Non-disruptive load-balancing of virtual machines between data centers

• US 9,733,989 B1
• Filed: 02/12/2015
• Issued: 08/15/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Robidoux, Gregory S, Barturen, Txomin, Ganeshan, Balakrishnan, Taylor, Kenneth, Glade, Bradford B, Dar, Yaron
• Primary Examiner(s): Kim, Edward
• Application Number:
  US14/620,343
• Time in Patent Office: 915 Days
• Field of Search: 709213-216, 709201-202, 709223-224, 709220-221
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5019 Workload prediction
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4868 with creation or replication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5088 involving task migration

Abstract

A method, system and program product for enabling migration of Virtual Machines with concurrent access to data across two geographically disperse sites to enable load balancing across the two geographically disperse sites, by presenting over a network a read writable logical volume at a first site, presenting over a network a read writable logical volume at a second geographically disparate site; wherein the first volume and the second volume are configured to contain the same information, and enabling read write access to the volume at the first site or the volume at the second site for a first virtual machine while keeping the data consistent between the two sites to enable transparent migration of the virtual machine to load balancing across the two sites according to at least one load balancing metric.

Claims

1. A method for enabling migration of a Virtual Machine (VM) across two disperse sites by providing concurrent read and write access to a read writable logical volume at both sites, the method comprising:

presenting, using a virtual volume presenter, over a first network the read writable logical volume at a first site, wherein the first site has a first storage medium;

presenting, using the virtual volume presenter, over a second network the read writable logical volume at a second disparate site, wherein the second site has a second storage medium; and

enabling cotemporaneous read write access by a set of virtual machines to the read writable logical volume at the first site and to the read writable logical volume at the second site by the set of virtual machines to enable transparent migration of the virtual machine between the first site and the second site to enable load balancing across the first site and the second site according to at least one load balancing metric, wherein the virtual volume presenter provides an abstraction layer spanning the first site and the second site, wherein transparent migration of the virtual machine includes enabling the virtual machine to access the read writeable logical volume as the same logical drive at the first site and the second site; and

wherein the read writable logical volume is configured to present logically consistent data at the first site and the second site using the first storage medium and the second storage medium.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the first storage medium includes a mirror of at least a portion of the second storage medium.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the storage mediums are asynchronous.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the load balancing includes balancing application load across the sites.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the method of migrating a virtual machine includes a second virtual machine, wherein the first and second virtual machines access different portions of the read writable logical volume.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein the first storage medium and the second storage medium include a synchronous mirror.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein when the virtual machine is migrated from the first site to the second site, enabling the migrated virtual machine to automatically access the read writable logical volume on the second storage medium instead of on the first storage medium.

8. A system for enabling migration of a Virtual Machine (VM) across two disperse sites by providing concurrent read and write access to a read writable logical volume at both sites, the system comprising:

a first site with a first storage medium;

a second site with a second storage medium;

a virtual volume presenter providing an abstraction layer spanning the first site and the second; and

computer-executable logic operating in memory, wherein the computer-executable program logic enables execution across one or more processors of;

presenting, using the virtual volume presenter, over a first network the read writable logical volume at the first site;

presenting, using the virtual volume presenter, over a second network the read writable logical volume at a second disparate site; and

enabling cotemporaneous read write access by a set of virtual machines to the read writable logical volume at the first site and to the read writable logical volume at the second site by the set of virtual machines to enable transparent migration of the virtual machine between the first site and the second site to enable load balancing across the first site and the second site according to at least one load balancing metric, wherein the virtual volume presenter, wherein transparent migration of the virtual machine includes enabling the virtual machine to access the read writeable logical volume as the same logical drive at the first site and the second site; and

wherein the read writable logical volume is configured to present logically consistent data at the first site and the second site using the first storage medium and the second storage medium.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the second storage medium includes a mirror of at least a portion of the first storage medium.

10. The system of claim 8 wherein the first storage medium and the second storage medium include a synchronized mirror.

11. The system of claim 8 wherein the load balancing includes balancing application load across the sites.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein different virtual machines of the set of virtual machines access different portions of the virtual volume.

13. The system of claim 10 wherein the first storage medium and the second storage medium include a synchronous mirror.

14. A computer program product comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with computer executable program code enabling execution across one or more processors of;

presenting, using a virtual volume presenter, over a first network a read writable logical volume at a first site;

presenting, using the virtual volume presenter, over a second network the read writable logical volume at a second disparate site; and

enabling cotemporaneous read write access by a set of virtual machines to the read writable logical volume at the first site and to the read writable logical volume at the second site by the set of virtual machines to enable transparent migration of a virtual machine between the first site and the second site to enable load balancing across the first site and the second site according to at least one load balancing metric, wherein the virtual volume presenter, wherein transparent migration of the virtual machine includes enabling the virtual machine to access the read writeable logical volume as the same logical drive at the first site and the second site; and

wherein the read writable logical volume is configured to present logically consistent data at the first site and the second site using the first storage medium and the second storage medium.

15. The program product of claim 14 wherein the first storage medium includes a mirror of at least a portion of the second storage medium.

16. The program product of claim 14 wherein the first storage medium and the second storage medium include a synchronous mirror.

17. The program product of claim 14 wherein the load balancing includes balancing application load across the sites.

18. The program product of claim 15 wherein different virtual machines of the set of virtual access different portions of the virtual volume.

19. The program product of claim 16 wherein the first storage medium and the second storage medium include a synchronous mirror.

20. The program product of claim 15 wherein when the virtual machine is migrated from the first site to the second site, enabling the migrated virtual machine to automatically access the read writable logical volume on the second storage medium instead of on the first storage medium.