second subsets of disks comprises allocating the cost without regard to runtime parameters of the first and the second subsets of disks.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein the method includes deleting the first linked clone VM during the time period.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein the method includes cloning the first and the second linked clone VM from a parent VM during the time period.

20. A system, comprising:

a hardware logic configured to implement;

a disk usage engine configured to determine, for a linked clone virtual machine (VM), a number of disks used by the linked clone VM among a plurality of disks in a software defined data center over a time period; and

a cost engine configured to allocate, to the linked clone VM, a cost for a total usage of the number of disks over the time period, regardless of whether the total usage over the time period includes usage by other VMs,

wherein the cost engine is configured to allocate the cost for the total usage of the number of disks based on a unit rate per unit time that is common to the number of disks.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the disk usage engine is configured to:

build a linked clone tree for a number of VMs that use the plurality of disks during the time period,

wherein each node in the tree represents one of the plurality of disks, and

wherein each leaf in the tree represents a delta disk for one of the number of VMs; and

for each leaf in the tree, determine a path from a root of the tree, wherein a particular path for a particular leaf includes a number of nodes representing disks used by one of the number of VMs corresponding to the particular leaf.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the cost engine is configured to allocate a cost for a total usage of a particular one of the plurality of disks during the time period to each of the number of VMs that use any portion of the particular one of the plurality of disks.