Load balancing technique for a storage array

• US 9,720,601 B2
• Filed: 02/11/2015
• Issued: 08/01/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 02/11/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Gupta, Anish, Nguyen, Jamie, Lu, Hung, Mohammed, Samiullah
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, HIEP T
• Application Number:
  US14/619,934
• Publication Number:
  US 20160231948A1
• Time in Patent Office: 902 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0635 by changing the path, e.g. traffic rerouting, path reconfiguration
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0653 Monitoring storage devices or systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0659 Command handling arrangements, e.g. command buffers, queues, command scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0688 Non-volatile semiconductor memory arrays

Abstract

A technique for load balancing uses heuristic-based algorithms with respect to input/output (I/O) latency of workloads destined to storage devices, e.g., solid state drives (SSDs), of a storage array attached to a storage system. Illustratively, “front-end” requests received from a host result in a back-end workload as those requests are processed by a storage I/O stack of the storage system and stored on the storage array. Accordingly, the technique maintains a consistent latency for the host requests (front-end) to control latency for the back-end workload. The load balancing technique illustratively load balances fixed (back-end) workloads having similar I/O sizes and I/O patterns. Illustratively, the technique balances the workloads across a plurality of storage ports over one or more I/O paths to the SSDs. Access to the SSDs may then be distributed among the storage ports.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving from a host, a plurality of write requests directed towards a logical unit (LUN), each write request having data, the write request processed at a storage system having a memory coupled to a processor via a memory bus, the processor coupled to at least one storage controller attached to at least one shelf of solid state drives (SSDs);

generating an input/output (I/O) workload from the plurality of write requests, the I/O workload including a de-duplication operation;

looking ahead into an I/O queue having the I/O workload to predict an expected load on each I/O channel of a plurality of I/O channels included in the at least one storage controller; and

controlling a back-end latency of the I/O workload to the SSDs by load balancing the I/O workload among the plurality of I/O channels based on the expected work load on each I/O channel, thereby for the plurality of write requests maintaining a predictable front-end latency to the host.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein predicting an expected load on each I/O channel of a plurality of I/O channels further comprises:

using a read/write workload ratio, wherein a first latency associated with a read operation and a second latency associated with a write operation are known, and wherein the I/O workload includes the read operation and the write operation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each SSD is associated with a primary I/O path and a secondary I/O path to the at least one storage controller, and wherein the load balancing of the I/O workload includes sending data across the primary I/O path and the secondary I/O path for each SSD.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the I/O workload includes an unexpected read operation in response to the de-duplication operation.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein each SSD is associated with a primary I/O path and a secondary I/O path to the at least one storage controller, wherein the load balancing of the I/O workload includes sending data across the primary I/O path for each SSD, and wherein the secondary I/O path is a failover I/O path for each SSD.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

reading a temperature of each respective SSD; and

in response to the temperature of the respective SSD being outside of an operating temperature range, issuing a warmup I/O request to the respective SSD.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein load balancing the I/O workload includes calculating a number of I/O operations per second of the workload for each I/O channel.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein load balancing the I/O workload includes calculating an I/O latency histogram of the I/O workload for a plurality of durations.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein load balancing the I/O workload includes examining a reads pending count and a writes pending count indicating a respective number of read and write requests associated with the I/O queue.

10. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

monitoring stream-open durations for a first SSD and a second SSD, wherein the first and second SSDs are multi-streaming; and

in response to the first SSD having stream-open durations greater than an average stream-open duration and the second SSD having stream-open durations less than the average stream-open duration, exchanging a first primary I/O path associated with the first SSD with a second primary I/O path associated with the second SSD.

11. A method comprising:

receiving from a host, a plurality of write request directed towards a logical unit (LUN), each write request having data, the write request processed at a storage system having a memory coupled to a processor via a memory bus, the processor coupled to at least one storage controller attached to at least one shelf of multi-stream solid state drives (SSDs);

generating an input/output (I/O) workload from the plurality of write requests, the workload including the data and metadata associated with the data; and

controlling a back-end latency of the I/O workload to the SSDs by load balancing the I/O workload among a plurality of I/O channels included in the at least one storage controller such that the plurality of write requests maintain a predictable front-end latency to the host, wherein a first stream for each SSD is used for the data and a second stream different from the first stream for each SSD is used for the metadata.

12. A system comprising:

a storage system having a memory connected to a processor via a bus;

at least one storage shelf coupled to the processor via at least one storage controller, each storage shelf having a plurality of solid state drives (SSDs);

a storage I/O stack executing on the processor of the storage system, the storage I/O stack configured to;

receive from a host, a plurality of write requests directed towards a logical unit (LUN), each write request having data;

generate an input/output (I/O) workload from the plurality of write requests, the I/O workload including a de-duplication operation;

look ahead into an I/O queue having the I/O workload to predict an expected load on each I/O channel of a plurality of I/O channels included in the at least one storage controller; and

control a back-end latency of the I/O workload to the SSDs by load balancing the I/O workload among the plurality of I/O channels based on the expected work load on each I/O channel, thereby for the plurality of write requests maintaining a predictable front-end latency to the host.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the storage I/O stack configured to predict an expected load on each I/O channel of a plurality of I/O channels is further configured to:

use a read/write workload ratio, wherein a first latency associated with a read operation and a second latency associated with a write operation are known, and wherein the I/O workload includes the read operation and the write operation.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein each SSD is associated with a primary I/O path and a secondary I/O path to the at least one storage controller, and wherein the load balancing of the I/O workload includes sending data across the primary I/O path and the secondary I/O path for each SSD.

15. The system of claim 12 the I/O workload includes an unexpected read operation in response to the de-duplication operation.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein each SSD is associated with a primary I/O path and a secondary I/O path to the at least one storage controller, and wherein the load balancing of the I/O workload includes sending data across the primary I/O path for each SSD, and wherein the secondary I/O path is a failover I/O path for each SSD.

17. The system of claim 12 wherein the storage I/O stack is further configured to:

read a temperature of each respective SSD; and

in response to the temperature of the respective SSD being outside of an operating temperature range, issue a warmup I/O request to the respective SSD.

18. The system of claim 12 wherein load balancing the I/O workload includes calculating a number of I/O operations per second of the workload for each I/O channel.

19. The system of claim 12 wherein load balancing the I/O workload includes calculating a I/O latency histogram of the I/O workload for a plurality of durations.

20. The system of claim 12 wherein the load balancing the I/O workload includes examining a reads pending counter and a writes pending counter indicating a respective number of read and write requests associated with the I/O queue.