Modifying an instance catalog to perform operations

• US 9,891,938 B2
• Filed: 06/26/2015
• Issued: 02/13/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Barry, David W., Ren, Joanne, Zucca, Mike, Farkas, Keith
• Primary Examiner(s): Do, Chat
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wood, William C
• Application Number:
  US14/752,438
• Publication Number:
  US 20160378516A1
• Time in Patent Office: 963 Days
• Field of Search: 718 1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4555 Para-virtualisation, i.e. guest operating system has to be modified

Abstract

The present disclosure is related to methods, systems, and machine-readable media for modifying an instance catalog to perform operation. A storage system can include a plurality of packfiles that store data. The storage system can include a plurality of streams that include a plurality of hashes that identify the plurality of packfiles. The storage system can include an instance catalog that includes an identification of the plurality of streams. The storage system can include an operation engine to perform a number of operations on the plurality of packfiles by modifying the instance catalog using the identification of the plurality of streams.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a storage system including;

one or more virtual identifications, each virtual identification associated with at least one virtual computing instance associated with of a virtual machine, wherein the virtual identification includes;

a plurality of packfiles that store data that comprises the virtual computing instance;

a plurality of streams, wherein each stream includes a plurality of hashes that reference data of the virtual computing instance stored in the plurality of packfiles and corresponding identifiers of packfiles storing data referenced by the respective hashes, wherein each hash is created using a hash function that maps data of an arbitrary size to a hash such that the hashes identify different portions of the data that comprises the virtual computing instance; and

an instance catalog that includes an identification of each of the plurality of streams; and

an operation engine to perform a number of operations on the plurality of packfiles by modifying the instance catalog using the identification of the plurality of streams.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the operation engine performs the number of operations indirectly on the plurality of packfiles.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the instance catalog includes agent metadata and caller metadata that is used to perform the number of operations.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the agent metadata includes a creation time and a human readable name for each of the plurality of streams.

5. The system of claim 3, wherein the caller metadata includes a key/value pairs for each of the plurality of streams.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein the operation engine performs the number of operations directly on the identification of the plurality of streams, the agent metadata, and the caller metadata.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of packfiles do not have an associated file system.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a push engine to:

store data segmented into a number of chunks in the plurality of packfiles;

store a plurality of hashes representing the number of chunks in a particular stream in the plurality of streams; and

store a reference of the stream in the instance catalog.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a query engine to:

receive a reference to a particular stream in the plurality of streams;

identify the stream using the reference and the instance catalog;

identify a portion of the plurality of packfiles that are associated with the stream; and

retrieve the data stored in the portion of the plurality of packfiles that are associated with the stream.

10. A method, comprising:

receiving an instruction to remove a stream that is associated with a stream identification (ID) from a storage system, wherein the stream includes a number of hashes that reference data stored in a number of packfiles, wherein the number of packfiles store data associated with a virtual computing instance associated with a virtual machine;

identifying the stream in an instance catalog using the stream ID, wherein the instance catalog includes an identification of a plurality of streams for the virtual computing instance including the stream ID; and

in response to determining that there are no pending requests to the storage system, removing the stream ID and associated metadata from the instance catalog to remove access to the packfiles referenced by the stream wherein removing the stream ID and associated metadata from the instance catalog does not include deleting the number of packfiles that are associated with the stream.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein removing the stream ID and associated metadata from the instance catalog includes removing access to the stream without deleting the stream.

12. The method of claim 10, comprising:

determining that the stream is not included in the instance catalog;

identifying the number of packfiles that are associated with the stream; and

deleting the number of packfiles that do not include data from other streams.

13. The method of claim 10, comprising:

determining that the stream is not included in the instance catalog; and

deleting the stream in response to the determination that the stream is not included in the instance catalog.

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

receive a request to write to a storage system, wherein the request to write to a storage system includes a request to modify an instance catalog associated with a particular virtual computing instance;

determine whether an agent providing the request has ownership of data stored in a plurality of packfiles that store data that comprises the virtual computing instance by referencing a lock file with a generation number, wherein the lock file is stored in a virtual identification associated with the virtual computing instance that further includes the plurality of packfiles and the instance catalog;

request ownership of the data from a previous owner agent by creating a request file with a next generation number based on a determination that the agent does not have ownership of the data; and

in response to determining that an ownership request made by the agent has timed out, grant ownership of the data to the agent by creating a new lock file with the next generation number.

15. The medium of claim 14, comprising instructions executable by the processing resource to delete the lock file with the generation number.

16. The medium of claim 14, comprising instructions executable by the processing resource to wait until the previous owner deletes the lock file with the generation number to grant ownership of the data to the agent.

17. The medium of claim 14, comprising instructions to time out the ownership request made by the agent when a predetermined amount of time transpires after the ownership request is made.