Threading of replication based on data type

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11537310-B2
Application number	US-202117169248-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 5, 2021
Priority date	Feb 5, 2021
Publication date	Dec 27, 2022
Grant date	Dec 27, 2022

Abstract

Replication of data from a primary computing system to a secondary computing system. The replication is single-threaded or multi-threaded depending on one or more characteristics of the data to be replicated. As an example, the characteristics could include the type of data being replicated and/or the variability on that data. Also, the multi-threading capabilities of the primary and secondary computing systems are determined. Then, based on the identified one or more characteristics of the data, the primary computing system decides whether to perform multi-threaded replication and the multi-threading parameters of the replication based on the one or more characteristics of that data, as well as on the multi-threading capabilities of the primary and secondary computing system.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A primary computing system that is configured to perform a replication to a secondary computing system, where the replication is dependent on one or more characteristics of at least some data that is to be replicated, the primary computing system comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more computer-readable hardware storage devices that store computer-executable instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the primary computing system to:
identify one or more characteristics of a region of data that is to be replicated from the primary computing system to the secondary computing system;
determine multi-threading capabilities of the primary computing system;
determine multi-threading capabilities of the secondary computing system, wherein determining the multi-threading capabilities of the secondary computing system and of the primary computing system includes facilitating an agreement between the secondary computing system and the primary computing system regarding a number of buffers to use during an operation comprising a multi-threaded replication;
based on the identified one or more characteristics of the region of data and based on the multi-threading capabilities of both the primary computing system and the secondary computing system, decide to perform the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using one or more multi-threading parameters;
communicate the one or more multi-threading parameters to the secondary computing system; and
in response to the decision to perform the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using the one or more multi-threading parameters, perform the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using the one or more multi-threading parameters.

2. The primary computing system in accordance with claim 1 , the one or more characteristics of the data being a data type of the data.

3. The primary computing system in accordance with claim 2 , the region of data being all of the data within a defined replication scope on the primary computing system.

4. The primary computing system in accordance with claim 1 , the one or more characteristics of the data being variation in partition sizes of the data.

5. The primary computing system in accordance with claim 1 , the replication being a full replication from the primary computing system to the secondary computing system.

6. The primary computing system in accordance with claim 1 , the one or more multi-threading parameters comprising a number of threads.

7. A method for performing a replication to a secondary computing system in a manner that depends on a data type of at least some data that is to be replicated as a part of the replication, said method comprising:
identifying one or more characteristics of a region of data that is to be replicated from a primary computing system to the secondary computing system;
determining multi-threading capabilities of the primary computing system;
determining multi-threading capabilities of the secondary computing system, wherein determining the multi-threading capabilities of the secondary computing system and of the primary computing system includes facilitating an agreement between the secondary computing system and the primary computing system regarding a number of buffers to use during an operation comprising a multi-threaded replication;
based on the identified one or more characteristics of the region of data and based on the multi-threading capabilities of both the primary computing system and the secondary computing system, deciding to perform the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using one or more multi-threading parameters;
communicating the one or more multi-threading parameters to the secondary computing system; and
in response to the decision to perform the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using the one or more multi-threading parameters, performing the multi-threaded replication of the data in the region using the one or more multi-threading parameters.

8. The method in accordance with claim 7 , the one or more characteristics of the data being variation in partition sizes of the data.

9. The primary computing system of claim 1 , wherein the number of buffers that will be used during the operation comprising the multi-threaded replication is agreed to be more than one buffer.

10. The method in accordance with claim 7 , the one or more characteristics of the data being a data type of the data.

11. The method in accordance with claim 7 , the multi-threaded replication comprising:
identifying a plurality of threads to be used in the replication;
partitioning the data into a plurality of parts; and
assigning the plurality of parts to corresponding threads of the plurality of threads.

12. The method in accordance with claim 7 , the region of data being a first region of data, the one or more characteristics being first one or more characteristics, the method further comprising:
identifying second one or more characteristics of data a second region of data to be replicated from the primary computing system to the secondary computing system;
based on the second one or more characteristics of the data of the second region of data, deciding to perform single-threaded replication of the second region of data; and
in response to the decision to perform single-threaded replication of the second region of data, performing single-threaded representation of second region of data.

13. The method in accordance with claim 12 , the first one or more characteristics comprising a variability in size of partition portions of the data of the first data region and the second one or more characteristics comprising a variation in size of partition portions of data of the second data region, the decision on whether to multi-thread or single-thread replication being based at least in part on the variation in size of the partition portions of the associated data region, the variation in size of partition portions of the data of the first data region being less than the variation in size of partition portions of data of the second data region.

14. The method in accordance with claim 12 , the replication of the second region of data and the replication of the first region of data being at least part of a full replication from the primary computing system to the secondary computing system.

15. The method in accordance with claim 12 , the replication of the second region of data occurring in a different replication operation as the replication of the first region of data.

16. The method in accordance with claim 7 , the region of data being a first region of data, the one or more characteristics being first one or more characteristics, the one or more multi-threading parameters being first one or more multi-threading parameters, the method further comprising:
identifying second one or more characteristics of the second region of data to be replicated within at least part of a replication from the primary computing system to the secondary computing system;
based on the identified one or more characteristics of the data of the region of data and multi-threading capabilities of both the primary computing system and the secondary computing system, deciding to perform multi-threaded replication of the region of data using one or more multi-threading parameters, and communicating the one or more multi-threading parameters to the secondary computing system; and
in response to the decision to perform multi-threaded replication of the second region of data using the s

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Verma Deepak
• Shanmugam Kesavan
• Montwill Michael Gregory

Classifications

• G06F3/0683

  Plurality of storage devices · CPC title

• G06F16/275 Primary

  Synchronous replication · CPC title

• G06F3/0604

  Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management · CPC title

• G06F3/065 Primary

  Replication mechanisms · CPC title

• G06F9/3851

  from multiple instruction streams, e.g. multistreaming · CPC title