A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains command formats and other computer language listings, all of which are subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner, EMC Corporation, has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
This invention relates generally to managing and analyzing data in a data storage environment, and more particularly to a system and method for managing physical and logical components of storage area networks.
Computer systems are constantly improving in terms of speed, reliability, and processing capability. As is known in the art, computer systems which process and store large amounts of data typically include a one or more processors in communication with a shared data storage system in which the data is stored. The data storage system may include one or more storage devices, usually of a fairly robust nature and useful for storage spanning various temporal requirements, e.g., disk drives. The one or more processors perform their respective operations using the storage system. Mass storage systems (MSS) typically include an array of a plurality of disks with on-board intelligent and communications electronics and software for making the data on the disks available.
To leverage the value of MSS, these are typically networked in some fashion, Popular implementations of networks for MSS include network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN). In NAS, MSS is typically accessed over known TCP/IP lines such as Ethernet using industry standard file sharing protocols like NFS, HTTP, and Windows Networking. In SAN, the MSS is typically directly accessed over Fibre Channel switching fabric using encapsulated SCSI protocols.
Each network type has its advantages and disadvantages, but SAN's are particularly noted for providing the advantage of being reliable, maintainable, and being a scalable infrastructure but their complexity and disparate nature makes them difficult to centrally manage. Thus, a problem encountered in the implementation of SAN's is that the dispersion of resources tends to create an unwieldy and complicated data storage environment. Reducing the complexity by allowing unified management of the environment instead of treating as a disparate entity would be advancement in the data storage computer-related arts. While it is an advantage to distribute intelligence over various networks, it should be balanced against the need for unified and centralized management that can grow or scale proportionally with the growth of what is being managed. This is becoming increasingly important as the amount of information being handled and stored grows geometrically over short time periods and such environments add new applications, servers, and networks also at a rapid pace.
It is important to manage allocation of storage resources, but such management on a single array may lead to problems when the array storage resources are exhausted. Other problems may include over-allocation of resources to one or more entities. It would be advancement in the art to overcome such problems.
To overcome the problems described above and to provide the advantages also described above, the present invention in one embodiment includes a system and method for managing allocation of storage resources in a storage network, wherein the storage network includes physical data storage on one or more storage arrays that are in the storage network. The network is in communication with one or more hosts and the network further includes a storage network management system that includes a storage virtualizer capable of intercepting and virtualizing an IO stream from the one or more hosts and which storage network management system further includes a storage and switch controller in communication with the storage virtualizer for storage network management.
The method includes the steps of the storage network management system allocating one or more virtual data storage volumes for use by a host computer and the storage network management system presenting the virtual data storage volumes to the host computer as representative of available physical storage on the one or more storage arrays, but not allocating physical data storage for the virtual data storage volumes. The virtual data storage volumes can include regions that are either allocated to physical storage or are unallocated to physical storage pending an IO write request that would normally transform the unallocated regions to allocated regions. If a write IO goes to an unallocated region and the data of that write to the region is predictable by the storage network management system, then the storage network management system suppresses the write IO, thus avoiding allocation of the unallocated region that would normally have been transformed to an allocated region. A read IO for the predicted data is responded to with a creation of the data by the storage network management system in order to reduce what would otherwise be normal transformation of an unallocated region to an allocated region.
The above and further advantages of the present invention may be better under stood by referring to the following description taken into conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The methods and apparatus of the present invention are intended for use in Storage Area Networks (SAN's) that include data storage systems, such as the Symmetrix Integrated Cache Disk Array system or the Clariion Disk Array system available from EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, Mass. and those provided by vendors other than EMC.
The methods and apparatus of this invention may take the form, at least partially, of program code (i.e., instructions) embodied in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, hard drives, random access or read only-memory, or any other machine-readable storage medium, including transmission medium. When the program code is loaded into and executed by a machine, such as a computer, the machine becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. The methods and apparatus of the present invention may be embodied in the form of program code that is transmitted over some transmission medium, such as over electrical wiring or cabling, through fiber optics, or via any other form of transmission. And may be implemented such that herein, when the program code is received and loaded into and executed by a machine, such as a computer, the machine becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. When implemented on a general-purpose processor, the program code combines with the processor to provide a unique apparatus that operates analogously to specific logic circuits. The program code (software-based logic) for carrying out the method is embodied as part of the system described below.
Overview
The embodiment of the present invention denominated as FabricX architecture allows storage administrators to manage the components of their SAN infrastructure without interrupting the services they provide to their clients. This provides for a centralization of management allowing the storage infrastructure to be managed without requiring host-based software or resources for this management. For example, data storage volumes can be restructured and moved across storage devices on the SAN while the hosts accessing these volumes continue to operate undisturbed.
The new architecture also allows for management of resources to be moved off of storage arrays themselves, allowing for more centralized management of heterogeneous data storage environments. Advantages provided include: (1) centralized management of a storage infrastructure; (2) storage consolidation and economical use of resources; (3) common replication and mobility solutions (e.g., migration) across heterogeneous storage subsystems; and (4) storage management that is non-disruptive to hosts and storage subsystems
Architecture
Referring now to
Generally such a data storage system includes a system memory and sets or pluralities and of multiple data storage devices or data stores. The system memory can comprise a buffer or cache memory; the storage devices in the pluralities and can comprise disk storage devices, optical storage devices and the like. However, in a preferred embodiment the storage devices are disk storage devices. The sets represent an array of storage devices in any of a variety of known configurations. In such a data storage system, a computer or host adapter provides communications between a host system and the system memory and disk adapters and provides pathways between the system memory and the storage device pluralities. Regarding terminology related to the preferred data storage system, the host or host network is sometimes referred to as the front end and from the disk adapters toward the disks is sometimes referred to as the back end. Since the invention includes the ability to virtualize disks using LUNs as described below, a virtual initiator may be interchanged with disk adapters. A bus interconnects the system memory, and communicates with front and back end. As will be described below, providing such a bus with switches provides discrete access to components of the system.
Referring again to
It is known in SAN networks using Fibre Channel and/or SCSI protocols that such data devices as those represented by disks or storage 30-40 can be mapped using a protocol to a Fibre Channel logical unit (LUN) that act as virtual disks that may be presented for access to one or more hosts, such as hosts 13-18 for I/O operations. LUN's are also sometimes referred to interchangeably with data volumes which at a logical level represent physical storage such as that on storage 30-40.
Over the referred IP Network 64 and by communicating through the management interface 43, a Storage Administrator using the EMS 29 may create virtual LUN's (Disks) that are composed of elements from the back-end storage. These virtual devices which may be represented, for example by a disk icon (not shown) grouped with the intelligent switch, are made available through targets created on a specific set of intelligent switch ports. Client host systems connect to these ‘front-end’ ports to access the created volumes. The client host systems, the front-end ports, and the virtual LUN's all form part of the Front-End SAN 20. Note Hosts, such as Host 13 may connect directly to the IMPS.
The combined processing and intelligence of the switch and the FabricX Controller provide the connection between the client hosts in the front-end SAN and the storage in the back-end SAN. The FabricX Controller runs storage applications that are presented to the client hosts. These include the Volume Management, Data Mobility, Snapshots, Clones, and Mirrors, which are terms of art known with EMC's Clariion data storage system. In a preferred embodiment the FabricX Controller implementation is based on the CLARiiON Barracuda storage processor and the CLARiiON Flare software implementation which includes layered drivers that are discussed below.
Hardware Components
Referring to
The CPP provides support for storage and switch software applications and runs the software that handles exceptions that occur on the fast-path. Regarding where software runs, in the exemplary embodiment, software for management by the Storage and Switch Controller is shown running on the CPP; however, that is merely an example and any or all software may be loaded and run from the IMPS or anywhere in the networked environment. Additionally the CPP supports management interfaces used to configure and control the instance. The CPP is composed of redundant storage processors and is further described with reference to
The DAE, together with the disks that it contains provide the persistent storage of the meta-data for the FabricX instance. The meta data includes configuration information that identifies the components of the instance, for example, the identities of the intelligent switches that make up the instance, data describing the set of exported virtual volumes, the software for the Controller, information describing what hosts and initiators are allowed to see what volumes, etc. The DAE is further described with reference to
Referring to
Referring to
Referring to
An IMPS can be used to support virtual SAN's (VSAN's), to parse between front-end SAN's and back-end SAN's even if such SAN's are not physically configured. In general, switches that support VSANs allow a shared storage area network to be configured into separate logical SANs providing isolation between the components of different VSANs. The IMPS itself may be configured in accordance with specifications from such known switch vendors as Brocade and Cisco.
Each intelligent switch preferably contains a collection of SCSI ports, such as Fibre Channel, with translation processing functions that allow a port or associate hardware to make various transformations on the SCSI command stream flowing through that port. These transformations are performed at wire-speeds and hence have little impact on the latency of the command. However, intelligent ports are only able to make translations on read and write commands. For other SCSI commands, the port blocks the request and passes control for the request to a higher-level control function. This process is referred to as faulting the request. Faulting also occurs for read and write commands when certain conditions exist within the port. For example, a common transformation performed by an intelligent port is to map the data region of a virtual volume presented to a host to the data regions of back-end storage elements. To support this, the port maintains data that allows it to translate (map) logical block addresses of the virtual volume to logical back-end addresses on the back-end devices. If this data is not present in the port when a read or write is received, the port will fault the request to the control function. This is referred to as a map fault.
Once the control function receives a faulted request it takes whatever actions necessary to respond to the request (for example it might load missing map data), then either responds directly to the request or resumes it. The control function supported may be implemented differently on different switches. On some vendor's switches the control function is known to be supported by a processor embedded within the blade containing the intelligent ports, on others it is known to provide it as an adjunct processor which is accessed via the backplane of the switch, a third known configuration is to support the control function as a completely independent hardware component that is accessed through a network such as Fibre Channel or IP.
Back-end storage devices connect to FabricX via the Fibre Channel ports of the IMPSs that have been identified as back-end ports (oriented in
The EMS 29 connects to FabricX in a preferred embodiment through an IP network, e.g. an Ethernet network which may be accessed redundantly. The FabricX CPP 58 in a preferred embodiment has two 10/100 Mbps Ethernet NIC that is used both for connectivity to the IMPS (so that it can manage the IMPS and receive SNMP traps), and for connectivity to the EMS. It is recommended that the IP networks 624a-b provided isolation and dedicated 100 Mbps bandwidth to the IMPS and CPP.
The EMS in a preferred embodiment is configured with IP addresses for each Processor 72-74 in the FabricX CPP. This allows direct connection to each processor. Each Processor preferably has its own Fibre Channel link that provides the physical path to each IMPS in the FabricX instance. Other connections may also work, such as the use of Gigabit Ethernet control path connections between the CPP and IMPS. A logical control path is established between each Processor of the CPP and each IMPS. The control paths to IMPS's are multiplexed over the physical link that connects the respective SP of the CPP to its corresponding IMPS. The IMPS provides the internal routing necessary to send and deliver Fiber Channel frames between the SP of the CPP and the respective IMPS. Other embodiments are conceivable that could use IP connectivity for the control path. In such a case the IMPS could contain logic to route IP packets to the SP.
Software Components
Reference is made to
The CPP-based software includes a mixture of User-Level Services 122 and Kernel-mode or Kernel services 128. The Kernel services include Layered Drivers 123, Common Services 125, Switch Independent Layer (SIL) 126, and Switch Abstraction Layer-Control Path Processor (SAL-CPP) 127. The IMPS-based software preferably runs on a control processor within the vendor's switch. This processor may be embedded on an I/O blade within the switch or implemented as a separate hardware module.
The SAL-CPP 127 provides a vendor-independent interface to the services provided by the IMPS's that form a FabricX instance. This software layer creates and manages a IMPS Client for each IMPS that is part of the FabricX instance. The following services are provided by the SAL-CPP. There is a Switch Configuration and Management Services (SWITCH CONFIG & MGMT) in the SAL-CPP that provides uniform support for configuring the IMPS, zone configuration and management, name service configuration and management, discovering the ports supported by the IMPS, reporting management related events such as Registered State Change Notifications (RSCNs), and component failure notifications. The service interfaces combined with the interfaces provided by the user-level Switch Management service encapsulate the differences between different switch vendors and provide a single uniform interface to the FabricX management system. The Switch Adapter Port Driver (SAPD) of the Kernel Services 128 uses these interfaces to learn what ports are supported by the instance so that it can create the appropriate device objects representing these ports.
Referring to
Referring again to
SAL-CPP 127 provides a volume management (Volume MGMT) service interface that supports creating and destroying virtual volumes, associating virtual volumes with back-end Storage Elements, and composing virtual volumes for the purpose of aggregation, striping, mirroring, and/or slicing. The volume management service interface also can be used for loading all or part of the translation map for a volume to a virtualizer, quiescing and resuming 10 to a virtual volume, creating and destroying permission maps for a volume, and handling map cache miss faults, permission map faults, and other back-end errors. These services are used by the volume graph manager (VGM) in each SP to maintain the mapping from the virtual targets presented out the logical front of the instance to the Storage Elements on the back-end.
There are other SAL-CPP modules. The SAL copy service (COPY SVCS) functions provide the ability to copy blocks of data from one virtual volume to another. The Event Dispatcher is responsible for delivering events produced from the IMPS to the registered kernel-based services such as Path Management, VGM, Switch Manager, etc.
The Switch and Configuration Management Interface is responsible for managing the connection to an IMPS. Each Storage Processor maintains one IMPS client for each IMPS that is part of the instance. These clients are created when the Switch Manager process directs the SAL-CPP to create a session with a IMPS.
The Switch Independent Layer (SIL) 126 is a collection of higher-level switch-oriented services. These services are implemented using the lower-level services provided by the SAL-CPP. These services include:
The CPP also hosts a collection of Common Services 125 that are used by the layered application drivers. These services include:
The CPP includes Admin Libraries that provide the management software of FabricX with access to the functionality provided by the layered drivers such as the ability to create a mirrored volume or a snapshot. The Admin Libraries, one per managed layer, provide an interface running in user space to communicate with the managed layers. The CPP further includes Layered Drivers 123 providing functionality as described below for drivers denominated as Flare, FlareX (FLARE_X), Fusion, Clone/Mirror, PIT Copy, TDD, TCD, and SAPD.
Flare provides the low-level disk management support for FabricX. It is responsible for managing the local Disk Array Enclosure used for storing the data of the PSM, the operating system and FabricX software, and initial system configuration images, packages, and the like. It provides the RAID algorithms to store this data redundantly.
The FlareX component is responsible for discovering and managing the back-end storage that is consumed by the FabricX instance. It identifies what storage is available, the different paths to these Storage Elements, presents the Storage Elements to the management system and allows the system administrator to identify which Storage Elements belong to the instance. Additionally, FlareX may provide Path Management support to the system, rather than that service being provided by the SIL as shown. In such a case, FlareX would be responsible for establishing and managing the set of paths to the back-end devices consumed by a FabricX instance. And in such a care it would receive path related events from the Back-End Services of the SAL-CPP and responds to these events by, for example, activating new paths, reporting errors, or updating the state of a path.
The Fusion layered driver provides support for re-striping data across volumes and uses the capabilities of the IMPS have to implement striped and concatenated volumes. For striping, the Fusion layer (also known as the Aggregate layer), allows the storage administrator to identify a collection of volumes (identified by LUN) over which data for a new volume is striped. The number of volumes identified by the administrator determines the number of columns in the stripe set. Fusion then creates a new virtual volume that encapsulates the lower layer stripe set and presents a single volume to the layers above.
Fusion's support for volume concatenation works in a similar way; the administrator identifies a collection of volumes to concatenate together to form a larger volume. The new larger volume aggregates these lower layer volumes together and presents a single volume to the layers above. The Fusion layer supports the creation of many such striped and concatenated volumes.
Because of its unique location in the SAN infrastructure, FabricX, can implement a truly non-disruptive migration of the dataset by using the Data Mobility layer driver that is part of the Drivers 123. The client host can continue to access the virtual volume through its defined address, while FabricX moves the data and updates the volume mapping to point to the new location.
The Clone driver provides the ability to clone volumes by synchronizing the data in a source volume with one or more clone volumes. Once the data is consistent between the source and a clone, the clone is kept up-to-date with the changes made to the source by using mirroring capabilities provided by the IMPS's. Clone volumes are owned by the same FabricX instance as the source; their storage comes from the back-end Storage Elements that support the instance.
The Mirror driver supports a similar function to the clone driver however, mirrors are replicated between instances of FabricX. The mirror layered driver works in conjunction with the mirror driver in another instance of FabricX. This application provides the ability to replicate a source volume on a remote FabricX instance and keep the mirror volume in synch with the source.
The PIT (Point-In-Time) Copy driver, also known as Snap, provides the ability to create a snapshot of a volume. The snapshot logically preserves the contents of the source volume at the time the snapshot is taken. Snapshots are useful for supporting non-intrusive data backups, replicas for testing, checkpoints of a volume, and other similar uses.
The Target Class Driver and Target Disk Driver (TCD/TDD) layer provides SCSI Target support. In FabricX these drivers mostly handle non-read and write SCSI commands (such as INQUIRY, REPORT_LUNS, etc). The drivers are also responsible for error handling, when errors cannot be masked by the driver layers below, the TCD/TDD is responsible for creating the SCSI error response to send back to the host. The TCD/TDD Layer also implements support for the preferred CLARiiON functionality which provides the means of identifying what LUNs each initiator should see. This is known as LUN masking. The feature also provides for LUN mapping whereby the host visible LUN is translated to an instance-based LUN. Additionally such functionality when combined with a host agent provides the ability to identify which initiators belong to a host to simplify the provisioning of LUN masking and mapping.
The Switch Adapter Port Driver (SAPD) is presented as a Fibre-Channel Port Driver to the TCD/TDD (Target Class Driver/Target Disk Driver) drivers, but rather than interfacing with a physical port device on the SP, the driver interfaces with the SAL-CPP and creates a device object for each front-end port of each IMPS that is part of the FabricX instance. The SAPD registers with the SAL-CPP to receive non-IO SCSI commands that arrive. The SAL-CPP will deliver all non-IO SCSI commands received for LUs owned by this driver's SP to this SAPD. The SAPD runs as a kernel-mode driver.
The following services are user based: Governor and Switch Management. The Governor is an NT Service that is responsible for starting other user-level processes and monitoring their health and restarting them upon failure. The Switch Manager controls sessions created in the SAL-CPP for each IMPS. The Switch Manager is responsible for establishing the connections to the switches under its control and for monitoring and reacting to changes in their health. Each SP hosts a single Switch Manager that runs as a User-level process and a Kernel-mode service within the SP.
Reference is made once again to
The Path Management is responsible for the construction and management of paths to back-end Storage Elements and is part of Kernel-mode services. It notes when paths change state; based on these state changes it applies its path management policies to take any adjusting actions. For example, upon receiving a path failure notification, the Path Management might activate a new path to continue the level of service provided for a back-end volume.
One function of FabricX Volume Management is to combine elements of the physical storage assets of the FabricX Instance into logical devices. The initial implementation of the FabricX Volume Manager is based on the Flare Fusion Driver. As in Flare, the basic building blocks of the volumes exported by FabricX are constructed from the back-end storage devices. Each device visible to the FabricX instance will be initially represented as an un-imported Storage Element. The storage administrator will able to bind the individual storage elements into single disk RAID Groups. From these RAID Groups the administrator can define Flare Logical Units (FLU). In the FabricX environment the FLUs will be exported by the FlareX component to the layered drivers above.
Flare Fusion imports FLUs and aggregates them into Aggregate Logical Units (ALU). When a logical unit or SCSI Disk is presented to a client host it is called a Host Logical Unit (HLU). HLUs can be created by: directly exporting a FLU; exporting an ALU created by concatenating two or more FLUs; and exporting an ALU created by striping two or more FLUs.
The FabricX Inter Process Communication Transport (FIT) provides the message passing support necessary for the SAL Agents running on the IMPS's to communicate with the SAL-CPP client instance running on each SP. This transport provides a model of asynchronous communication to its clients and is responsible for monitoring and reporting on the health of the communications network connecting the IMPSs to the CPPs. FIT uses a proprietary protocol developed on top of the SCSI/FC protocol stack to provide a control path between the SPs and the IMPS's. This protocol runs over the Fibre Channel connecting the SP to the IMPS's switch. FIT supports multiple transport protocols. In addition to SCSI/FC FIT also supports TCP/IP.
FabricX preferably uses the Flare architecture from CLARiiON. This architecture uses a Windows driver stack. At the lowest layer is the code, labeled FlareX (Flare_X) that interfaces to the back-end devices. The storage applications are logically layered above FlareX as Windows device drivers, including Fusion, Mirror_View, Snap_View, Clone_View, and TCD/TDD. These layers provide support for features such as volume concatenation, striping, clones, snapshots, mirrors, and data migration. These layers also define virtualized Logical Unit objects.
This architecture includes replication layers: Snap_View, Clone_View, and Mirror_View are layered above the Fusion layer of code and consume the logical units (volumes) presented by the Fusion layer, they likewise present logical units to the layers above. The replication layers have no knowledge of back-end devices or data placement thereon.
The inventors have critically recognized that prior art storage arrays had limited processes to create clones, which are replicas stored within an array, and mirrors, which are replicas stored on different arrays. This is because the front end of an array has no way to directly access to a back end device in some other array. Remote mirroring in such prior art configurations is processed through two different arrays, one attached to a host and one attached to remote back end devices. These two arrays are then connected to each other via a WAN. However, the present invention being based on a switch and storage architecture does not have such limitations. Instead, all back end devices are equivalent irregardless of their physical location though latency of access may vary. A back end device may be connected to a back-end port of a switch through some WAN making it physically remote. With a switch-based architecture clones, which are replicas stored within the storage managed by the instance, can be created from storage that is physically remote from the Controller and switch hardware just as easily as creating it from storage which is physically close to this hardware. Only one FabricX instance is necessary, to create clones whether on physically local back-end devices or on physically remote back-end devices. However, if it is desirable to create replicas, mirrors, between instances of FabricX that is possible. For example, one might want to create a replica on another instance for the purpose of increasing data protection and providing a means to tolerate a failure of a FabricX instance, or to replicate data using an asynchronous protocol for very long distance replication.
Further Operation Details
Several components of FabricX System Management reside on Host computers (those using the storage services of FabricX and/or those managing FabricX), these are referred to as Client Components and are shown in group 18. One component in particular, Raid++, has both a client and server instance, shown respectively in host/client group 18 or server group 210. The C++ Command Line Interface CLI 200—referred to here as CLI++) component resides on any system where the user wishes to manage FabricX using a text based command line interface. This component in conjunction with the Java based CLI provide the user with control over FabricX. The security model for the CLI++ is host based; the user/IP address of the host is entered into the FabricX registry to permit/limit the user's access to system management. The CLI++ uses a client instance of Raid++ to hold the model of the FabricX instance and to manipulate the configuration of FabricX. The client resident Raid++ communicates with the server based Raid++ using a messaging scheme over TCP/IP.
The Java CLI 206 provides commands that use a different management scheme from that used by the CLI++. The Java CLI captures the user command string, packages it into an XML/HTTP message and forwards it to the CIMOM on the server group 210. The CIMOM directs the command to the CLI Provider which decomposes the command and calls methods in the various CIM providers, primarily the CLARiiON provider, to effect the change.
The Java GUI 208 provides a windows based management interface. It communicates with CIMOM using standard CIM XML/HTTP protocol. The GUI effects its changes and listens for events using standard CIM XML/HTTP. The Host Agent 204 provides optional functionality by pushing down to FabricX information about the host. The following information is forwarded by the Agent explicitly to the CPP: Initiator type, Initiator options, Host device name used for push, Hostname, Host IP address, Driver name, Host Bus Adapter (HBA) model, HBA vendor string, and Host ID.
The Event Monitor 202 resides on a host and can be configured to send email, page, SNMP traps, and/or use a preferred EMC Call Home feature for service and support. The configuration is performed on the CPP and the configuration information is pushed back to the Event Monitor. The Event Monitor may also run directly on the CPP but due to memory constraints may be limited in function in comparison to running on a host computer.
Referring again to
The management functions not provided by Raid++ are provided by a series of CIMOM providers which are attached to a CIMOM. The CIMOM provides common infrastructure services such as XML coding/decoding and HTTP message transport. The hosted services exclusively implemented in CIMOM providers are:
The above-described providers periodically poll the system infrastructure to build a model of the existing component configuration and status. If any changes are detected in configuration or status between the existing model and the newly built model, registered observers are notified of the changes. The model is then updated with the new model and saved for queries by the provider. The services of these providers can be accessed from other providers by formulating XML requests and sending them to the CIMOM. This permits providers which require the services of other providers (such as Raid++ through the CLARiiON Provider or the CIM local services such as persistent storage, directory services, or security) to access those services. Additionally Admin STL Driver Access through the server side provides access to these providers to the drivers and services of an SP as shown in group 218, including to the following drivers: Flare, Clones, Snaps, Fusion, and mirrors and services for switch management and data mobility.
Other Service Providers are shown in group 212 of the server group 210, and include the Persistent Data Service Provider, Security Provider, and Directory Service Provider. The Persistent Data Service Provider provides the CIMOM with access to the kernel-based PSM. The CIMOM uses the PSM to store meta-data relevant to the management system for example user names and passwords. The Security Provider supports authentication of users and authorization of user roles. The Directory Service Provider is used to obtain the network addresses of the systems in a domain of managed FabricX instances.
Reference will be made below to
This problem is addressed with the architecture of the present invention by using memory with the FabricX Storage Processor 26 or 28 to supplement the memory resources of the IMPS's translation unit and more efficiently use memory of each. The translation unit's memory resources are used to store a subset of the full set of extent maps for the volumes exported by the translation unit. Maps are loaded to the translation unit from the CPP both on demand and ahead of demand in a technique denoted as being a virtualizer application which is preferably software running in a SP or on the IMPS. In this embodiment, sequential access is detected and future requests are predicted using protection maps to mark the edges of unmapped regions. Access to a marked region in combination with the detection of sequential access triggers the preloading of additional maps prior to the arrival of the actual request.
I/O requests that arrive to find no mapped region are handled by loading the map from the control-processor. The control processor uses access data collected from the intelligent multi-protocol switch to determine which data to replace. Supported cache replacement algorithms include least-recently used, least frequently used. The IMPS hardware is used to detect need for extents prior to access and statistical data is collected on volume access to select which cache entries to replace. The mechanism further identifies volumes whose extent maps have become fragmented and triggers a process to reduce this fragmentation.
Referring to
Referring to
An example of solving the problem described in general is shown with reference to
Referring to
In this embodiment the storage application (
Referring to
Regarding nomenclature used for presenting an example of how this embodiment functions, in the volume group 412, V7 represents a “top level” volume, or one that is capable of being presented to a host. V6 represents a cloning volume. This volume has two children, V3 and V5, where V3 is the source for the clone and V5 is its replica. Similarly V1 and V2 are children of V3 while V4 is a child of V5. It is the children at the bottommost layer that are presented by the bottommost driver in this example (FlareX) to map the storage extents of the backend array that are of interest.
Referring now to
Information extracted from the IMPS through its API includes the type of I/O operation (e.g., read or write), a logical volume target or in this context a virtual target (VT), a virtual LUN (v-LUN), physical target, a physical LUN, block address of a physical device, length of request, and error condition. The error condition is received and that identifies the bottommost affected volume and delivered to the bottommost affected object.
Objects in the Volume Graph have one-to-one congruity with objects in the Device Graph, as follows. At the top layer (V7) the Volume Graph Object G represents a slice volume. A slice volume represents a “slice” or partition of its child volume. It has only one child volume and presents a (possibly complete) contiguous subset of the data of this child volume. The next layer down (V6) is congruently mapped to element F represents the mirrored volume. V3 represents an aggregated volume consisting of the concatenation of volumes V1 and V2. Volume V5 is a slice volume that presents the data of V4. Slice Volume Objects A, B, and D, are congruent with Device Graph Objects V1, V2, and V4, respectively.
Upon receiving an error, the Bottommost Volume Graph Object will deliver the error to its corresponding Device Graph Object. The Device Graph Object as the owner of the error can decide how to handle, e.g. propagate the error up the layer stack, or deal with it directly and not propagate it. Two goals are carried out in the error presentation: consistent presentation to the host, and masking of errors which involves using independent capabilities of the FabricX architecture to solve problems for the host at the unique middle-layer level of a FabricX instance.
Reference is made below to
In handling the error in this example, there are two cases for handling in keeping with the goals discussed above: (a) Case 1—error is not delivered back to host but rather handled by a Device Object at the FabricX instance level; or (b) Case 2—error is transformed to have the error personality of FabricX. Each method of handling is explained in the example, continued with the flow-diagrams of
Referring to
Referring to
Traditionally storage is allocated to hosts by identifying available space on physical storage devices, configuring this storage as a volume, and presenting it to the host. This method suffers from two problems: (1) under utilization of physical storage. Physical storage goes unused and is wasted if the host never accesses all of the storage allocated to it, and (2) costly storage administration. If insufficient storage is allocated to the host, additional storage must be identified, configured, and presented to the host. Hosts that frequently need additional storage require frequent attention from the storage administrator. This increases the costs of operating these hosts.
Methods enabled by the elements and architecture of
A so-called thinly provisioned volume is configured on the storage system whereby this volume advertises a maximum capacity (e.g. 2 TB) limited only by the size of the address space used by the host and the storage array, also referred to as a storage system. No physical storage or minimal physical storage is assigned to the volume at this time. The full capacity of the volume is marked in the storage system as unallocated. The volume is then presented to the host which believes it has a maximally sized volume allocated to it. Doing this thin provisioning within the network provides advantages over prior art methods of doing thin provisioning, and elements of the architecture of
Referring to
The Virtualizer 610 implements virtualization of the IO stream 617. This entity is typically realized as an Intelligent Multi-Protocol Switch, such as that shown in
The Storage Virtualizer presents virtual volumes to Hosts 600, 602, and 606 (although only 3 Hosts are shown, many are possible, as will occur to one skilled in the art). VV 611 represents a virtual volume that is thinly provisioned and draws storage from disks accessible to the Storage Virtualizer either through the SAN or via direct connections. The Storage Virtualizer contains a Volume Virtualization Acceleration Services (VVAS) 614 that is responsible for using the services of the Storage Virtualizer to optimize the processing of IO through virtual volumes.
The VVAS 614 contains application specific code such as a Thin Provisioning Accelerator (TPA) 621 that is responsible for implementing application specific logic on the VVAS. For Thin Provisioning the TPA controls the loading of translation maps that identify what regions of the volume are allocated and unallocated and the physical storage that is bound to these regions. The TPA is able to perform tests on the data carried by IO's to determine if it matches expected deterministic data.
The Storage and Switch Controller is implemented with redundancy for high-availability. It is responsible for controlling a collection of Storage Virtualizers and contains a Virtual Volume Management Service (VVMS) 615. The Virtual Volume Management Service is responsible for controlling storage virtualization applications across the collection of Storage Virtualizers that make up the instance. The VVMS contains support for a collection of application modules that each have responsibility for the centralized control of their respective application functions. The Thin Provisioning Controller (TPC) 623 is one such module that controls the Thin Provisioning Accelerators and is responsible for coordination of physical storage allocation across these accelerators.
Referring to
The two problems described above are addressed as described below. Physical storage is only allocated where it is used addressing the problem of under utilization of physical storage. Physical storage is assigned automatically by the storage system when this storage is needed to service writes. This reduces administrative costs by limiting the interactions the storage administrator has with the host.
The traditional concept of thin provisioning is a virtualization that can be realized in a traditional single storage array. However, the inventors have critically recognized there is an underlying problem in using provisioning in the traditional sense because a storage array typically has a maximum capacity for physical storage that is limited by the cabinets and fabric connections that make up the array. Thus, with prior art thin provisioning methods, it is possible for the array to over-subscribe storage, advertising more storage to hosts than it can actually provide. When the actual demand for physical storage exceeds this capacity, requests from hosts accessing unallocated storage will start to fail.
This problem is addressed with the elements of
Another problem occurs in prior art systems that is overcome by the architecture and elements of
The inventors have critically recognized that much of the initial format writes and application volume initialization is deterministic or predictable. The network-based thin provisioning application provided by the elements of
Reference is now made to
Referring to
Reference is made to
A system and method has been described for managing one or more data storage networks at a middle-layer level using a new architecture, and including management of provisioning of storage resources in such networks. Having described a preferred embodiment of the present invention, it may occur to skilled artisans to incorporate these concepts into other embodiments. Nevertheless, this invention should not be limited to the disclosed embodiment, but rather only by the spirit and scope of the following claims and their equivalents.
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/810,988 entitled “System And Method For Managing Storage Networks And Providing Virtualization Of Resources In Such A Network” filed on Mar. 26, 2004, and which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by this reference. This application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 10/810,971 filed on Mar. 26, 2004 and entitled “System And Method For Managing Storage Networks And For Managing Scalability Of Volumes In Such A Network” and which is assigned to the same assignee as this application. This application also is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 10/809,959 filed on Mar. 26, 2004 and entitled “System And Method For Managing Storage Networks And For Handling Errors In Such A Network”. Additionally, this application is related to co-pending U.S. Application Serial No. To Be Determined filed on even date with this application and entitled “System and Method for Managing Provisioning of Storage Resources in a Network with Virtualization of Resources in such a Network” and which is assigned to the same assignee as this application.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
6959373 | Testardi | Oct 2005 | B2 |
6973549 | Testardi | Dec 2005 | B1 |
6985956 | Luke et al. | Jan 2006 | B2 |
6986015 | Testardi | Jan 2006 | B2 |
7013379 | Testardi | Mar 2006 | B1 |
7206863 | Oliveira et al. | Apr 2007 | B1 |
7216264 | Glade et al. | May 2007 | B1 |
7225317 | Glade et al. | May 2007 | B1 |
7315914 | Venkatanarayanan et al. | Jan 2008 | B1 |
7379990 | Tsao | May 2008 | B2 |
7409495 | Kekre et al. | Aug 2008 | B1 |
7620774 | Waxman et al. | Nov 2009 | B1 |
7620775 | Waxman et al. | Nov 2009 | B1 |
7739448 | Oliveira et al. | Jun 2010 | B1 |
7770059 | Glade et al. | Aug 2010 | B1 |
7818515 | Umbehocker et al. | Oct 2010 | B1 |
7818517 | Glade et al. | Oct 2010 | B1 |
7849262 | Glade et al. | Dec 2010 | B1 |
7958305 | Oliveira et al. | Jun 2011 | B1 |
7984253 | Glade et al. | Jul 2011 | B1 |
7992038 | Glade et al. | Aug 2011 | B1 |
8032701 | Glade et al. | Oct 2011 | B1 |
8219681 | Glade et al. | Jul 2012 | B1 |
8281022 | Bopardikar et al. | Oct 2012 | B1 |
8291094 | Bast et al. | Oct 2012 | B2 |
20030126132 | Kavuri et al. | Jul 2003 | A1 |
20030217129 | Knittel et al. | Nov 2003 | A1 |
20040133634 | Luke et al. | Jul 2004 | A1 |
20050025075 | Dutt et al. | Feb 2005 | A1 |
20050066120 | Ohta et al. | Mar 2005 | A1 |
20050066225 | Rowan et al. | Mar 2005 | A1 |
20050138184 | Amir | Jun 2005 | A1 |
20060161642 | Bopardikar et al. | Jul 2006 | A1 |
20060224844 | Kano et al. | Oct 2006 | A1 |
20060242378 | Kano | Oct 2006 | A1 |
20080201391 | Arakawa et al. | Aug 2008 | A1 |
20100274963 | Innan et al. | Oct 2010 | A1 |
Entry |
---|
The Cisco MDS 9500 Series Supervisor Module, Cisco. |
U.S. Appl. No. 12/946,424, Bradford B. Glade et al. |
U.S. Appl. No. 13/155,734, Bradford B. Glade et al. |
U.S. Appl. No. 13/166,096, Bradford B. Glade et al. |
U.S. Appl. No. 13/217,400, Bradford B. Glade et al. |
U.S. Appl. No. 13/443,002, Wentworth, III, James A. et al. |
U.S. Appl. No. 13/591,579, filed Dec. 20, 2012, Raju C. Bopardikar et al. |
Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Fibre Channel Switches, Cisco. |
Internet, Cisco. |
US—Using VSANs and Zoning in the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Fibre Channel Switches, Cisco. |
US—Virtual Storage Area Network, Cisco. |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 11731469 | Mar 2007 | US |
Child | 13443002 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 10810988 | Mar 2004 | US |
Child | 11731469 | US | |
Parent | 09608521 | Jun 2000 | US |
Child | 10810988 | US |