Architecture for implementing a virtualization environment and appliance

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10684879-B2
Application number	US-201715714880-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 25, 2017
Priority date	Jul 17, 2012
Publication date	Jun 16, 2020
Grant date	Jun 16, 2020

Abstract

An improved architecture is provided which enables significant convergence of the components of a system to implement virtualization. The infrastructure is VM-aware, and permits scaled out converged storage provisioning to allow storage on a per-VM basis, while identifying I/O coming from each VM. The current approach can scale out from a few nodes to a large number of nodes. In addition, the inventive approach has ground-up integration with all types of storage, including solid-state drives. The architecture of the invention provides high availability against any type of failure, including disk or node failures. In addition, the invention provides high performance by making I/O access local, leveraging solid-state drives and employing a series of patent-pending performance optimizations.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system, comprising:
multiple nodes, a node of the multiple nodes comprising:
a user virtual machine;
a hypervisor;
a serverboard insertable into the system and corresponding to the node; and
a controller virtual machine running as a virtual machine above the hypervisor and managing a storage pool for the system at least by receiving, via the hypervisor, a storage request sent by the user virtual machine;
a distributed virtual controller infrastructure that further comprises multiple controller virtual machines that are coupled with each other, wherein the distributed controller infrastructure eliminates a need for network storage; and
a local storage device coupled to the serverboard, wherein
the multiple controller virtual machines for the multiple nodes are coupled with each other to create the storage pool comprising the local storage device, and
the system is operatively coupled to another system to form a virtualization system.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller virtual machine is configured to receive a storage request from the user virtual machine on the node based at least in part upon a destination identification of the storage pool, and the storage request includes information of the destination identification that corresponds to the storage pool.

3. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a backplane connecting each node of the multiple nodes to a plurality of storage devices.

4. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of storage devices, wherein the plurality of storage devices comprises solid state drives (SSD), hard disk drives (HDD), and cloud storage, and networked storage appliances.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the is configured to determine the controller virtual machine from the multiple controller virtual machines for processing a storage request.

6. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of storage devices, and multiple storage devices of the plurality of storage devices with similar characteristics are classified into different tiers.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein input-output (I/O) performance is faster when accessing the local storage device as compared to the I/O performance when accessing networked storage.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage pool comprises a scale-out converged storage (SOCS), and the SOCS uses a local solid-state drive and a hard disk drive of the multiple nodes to store virtual machine data.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multiple controller virtual machines are communicably coupled with each other to form a single distributed system for the storage pool.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the system is configured to scale a storage or compute infrastructure in the system at least by adding an additional node having an additional serverboard to the system.

11. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of power supplies providing power redundancy to the system.

12. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multiple controller virtual machines have a same IP address isolated by an internal virtual local area network in a virtual switch of the hypervisor.

13. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller virtual machine is not formed as a part of the hypervisor.

14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the controller virtual machine is hypervisor-agnostic.

15. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a clustered storage appliance that comprises a plurality of block devices or server targets and is exported by the controller virtual machine.

16. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller virtual machines form a distributed virtual controller infrastructure that is scaled at least by adding at least one additional node to the multiple nodes and an additional controller virtual machine for the at least one additional node, and the additional controller virtual machine is further coupled with the controller virtual machines of the multiple nodes to scale the distributed virtual controller infrastructure.

17. The system of claim 1 , wherein the system is configured to performed a set of acts, and the set of acts comprises:
processing the storage request at the controller virtual machine or at another controller virtual machine least by routing the storage request based at least in part upon a destination specification for the controller virtual machine, wherein the storage request comprises the destination specification.

18. An appliance, comprising:
multiple nodes, a node of the multiple nodes comprising:
a user virtual machine;
a hypervisor;
a serverboard insertable into the appliance and corresponding to the node; and
a controller virtual machine running as a virtual machine above the hypervisor and managing a storage pool for the appliance at least by receiving, via the hypervisor, a storage request sent by the user virtual machine; and
a local storage device coupled to the serverboard, wherein
controller virtual machines for the multiple nodes are communicably coupled with each other to create the storage pool comprising the local storage device, and
the system is operatively coupled to another system to form a virtualization system, wherein the appliance is configured to performed a set of acts, and the set of acts comprises:
receiving, at the hypervisor, the storage request from the user virtual machine that is structured by the user virtual machine in a first storage protocol;
converting, by the hypervisor, the storage request into a modified storage request in a second storage protocol for the controller virtual machine;
routing the modified storage request from the hypervisor to the controller virtual machine; and
interpreting and processing the modified storage request at the controller virtual machine.

19. The appliance of claim 18 , further comprising a storage universe, wherein the storage universe is divided into multiple storage pools including the storage pool and a different storage pool.

20. The appliance of claim 18 , wherein the controller virtual machines form a distributed controller that manages the storage pool for the multiple nodes in the virtualization system.

Assignees

• Nutanix Inc

Inventors

• Aron Mohit
• Pandey Dheeraj
• Singh Ajeet
• Bhardwaj Rishi
• Chun Brent

Classifications

• G06F2009/45579

  I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage · CPC title

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title