Patent Grant
8726067
This application is related to the field of data storage and, more particularly, to systems for managing data sharing over one or more networks.
In current storage networks, and particularly storage networks including geographically remote directors (or nodes) and storage resources, preserving or reducing bandwidth between resources and directors while providing optimized data availability and access is highly desirable. Data access may be localized, in part, to improve access speed to pages requested by host devices. Caching pages at directors provides localization, however, it is desirable that the cached data be kept coherent with respect to modifications at other directors that may be caching the same data. An example of a system for providing distributed cache coherence is described in U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2006/0031450 to Unrau et al., entitled “Systems and Methods for Providing Distributed Cache Coherency,” which is incorporated herein by reference. Other systems and techniques for managing and sharing storage array functions among multiple storage groups in a storage network are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,706 to Brown et al. entitled “Methods and Systems for Implementing Shared Disk Array Management Functions,” which is incorporated herein by reference.
Data transfer among storage devices, including transfers for data replication or mirroring functions, may involve various data synchronization processing and techniques to provide reliable protection copies of data among a source site and a destination site. In synchronous transfers, data may be transmitted to a remote site and an acknowledgement of a successful write is transmitted synchronously with the completion thereof. In asynchronous transfers, a data transfer process may be initiated and a data write may be acknowledged before the data is actually transferred to directors at the remote site. Asynchronous transfers may occur in connection with sites located geographically distant from each other. Asynchronous distances may be distances in which asynchronous transfers are used because synchronous transfers would take more time than is preferable or desired. Particularly for asynchronous transfers, it is desirable to maintain a proper ordering of writes such that any errors or failures that occur during data transfer may be properly identified and addressed such that, for example, incomplete data writes be reversed or rolled back to a consistent data state as necessary. Reference is made, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 7,475,207 to Bromling et al. entitled “Maintaining Write Order Fidelity on a Multi-Writer System,” which is incorporated herein by reference, that discusses features for maintaining write order fidelity (WOF) in an active/active system in which a plurality of directors (i.e. controllers and/or access nodes) at geographically separate sites can concurrently read and/or write data in a distributed data system. Discussions of data ordering techniques for synchronous and asynchronous data replication processing for other types of systems, including types of remote data facility (RDF) systems produced by EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, Mass., may be found, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,613,890 to Meiri, entitled “Consistent Replication Across Multiple Storage Devices,” U.S. Pat. No. 7,054,883 to Meiri et al., entitled “Virtual Ordered Writes for Multiple Storage Devices,” and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/080,027 to Meiri et al., filed Mar. 31, 2008, entitled “Active/Active Remote Synchronous Mirroring,” which are all incorporated herein by reference and are assigned to the assignee of the present application.
In an active/active storage system, if there are multiple interfaces to a storage device, each of the interfaces may provide equal access to the storage device. With active/active storage access, hosts in different locations may have simultaneous read/write access via respective interfaces to the same storage device. Various failures in an active/active system may adversely impact synchronization and hinder the ability of the system to recover. Especially problematic are failure scenarios in active/active storage systems involving asynchronous data transmissions.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an effective and efficient system to address issues like that noted above for a distributed storage system, particularly in an active/active storage system.
According to the system described herein, a method for providing mobility of a virtual machine between a first site and a second site of an active/active system is disclosed. For a virtual machine operating on the first site, it may be determined that the second site is a destination site between the first site and the second site. While the virtual machine is operating on the first site, storage data may be transferred from the first site to the second site. Operation of the virtual machine may be suspended on the first site. Operation of the virtual machine may be resumed on the second site. In the event of link failure between the first site and the second site, operation of the virtual machine may be maintained on the second site. Determining that the second site is the destination site may occur in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The destination site may be indicated by a user. The virtual machine may be transferred from the first site to the second site by transferring an image of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. Each of the first site and second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster and at least one storage array. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance. Following a failure, the active/active system may transition to an active/passive system.
According further to the system described herein, a non-transitory computer readable medium stores software for providing mobility of a virtual machine between a first site and a second site of an active/active system. The software may include executable code that, for a virtual machine operating on the first site, determines that the second site is a destination site between the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that, while the virtual machine is operating on the first site, transfers storage data from the first site to the second site. Executable code may be provided that suspends operation of the virtual machine on the first site. Executable code may be provided that resumes operation of the virtual machine on the second site. Executable code may be provided that, in the event of link failure between the first site and the second site, maintains operation of the virtual machine on the second site. The executable code that determines that the second site is the destination site may perform in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The destination site may be indicated by a user. The virtual machine may be transferred from the first site to the second site by executable code that transfers an image of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. Each of the first site and second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster and at least one storage array. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance. Following a failure, the active/active system may transition to an active/passive system.
According further to the system described herein, an active/active system includes a first site and a second site located remotely from the first site. Each of the first site and the second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster, and at least one storage array. A computer readable medium of the host cluster and/or the director cluster may store software for providing mobility of a virtual machine between the first site and the second site. The software may include executable code that, for the virtual machine operating on the first site, determines that the second site is a destination site between the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that, while the virtual machine is operating on the first site, transfers storage data from the first site to the second site. Executable code may be provided that suspends operation of the virtual machine on the first site. Executable code may be provided that resumes operation of the virtual machine on the second site. Executable code may be provided that, in the event of link failure between the first site and the second site, maintains operation of the virtual machine on the second site. The executable code that determines that the second site is the destination site may perform in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The destination site may be indicated by a user. The virtual machine may be transferred from the first site to the second site by executable code that transfers an image of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance. Following a failure, the active/active system may transition to an active/passive system.
According further to the system described herein, a method for operating a virtual machine using a first site and a second site of an active/active system is provided. A host cluster and a director cluster may be identified at each of the first site and the second site. A first link may be provided between the host cluster of the first site and the host cluster of the second site. A second link may be provided between the director cluster of the first site and the director cluster of the second site, the first link being different from the second link. A virtual machine may be operated on the first site. While the virtual machine is operating on the first site, storage data may be transferred from the first site to the second site. An image of the virtual machine may be transferred from the first site to the second site. At least one of the following may be performed: (i) the storage data is transferred using the first link or (ii) the image of the virtual machine is transferred using the second link. The storage data may be transferred using the first link and the image of the virtual machine may be transferred using the second link. Each of the first site and second site may include at least one storage array. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance. The second site may be determined as a preferred site in event of a link failure between the first site and the second site. This determining that the second site is the preferred site may occur in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The determination that the at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine may trigger the transferring of the storage data and the virtual machine image to the second site.
According further to the system described herein, a non-transitory computer readable medium stores software for operating a virtual machine among a first site and a second site of an active/active system. The software may include executable code that identifies a host cluster and a director cluster at each of the first site and the second site. A first link may be provided between the host cluster of the first site and the host cluster of the second site. A second link may be provided between the director cluster of the first site and the director cluster of the second site, the first link being different than the second link. Executable code is provided that operates a virtual machine on the first site. Executable code may be provided that, while the virtual machine is operating on the first site, transfers data corresponding to operation of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. Executable code may be provided that transfers an image of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. At least one of the following may be performed: (i) the storage data is transferred using the first link; or (ii) the image of the virtual machine is transferred using the second link. The storage data may be transferred using the first link and the image of the virtual machine is transferred using the second link. Each of the first site and second site may include at least one storage array. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance. Executable code may be provided that determines that the second site is a preferred site in event of a link failure between the first site and the second site. The executable code that determines that the second site is the preferred site may operate in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The determination that the at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine may trigger the transferring of the data and the image to the second site.
According further to the system described herein, an active/active system may include a first site and a second site located remotely from the first site. Each of the first site and the second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster, and at least one storage array. A computer readable medium may be provided for the host cluster and/or the director cluster that stores software. The software may include executable code that identifies a host cluster and a director cluster at each of the first site and the second site. A first link may be provided between the host cluster of the first site and the host cluster of the second site. A second link may be provided between the director cluster of the first site and the director cluster of the second site, the first link being different than the second link. Executable code may be provided that operates a virtual machine on the first site. Executable code may be provided that, while the virtual machine is operating on the first site, transfers data corresponding to operation of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. Executable code may be provided that transfers an image of the virtual machine from the first site to the second site. At least one of the following may be performed: (i) the storage data is transferred using the first link; or (ii) the image of the virtual machine is transferred using the second link. The storage data may be transferred using the first link and the image of the virtual machine is transferred using the second link. Each of the first site and second site may include at least one storage array. Executable code may be provided that determines that the second site is a preferred site in event of a link failure between the first site and the second site. The executable code that determines that the second site is the preferred site may operate in response to a determination that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The determination that the at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine may trigger the transferring of the data and the image to the second site.
According further to the system described herein, a method for providing prior operation states of a virtual machine in a storage system having at least one storage array is provided. It may be determined that a trigger for taking a snapshot image of the virtual machine and a snapshot of a storage array state has occurred. The snapshot image of the virtual machine may be taken. The snapshot of the storage array state may be taken. The snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state may be made available for subsequent access to rollback the virtual machine and storage array state to a prior state. The trigger may include a determination that a failure condition has occurred. The failure condition may be a state that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The trigger may be initiated by a user. The snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state may correspond to a write order fidelity processing state. The write order fidelity processing state may, for a set of data being transmitted from a first site to a second site, be a state of the set of the data that is transmitted prior to the trigger and may include at least some data that is on the first site and the second site. The virtual machine and the storage array state may be rolled back to a state corresponding to the snapshot image of the virtual machine and the storage array state in response to a failure in the system.
According further to the system described herein, a non-transitory computer readable medium stores software for providing prior operation states of a virtual machine in a storage system having at least one storage array. The software may include executable code that determines that a trigger for taking a snapshot image of the virtual machine and a snapshot of a storage array state has occurred. Executable code may be provided that takes the snapshot image of the virtual machine. Executable code may be provided that takes the snapshot of the storage array state. Executable code may be provided that makes the snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state available for subsequent access to rollback the virtual machine and storage array state to a prior state. The trigger may include a determination that a failure condition has occurred. The failure condition may be a state that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The trigger may be initiated by a user. The snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state may correspond to a write order fidelity processing state. The write order fidelity processing state may, for a set of data being transmitted from a first site to a second site, be a state of the set of the data that is transmitted prior to the trigger and may include at least some data that is on the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that rolls back the virtual machine and the storage array state to a state corresponding to the snapshot image of the virtual machine and the storage array state in response to a failure in the system.
According further to the system described herein, an active/active system may include a first site and a second site located remotely from the first site. Each of the first site and the second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster, and at least one storage array. A computer readable medium may be provided for the host cluster and/or the director cluster that stores software. The software may include executable code that determines that a trigger for taking a snapshot image of the virtual machine and a snapshot of a storage array state has occurred. Executable code may be provided that takes the snapshot image of the virtual machine. Executable code may be provided that takes the snapshot of the storage array state. Executable code may be provided that makes the snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state available for subsequent access to rollback the virtual machine and storage array state to a prior state. The trigger may include a determination that a failure condition has occurred. The failure condition may be a state that at least one additional failure will result in a lack of resources to maintain operation of the virtual machine. The snapshot image of the virtual machine and the snapshot of the storage array state may correspond to a write order fidelity processing state. The write order fidelity processing state may, for a set of data being transmitted from a first site to a second site, be a state of the set of the data that is transmitted prior to the trigger and may include at least some data that is on the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that rolls back the virtual machine and the storage array state to a state corresponding to the snapshot image of the virtual machine and the storage array state in response to a failure in the system.
According further to the system described herein, a method for responding to a failure in an active/active system is provided. It may be determined that a failure has occurred in connection with a first site and a second site. A winning site and a losing site may be determined from among the first site and the second site. It may be determined whether to perform at least one of: a push operation, a pull operation or both to obtain or identify data from the losing site in order to maintain I/O operations on the data at the winning site. A message may be sent to the losing site concerning the data. The message may depend on whether to perform the push operation, the pull operation or both. A response to the message may be received. For the push operation, the message may be an inquiry to the losing site about the data. The response may be a first transmission that includes transferring ownership of clean data blocks to the winning site. After the first transmission, a second transmission may transfer dirty data blocks and ownership of the dirty data blocks to the winning site. For the pull operation, the message may be a command to the losing site concerning dirty and clean data blocks. The response may depends on whether the data blocks are dirty or clean and include: for clean data blocks, transferring ownership thereof to the winning site, and for dirty data blocks, transferring the dirty data blocks and ownership thereof to the winning site. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance.
According further to the system described herein, a non-transitory computer readable medium may include software for responding to a failure in an active/active system. The software may include executable code that determines that a failure has occurred in connection with a first site and a second site. Executable code may be provided that determines a winning site and a losing site from among the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that determines whether to perform at least one of: a push operation, a pull operation or both to obtain or identify data from the losing site in order to maintain I/O operations on the data at the winning site. Executable code may be provided that sends a message to the losing site concerning the data. The message may depend on whether to perform the push operation, the pull operation or both. Executable code may be provided that receives a response to the message. For the push operation, the message may be an inquiry to the losing site about the data. The response may be a first transmission that includes transferring ownership of clean data blocks to the winning site. After the first transmission, a second transmission may transfer dirty data blocks and ownership of the dirty data blocks to the winning site. For the pull operation, the message may be a command to the losing site concerning dirty and clean data blocks. The response may depend on whether the data blocks are dirty or clean and include: for clean data blocks, transferring ownership thereof to the winning site, and for dirty data blocks, transferring the dirty data blocks and ownership thereof to the winning site. The second site may be located remotely from the first site across an asynchronous distance.
According further to the system described herein, an active/active system may include a first site and a second site located remotely from the first site. Each of the first site and the second site may include at least one host cluster, at least one director cluster, and at least one storage array. A computer readable medium may be provided for the host cluster and/or the director cluster that stores software. The software may include executable code that determines that a failure has occurred in connection with a first site and a second site. Executable code may be provided that determines a winning site and a losing site from among the first site and the second site. Executable code may be provided that determines whether to perform at least one of: a push operation, a pull operation or both to obtain or identify data from the losing site in order to maintain I/O operations on the data at the winning site. Executable code may be provided that sends a message to the losing site concerning the data. The message may depend on whether to perform the push operation, the pull operation or both. Executable code may be provided that receives a response to the message. For the push operation, the message may be an inquiry to the losing site about the data. The response may be a first transmission that includes transferring ownership of clean data blocks to the winning site. After the first transmission, a second transmission may transfer dirty data blocks and ownership of the dirty data blocks to the winning site. For the pull operation, the message may be a command to the losing site concerning dirty and clean data blocks. The response may depend on whether the data blocks are dirty or clean and includes: for clean data blocks, transferring ownership thereof to the winning site, and for dirty data blocks, transferring the dirty data blocks and ownership thereof to the winning site.
Embodiments of the system described herein are explained with reference to the several figures of the drawings, which are briefly described as follows.
Each of the hosts 10 may be communicably coupled to one or more of directors 20 over one or more network connections 15, 16. It is noted that host devices 10 may be operatively coupled with directors 20 over any of a number of connection schemes as required for the specific application and geographical location relative to each of the directors 20, including, for example, a direct wired or wireless connection, an Internet connection, a local area network (LAN) type connection, a wide area network (WAN) type connection, a VLAN, a proprietary network connection, a Fibre channel (FC) network etc. Furthermore, hosts may also be coupled to one another via the networks 15, 16 and/or operationally via a different network 5 and several of the hosts 10 may be clustered together at one or more sites in which the sites are geographically distant from one another. It is also noted that in various embodiments the networks 15, 16 may be combined with the SAN networks 30, 31.
Each of the directors 20 may also include, or be communicably coupled with, one or more file systems, such as a virtual machine file system (VMFS), a new technology file system (NTFS) and/or other appropriate file system, and may be communicably coupled with one or multiple storage resources 40, 41, each including one or more disk drives and/or other storage volumes, over one or more storage area networks (SAN) 30, 31, and/or other appropriate network, such as a LAN, WAN, etc. The directors 20 may be located in close physical proximity to each other, and/or one or more may be remotely located, e.g., geographically remote, from other directors, as further discussed elsewhere herein. It is possible for the SANs 30, 31 to be coupled together, and/or for embodiments of the system described herein to operate on the same SAN, as illustrated by a dashed line between the SAN 30 and the SAN 31. Each of the directors 20 may also be able to intercommunicate with other directors over a network 25, such as a public or private network, a peripheral component interconnected (PCI) bus, a Fibre Channel (FC) network, an Ethernet network and/or an InfiniBand network, among other appropriate networks. In other embodiments, the directors may also be able to communicate over the SANs 30, 31 and/or over the networks 15, 16. Several of the directors 20 may be clustered together at one or more sites and in which the sites are geographically distant from one another. The system described herein may be used in connection with a vSphere and/or VPLEX product produced by VMware Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. and EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, Mass., respectively. The system described herein may also be used in connection with an RDF storage product produced by EMC Corporation, such as a Symmetrix product. Although discussed and illustrated in connection with embodiment for a distributed storage system, the system described herein may generally be used in connection with any appropriate distributed processing system.
Each distributed cache manager 26 may be responsible for providing coherence mechanisms for shared data across a distributed set of directors. In general, the distributed cache manager 26 may include a module with software executing on a processor or other intelligence module (e.g., ASIC) in a director. The distributed cache manager 26 may be implemented in a single director or distributed across multiple intercommunicating directors. In certain aspects, each of the directors 20 may be embodied as a controller device, or blade, communicably coupled to one or more of the SANs 30, 31 that allows access to data stored on the storage networks. However, it may be appreciated that a director may also be embodied as an intelligent fabric switch, a hub adapter and/or other appropriate network device and may also be implemented as a virtual machine, as further discussed elsewhere herein. Because Locality Conscious Directory Migration (LCDM) is applicable to databases, any suitable networked director may be configured to operate as an access node with distributed cache manager functionality. For example, a distributed cache manager may be run on one or more desktop computers and/or virtual machines with a network connection.
According to the system described herein, a distributed storage system may enable a storage device to be exported from multiple distributed directors, which may be either appliances or arrays, for example. With an active/active storage system, hosts in different locations may have simultaneous write access to mirrored exported storage device(s) through a local front-end thereof (i.e., a director). The distributed storage system may be responsible for providing globally consistent and coherent data access. The system described herein may be used in connection with enabling the distributed storage system to meet consistency guarantees and maximize data access even in response to failures that may cause inconsistent data within the distributed storage system.
Using virtualization software, one or more of the physical servers may be subdivided into a plurality of virtual machines. A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine that executes programs like a physical machine. Virtualization software allows multiple VMs with separate operating systems to run in isolation on the same physical machine. Each VM may have its own set of virtual hardware (e.g., RAM, CPU, NIC, etc.) upon which an operating system and applications are loaded. The operating system may see a consistent, normalized set of hardware regardless of the actual physical hardware components. The term “virtualization software” is used herein to generally refer to any and all software that supports the operation of one or more VMs. A number of virtualization software products exist, including the VMware product family provided by VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. A benefit of providing VMs is the ability to host multiple, unrelated, clients in a single physical server. The virtualization software may maintain separation of each of the clients, and in which each of the clients separately access their own virtual server(s). Other virtualization products that may be used in connection with the system described herein include Hyper-V by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., public license virtualization products and/or other appropriate virtualization software.
Configuring and deploying VMs is known in the field of computer science. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,577,722 to Khandekar, et al., entitled “Provisioning of Computer Systems Using Virtual Machines,” which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses techniques for configuring and deploying a VM according to user specifications. VMs may be provisioned with respect to any appropriate resource, including, for example, storage resources, CPU processing resources and/or memory. Operations of VMs may include using virtual machine images. A virtual machine image is the image of the virtual machine as it resides in the host's memory. A virtual machine image may be obtained for an operating VM and transferred to another location where the VM continues execution from the state defined by the virtual machine image. In this way, the virtual machine image may be a snapshot of an execution state of a program by a VM that may be moved between different locations and processing thereafter continued without interruption.
In a virtualization environment, a virtual center, that may be referred to as a vCenter, may provide a central point of control for managing, monitoring, provisioning and migrating virtual machines. Virtual centers may operate to control virtual machines in data centers and in connection with cloud computing including using both internal and external cloud infrastructures and hybrids thereof.
The data centers 102, 104 may contain any number of processors and storage devices that are configured to provide the functionality described herein. In an embodiment herein, the storage devices may be Symmetrix storage arrays provided by EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, Mass. Other appropriate types of storage devices and different types of processing devices may also be used in connection with the system described herein. The data centers 102, 104 may be configured similarly to each other or may be configured differently. The network 106 may be any network or similar mechanism allowing data communication between the data centers 102, 104. In an embodiment herein, the network 106 may be the Internet and/or any other appropriate network and each of the data centers 102, 104 may be coupled thereto using any appropriate mechanism. In other embodiments, the network 106 may represent a direct connection (e.g., a physical connection) between the data centers 102, 104.
In various embodiments, VMs may be migrated from a source one of the data centers 102, 104 to a destination one of the data centers 102, 104. VMs may be transferred from one data site to another, including VM mobility over geographical distances, for example, for reasons of disaster avoidance, load balancing and testing, among other reasons. For a discussion of migrating VMs, reference is made to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/932,080 to Meiri et al., filed Feb. 17, 2011, entitled “VM Mobility Over Distance,” which is incorporated herein by reference and is assigned to the assignee of the present application. A product, such as EMC's VPLEX Geo and/or VPLEX Global, may be used to enable the resources of disparate storage systems in geographically dispersed data centers to be federated together and utilized as a single pool of virtual storage. VPLEX Geo or Global provide for data mobility, availability and collaboration through active/active data over distance with the ability to non-disruptively move many VMs.
Various types of failures, including network failures within a cluster, may result in behaviors that are further discussed elsewhere herein. It should be noted that the host cluster 210a,b (e.g., vSphere cluster) may be connected in such a way that VMs can keep their network (e.g., IP, FC, IB) addresses when migrating between clusters (for example, by means of a vLan or an open vSwitch). In an embodiment, VPLEX Geo may be used and configured to expose one or more distributed volumes from both VPLEX director clusters. A VMFS may be created on top of these distributed volumes allowing VMs that migrate between the sites to see the same file system in either site. It is also noted that, as illustrated and according to various embodiments, each site 201, 202 may include redundancies in hosts, directors and links therebetween. It should be noted that the active/active system described herein may also be used in active/passive functioning as appropriate or desired.
I/O access may be provided to distributed volumes in an active/active system with two sites separated by an asynchronous distance. For asynchronous operation, a write operation to cluster at a remote site may be acknowledged as soon as a protection copy is made within the cluster. Sometime later the write data is synchronized to the remote site. Similarly, writes to the remote site are later synchronized to a cluster at the local site. Software or other controllers at the director clusters, such as VPLEX, may present the same image of the data on either cluster to provide a cache-coherent view of the data. In an embodiment, this may be achieved by fetching data that has not yet been replicated between a source and destination site (i.e. “dirty” data; as compared with “clean” data which has been copied and is protected on multiple sites) over the inter-cluster link on an as needed basis. In the background, the controller (VPLEX) may synchronize the oldest dirty data between the clusters.
The above operations may work as long as the inter-cluster network is available. If the inter-cluster link fails, both clusters may contain dirty data that is unknown by the respective remote clusters. As a consequence of this failure, the director cluster may rollback the image of the data to a write order consistent point. In other words, the director cluster may rollback the image of the data to a point where it knows the data that is available on both clusters, or to a time where the write data was exchanged between both sites. The director cluster may also guarantee rollback to an image of the disk or volume that is write order consistent, which means that if the data of a specific write is available on the volume, all data of writes that were acknowledged before (“preceded”) that write should be present too. Write order consistency is a feature that allows databases to recover by inspecting the volume image. As noted elsewhere herein, known techniques may provide write order consistency by bucketing writes in what are called deltas and providing the consistency on a delta boundary basis (see, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 7,475,207 to Bromling et al.).
Suspend/resume migration processing may involve suspending a VM in the source site and resuming that VM in the destination site. Before the suspended VM is resumed, all dirty data for the affected VMFS may be synchronized from the source VPLEX cluster to the destination VPLEX cluster, and the preference (i.e. “winner” site) for the distributed volume may be changed from the source cluster to the destination cluster. The preference attribute may be related to a VPLEX consistency group that contains one or more VMs. Hence, the VM may be in a consistency group of its own or all VMs in a consistency group may be migrated together. To know when the synchronization of VPLEX's dirty cache is finished, the customer may map the VMFS to a distributed volume.
Failures may also occur when a VM is migrated while performing I/O operations. The migration of a VM during I/O operations may be referred to herein as “vMotion” and may be facilitated by a VMware product called vMotion. In a director network failure situation during VM migration, both the source cluster directors and the destination cluster directors may contain dirty data. A similar problem may occur when multiple VMs have to be migrated together because they all access one VMFS volume. In an embodiment, this problem could be alleviated by suspending the restart of the VM on the destination cluster until the director cluster (e.g., VPLEX cluster) cache has been synchronized; however, such operation may cause undesirable delays.
In various embodiments, many of the failure scenarios for VM migration may result in the same behavior as for that of suspend/resume migration failure behavior results. Table 2 describes the failure scenarios where the VM migration (e.g., vMotion) results in different behaviors as compared with the suspend/resume migration processing of Table 1. Note that in Table 2, the identified scenarios from Table 1 are split in two: one for the case where dirty data is on the non-preferred cluster and one where dirty data is not on the non-preferred cluster.
Once a director cluster (e.g., VPLEX Geo) has a vulnerability where one additional failure (or a limited number of additional failures) would result in Data Unavailability (DU) in a site according to the system described herein, it may start taking proactive measures to prevent this DU from happening. In other words, the system may transition towards an active/passive model. This may involve determining which site is a less vulnerable or otherwise preferred site in the event of the failure. Thereafter, the system may migrate all VMs to the less vulnerable (preferred) site (away from the more vulnerable site). If both sites are vulnerable to the same degree, the VMs are migrated to the customer's indicated preferred site. The director cluster (VPLEX) may initiate these migrations by specifying a “must” preference through an interface to a vCenter. According to various embodiments, a must preference from VPLEX to vSphere indicates on what ESX hosts VMs must be running in order to have and retain access to a specific virtual volume. A must preference from vSphere to VPLEX indicates on what directors a virtual volume must survive in order for VMs to have and retain access to it. Contrast this to a “should” preference for where the winning clusters contains the same volume image as the losing or stopped cluster. A should preference from VPLEX to vSphere indicates on what ESX hosts VMs should ideally be (this is a useful preference for VPLEX Metro). A should preference from vSphere to VPLEX indicates on what directors a virtual volume should ideally survive. The migrating of VMs to the site with access to its array improves I/O performance.
In embodiments like that discussed above, VPLEX Geo or Global, in combination with vSphere, may proactively migrate VMs to ensure that one additional failure (or a limited number of additional failures) will not cause a DU. Of course if the additional failure happens before the VMs are all moved the DU can still be encountered. Once vSphere has a vulnerability where one additional failure (or a limited number of additional failures) results in lack of resources to run all VMs in one site or to move all VMs to one site, it should notify VPLEX about its shortcomings. This may result in overruling the customer's indicated preferred site. Depending on the nature of the resource problem a should or must preference is given. Ideally, a should preference may be used when all VMs can run on one site but some resources become overcommitted based on limits in vSphere's resource allocations. A must preference may be used when VMs can no longer run on one site because of Reservations specified in vSphere's Resource Allocation. A must preference may also be used when the vSphere inter-cluster link becomes vulnerable.
In another embodiment, when both clusters contain dirty cache data, the director clusters 220a,b may discard some of the last writes in order for the customer to carry on operations. As further discussed elsewhere herein, the director clusters 220a,b may rollback the volume image to a write order consistent image, which means that an image from some prior point in time will be restored.
According to various embodiment of the system described herein, it may be advantageous to avoid occurrences of VM image rollback, particular in connection with addressing a situation where a last independent inter-cluster link fails during or shortly after a VM migration and causes not all data to be available on the cluster that is the target of the VM migration.
In an embodiment, the system described herein may provide for avoiding rollback of the distributed volume by writing to the distributed volume from only one cluster. By making sure that all the VMs that are accessing a certain file system, such as VMFS, vSphere, and/or NTFS for Hyper-V, on a distributed volume are in the cluster of the preferred site, it may not be necessary to rollback an image when a link failure occurs. This does mean that the system is used in an active/passive fashion on a cluster level. All VMs accessing the same distributed volume may have to be migrated together by suspending all the VMs on the source ESX host cluster, synchronizing the dirty blocks from the source director cluster to the destination director cluster, moving the cluster preference to the destination cluster, and resuming all the VMs on the destination ESX host cluster.
The following discusses a specific embodiment for avoiding rollback according to the system described herein for failure conditions like that discussed above. In the event of an expected link failure or a condition that results in a determination that link failure between a source site and the destination site is more likely, at the moment that the host cluster (e.g., a vSphere cluster) decides to start a VM migration to another site (e.g., which site may be the “winner” or preferred site in the event of a failure condition), it indicates this to the director cluster (e.g., a VPLEX cluster) at the source site by issuing an asynchronous SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command to the affected logical units of the director cluster at the source site. The host cluster, either at the source site or as a distributed layer, may start pushing memory pages to the destination ESX host. The director cluster at the source site may start pushing storage data (e.g., in one or more data blocks) for the volume groups containing the affected logical units to the destination cluster.
Once the host cluster has pushed enough pages over to enable the host cluster to suspend the VM on the source ESX host, the host cluster may issue a synchronous SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command to the affected logical units of the director cluster at the source site. The host cluster then pushes the remaining memory pages to the destination ESX host, and the director cluster at the source site pushes the remaining storage data to the destination director cluster. Once the director cluster at the source site finishes, the director cluster then completes the second (synchronous) SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command. Once the host cluster sees that both the memory pages and the storage data are available to the destination ESX host, the host cluster resumes the VM on the destination host. If the director cluster somehow takes too long before it responds to the synchronous SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command (in other words it takes too long pushing the remaining storage data to the destination cluster), the VM can be resumed on the source ESX host and the process can be restarted at an appropriate one of the above-noted steps.
Therefore, in accordance with the system described herein, the above-noted embodiment provides for synchronizing data between a source and destination site during a migration operation by moving dirty data from a source site to a destination site along with a VM that was running at the source site and then resuming the operation of the VM on the destination site.
After the step 306, processing may proceed to a test step 308 where it is determined if a link failure has occurred between the source site and the destination site. As further discussed elsewhere herein, failure conditions may be determined using a witness node, for example. If it is determined at the test step 308 that a link failure has occurred, then processing proceeds to a step 330 where the transfer processing to the destination site is stopped and the VM is to be kept at the source site. After the step 330, processing is complete.
If it is determined that a link failure has not occurred at the test step 308, then processing proceeds to another test step 310 where it is determined whether a sufficient amount of storage data and/or memory of the VM (VM image) has been transferred to the destination site. In various embodiments, a sufficient amount of storage data and/or VM image information may be determined according to one or more thresholds. For example, a threshold may be whether 90% of the storage data and/or the VM image has been transferred. In this way, since the VM continues to operate on the source site during this part of the process, changes to storage data and/or the VM image while the VM is operating in the source site may affect the determinations of the amount of current storage data and/or the VM image that has been transferred. The threshold may be configured to establish that at a particular point in time, given the amount of storage data and VM image information transferred, it is appropriate to proceed with processing to suspend and resume the VM on the destination site, as further discussed herein.
Accordingly, if, at the test step 310, it is determined that sufficient amounts of the storage data and/or VM image have not been transferred, then processing proceeds back to the step 304. Otherwise, if it is determined that a sufficient amount has been transferred at the test step 310 according to the threshold(s), then processing proceeds to a step 312 where operation of the VM is suspended on the source site. After the step 312, processing proceeds to a step 314 where a remainder amount of the storage data, that is remaining on the source site and that had not been transferred in the prior steps, is transferred from the source site to the destination site. After the step 314, processing proceeds to a step 316 where an a remainder amount of the VM image information, that is remaining on the source site and that had not been transferred in the prior steps, is transferred from the source site to the destination site. Like that of steps 304 and 306, in various embodiments, the steps 314 and 316 may be performed in an order other than that shown and/or may be performed concurrently.
After the step 316, processing proceeds to a step 318 where it is again determined if a link failure has occurred between the source site and the destination site. If it is determined at the test step 318 that a link failure has occurred, then processing proceeds to the step 330 where the transfer processing to the destination site is stopped and the VM is to be kept at the source site. After the step 330, processing is complete.
If it is determined that a link failure has not occurred at the test step 318, then processing proceeds to another test step 320 where transfer of the storage data and VM image to the destination site is completed. That is, for example, completion of data and VM image transfer may be when 100% of the storage data and VM image have been transferred. If not, then processing proceeds back to the step 314. If the transfer to the destination site is determined to be completed at the test step 320, then processing proceeds to a step 322 where the VM is resumed on the destination site according to the transferred storage data and the transferred VM image. After the step 322, processing is complete.
In various embodiments, the above-noted processing may also include provisions for error processing in which it is determined that processing, such as transferring of storage data and/or the VM image, may not be performed and/or may not be desirable to perform. For example, a system may include mechanisms for factoring in load determination processing such that a determination that load on a network is high may cause cancellation of the VM transfer even where a link failure has not occurred. Similarly, the error processing may be performed in connection with exceeding a time threshold where an attempt to transfer storage data and/or the VM image has timed out over a network. It is also noted that the above-noted method, and other methods discussed herein, may be performed using executable code stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium that is executed by one or more processors and is performed in connection with a system having components like that further discussed elsewhere herein.
Another alternative embodiment of the system described herein is to make ESX hosts aware of the changed volume state by rebooting them so they pick up the current state. This assumes that ESX hosts do not forward information about their state to vCenter or other ESX hosts. All ESX hosts that may have state about volumes that have rolled back can be put in maintenance mode. The ESX host may not have to access the volume to store its updated state, because such access would risk corrupting the VMFS. By parking an ESX host in maintenance mode, all VMs that are not talking to the rolled back storage may be migrated to other ESX hosts. Once no VMs are remaining on the ESX host, it can be rebooted and pick up the new, rolled back state of the volume.
According to another embodiment of the system described herein, the system may control rollback of a volume, or portion thereof, in a different way. For example, the system may only rollback the state of the volume to a write order consistent image on the remote cluster. For example, a winning site may contain all local writes and only the remote writes that have been synchronized locally in a write order consistent way. This would result in a volume image that is not globally consistent, and it is noted that some applications may not be able to deal with this alternate rollback state.
According to another embodiment, the system described herein may provide for the use of the inter-cluster links between the host clusters (host networks 205) and the inter-cluster link between the director clusters (director networks 225) of multiple sites to be used to help migrate a VM. Such operation may be used to increase bandwidth of the host cluster enough that it is able to migrate over longer distances. Accordingly, instead, or in addition to, the transferring of a VM image using the host networks 205 and the storage data using the director networks 225, the host networks 205 may be used to transfer storage data and/or the director networks 225 may be used to transfer VM images. For example, in an embodiment, either the VM image and/or the storage data may be transferred over the director networks 225 between the director clusters in connection with a VM migration operation. In another embodiment, either the VM image and/or the storage data may be transferred over the host networks 205. It is further noted that in connection with this operation, a host cluster may perform writes of the VM's image to the source director cluster at the source site and corresponding reads to the destination director cluster at the destination site. The above-noted method may be performed in connection with a determination of a failure of an inter-cluster link, with at least a last remaining inter-cluster link in operation. That is, even though one inter-cluster link has failed, such as failure of host networks 205, migration of a VM may be advantageously enhanced by using the remaining inter-cluster link, such as director networks 225, to help with the migrating by increasing the bandwidth of the host cluster, and vice versa.
In various embodiments, the processing of
When the inter-cluster storage network fails, the symmetric view of the data blocks may no longer be maintained over the inter-cluster storage network. Generally, the storage application stops exporting a disk image on one site. At this point, the inter-cluster computer network may still be available and may be utilized to synchronize the storage to the winning site in accordance with the system described herein. This may be done in two ways: (1) pushing disk block ownership and data from losing site to winning site and/or (2) pulling disk block ownership and data from losing site to winning site.
A combination of the methods of pushing and pulling disk storage data and ownership is also possible according to various embodiments of the system described herein. For example, the combination of pushing the storage block ownership of clean blocks and pulling the block ownership and data of dirty blocks may be desirable.
According further to the system described herein, when the last redundant resource of a cluster level vulnerability fails, one of the clusters will no longer serve I/O, either because the cluster failed or because cache coherence can no longer be guaranteed between the clusters. If all VMs made it in time to safety on the less vulnerable or preferred site that is still serving I/O as set forth herein, then the system may continue operating in the manner provided. If not, however, three further options may be provided according to various embodiments of the system described herein:
1. All VMs may be restarted from a Write Order Fidelity (WOF) consistent virtual volume (e.g., from a couple of seconds ago). Due to the restart, the VMs may boot with an empty memory state.
2. All VMs may be restarted with an application consistent snapshot of the virtual volume. Periodic snapshot of the virtual volume may be created to facilitate this approach.
3. All VMs may be resumed with a memory state and virtual volume state from a coordinated VM/disk snapshot. Periodic coordinated snapshots of both VM (with memory state) and virtual volume may be created to facilitate this approach.
In case 1, all applications running in VMs should be able to detect what work is lost by studying the current state of the disk and carry on from that point. In case 2, all applications running in VMs may simply carry on without having to check the state of the disk. In cases 2 and 3, all applications running in VMs may redo the work from the moment that the snapshots were taken. Note that external transactions to the VMs that occurred since the snapshot may be lost.
After the step 706, processing proceeds to a step 708 where a snapshot image of the VM is taken when the VM is preparing to commit a write of a delta to a bucket in accordance with WOF pipeline processing as further discussed elsewhere herein. After the step 708, processing proceeds to a step 710 where a snapshot is taken of the storage state of a disk being utilized to store data in connection with the WOF transfer processing. The VM image snapshot and the storage state snapshots are synchronized and it is noted that the order of steps 708 and 710 may be reversed, as appropriate, and/or may be performed in parallel. After the step 710, processing proceeds to a step 712 where the VM is resumed. After the step 712, processing proceeds to a step 714 where I/O processing is resumed. It is noted that the steps 712 and 714 may be reversed, as appropriate, or performed in parallel. After the step 714, processing proceeds to a step 716 where the VM image snapshot and storage state snapshot are made available for subsequent access as further discussed elsewhere herein. After the step 716, processing is complete.
After the step 762, processing proceeds to a step 764 where the VM is resumed according to the rollback state snapshots. After the step 764, processing proceeds to a step 766 where I/O processing is resumed. In various embodiments, the order of steps 764 and 766 may be reversed, as appropriate, and/or performed in parallel. After the step 764, processing is complete.
Various embodiments discussed herein may be combined with each other in appropriate combinations in connection with the system described herein. Additionally, in some instances, the order of steps in the flowcharts, flow diagrams and/or described flow processing may be modified, where appropriate. Further, various aspects of the system described herein may be implemented using software, hardware, a combination of software and hardware and/or other computer-implemented modules or devices having the described features and performing the described functions. Software implementations of the system described herein may include executable code that is stored in a computer readable medium and executed by one or more processors. The computer readable medium may include a computer hard drive, ROM, RAM, flash memory, portable computer storage media such as a CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM, a flash drive and/or other drive with, for example, a universal serial bus (USB) interface, and/or any other appropriate tangible or non-transitory computer readable medium or computer memory on which executable code may be stored and executed by a processor. The system described herein may be used in connection with any appropriate operating system.
Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from a consideration of the specification or practice of the invention disclosed herein. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with the true scope and spirit of the invention being indicated by the following claims.
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