CONVERGENCE OF MULTIPLE APPLICATION PROTOCOLS ONTO A SINGLE STORAGE PLATFORM

• US 20160004466A1
• Filed: 04/10/2015
• Published: 01/07/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Hedvig Inc. (CommVault Systems Incorporated)
• Inventors: LAKSHMAN, Avinash
• Granted Patent: US 9,864,530 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0607 by facilitating the process of upgrading existing storage systems, e.g. for improving compatibility between host and storage device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0661 Format or protocol conversion arrangements
• 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

Abstract

An administrator provisions a virtual disk in a remote storage platform and defines policies for that virtual disk. A virtual machine writes to and reads from the storage platform using any storage protocol. Virtual disk data within a failed storage pool is migrated to different storage pools while still respecting the policies of each virtual disk. Snapshot and revert commands are given for a virtual disk at a particular point in time and overhead is minimal. A virtual disk is cloned utilizing snapshot information and no data need be copied. Any number of Zookeeper clusters are executing in a coordinated fashion within the storage platform, thus increasing overall throughput. A timestamp is generated that guarantees a monotonically increasing counter, even upon a crash of a virtual machine. Any virtual disk has a “hybrid cloud aware” policy in which one replica of the virtual disk is stored in a public cloud.

Claims

1. A method of writing to a virtual disk within a storage platform, said method comprising:

issuing a write request from a software application executing within a virtual machine of a computer server to write data onto a virtual disk of a remote storage platform, said write request using a first storage protocol;

intercepting said write request by a controller virtual machine of said computer server;

sending said first write request along with said data from said controller virtual machine to a computer node of said storage platform using a communication protocol different from said first storage protocol;

writing said data into said virtual disk using at least one storage disk of said storage platform; and

acknowledging said writing of said data to said software application from said controller virtual machine using said first storage protocol.

2. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising:

acknowledging said writing of said data to said controller virtual machine by said storage platform.

3. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein said first storage protocol is the Network File System (NFS) protocol, the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol or the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

4. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein the use of said communication protocol is transparent to said software application.

5. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising:

issuing a second write request from a second software application executing within a second virtual machine of said computer server to write data onto a second virtual disk of said remote storage platform, said second write request using a second storage protocol different from said first storage protocol;

intercepting said second write request by said controller virtual machine of said computer server; and

sending said second write request along with said data from said controller virtual machine to a computer node of said storage platform using a communication protocol different from said second storage protocol.

6. The method as recited in claim 5 wherein said second storage protocol is the Network File System (NFS) protocol, the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol or the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

7. A method of writing to a virtual disk within a storage platform, said method comprising:

receiving a first write request from a first software application executing within a first virtual machine of a computer server to write data onto a first virtual disk of a remote storage platform, said first write request using a first storage protocol and being received by a controller virtual machine;

sending said first write request along with said data from said controller virtual machine to a computer node of said storage platform using a communication protocol different from said first storage protocol;

receiving a second write request from a second software application executing within a second virtual machine of said computer server to write data onto a second virtual disk of said remote storage platform, said second write request using a second storage protocol different from said first storage protocol;

sending said second write request along with said data from said controller virtual machine to a computer node of said storage platform using a communication protocol different from said second storage protocol;

acknowledging said writing of said data onto said first virtual disk to said first software application from said controller virtual machine using said first storage protocol; and

acknowledging said writing of said data onto said second virtual disk to said second software application from said controller virtual machine using said second storage protocol.

8. The method as recited in claim 7 wherein said first storage protocol is the Network File System (NFS) protocol, the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol or the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

9. The method as recited in claim 8 wherein said second storage protocol is the Network File System (NFS) protocol, the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol or the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

10. The method as recited in claim 7 wherein the use of said communication protocol is transparent to said first and second software applications.