Storage system and data management method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9317381-B2
Application number	US-201213702195-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 20, 2012
Priority date	Nov 20, 2012
Publication date	Apr 19, 2016
Grant date	Apr 19, 2016

Abstract

An efficient disaster recovery system is constructed at three data centers. A data center includes: a business server for executing an application in response to an input/output request; a storage system for providing a first storage area storing data in response to a request from the business server; and a management server for managing a second data center or a third data center among the plurality of data centers as a failover location when a system of a first data center having the first storage area stops; and wherein the management server: copies all pieces of data stored in the first storage area to a second storage area managed by a storage system of the second data center; and copies part of the data stored in the first storage area to a third storage area managed by a storage system of the third data center.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A storage system for managing a plurality of data centers comprising:
a business server for executing an application in response to an input/output request;
a first storage system of a first data center that includes a first storage area, that is configured to store data in one or more volumes in response to a request from the business server; and
a management server for managing the plurality of data centers;
wherein the management server is configured to:
rank pages of the one or more volumes of the first storage area based on tier;
determine a second data center and a third data center from the plurality of data centers;
copy all pieces of data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to one or more volumes of a second storage area managed by a second storage system of the second data center; and
copy a subset of the data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to one or more storage areas of a third storage area managed by a third storage system of the third data center, wherein the subset of the data is determined based on the rank of the page on which the data is stored.

2. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the subset of the data is further determined based on a frequency of access of the data stored in the first storage area.

3. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the management server is further configured to determine the second and the third data center based on ranking each of the plurality of data centers based upon available resources of each of the data centers and selecting the data center with firstmost available resources to be the second data center and the data center with secondmost available resources to be the third data center.

4. The storage system according to claim 3 , wherein the available resources of each of the data centers includes an unused capacity of the storage area managed by the storage system of each data center and a server resource amount or network resource amount required to execute the application.

5. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the management server is further configured to:
decide the second data center to be a failover location, and
copy all pieces of data stored in the one or more volumes of the second storage area to the one or more volumes of the third storage area.

6. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the management server is further configured to:
decide the third data center to be a failover location,
copy all pieces of data stored in the one or more volumes of the second storage area to the one or more volumes of the third storage area; and
obtain the data from the one or more volumes of the second storage area, if the data has been requested from one or more volumes of the first storage area that have not been copied.

7. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the management server is further configured to:
decide if either the second data center or the third data center is a failover location based on which data center has a larger resource amount.

8. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein if a plurality of applications are executed in the business server,
the management server is further configured to decide a failover location for one or more of the plurality of applications, based upon ranking the plurality of applications in descending order of required resources needed to execute the application.

9. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein if it is predicted that a required resource amount for the application executed at the first data center exceeds a specified threshold value, the management server is further configured to:
make an application of low priority operate at the second data center or the third data center whichever is the data center with a larger remaining resource amount.

10. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the management server is further configured to:
determine the second data center and the third data center from the plurality of data centers based on an accounting level and a cost level for each of the plurality of data centers.

11. A storage system for managing a plurality of data centers comprising:
a business server for executing an application in response to an input/output request;
a first storage system of a first data center that includes a first storage area, that is configured to store data in one or more volumes in response to a request from the business server; and
a management server for managing the plurality of data centers; and
wherein the management server is configured to:
rank pages of the one or more volumes of the first storage area based on tier;
determine a second data center and a third data center from the plurality of data centers based on available resources of each of the plurality of data centers;
determine a failover location from the plurality of data centers;
copy all pieces of data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to one or more volumes of a second storage area managed by a second storage system of the second data center;
copy a subset of the data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to one or more volumes of a third storage area managed by a third storage system of the third data center based on the rank of the page on which the data is stored and a frequency of access of the data;
copy all pieces of data from the one or more volumes of the second storage area to the one or more volumes of the third storage area, if the first storage system of the first data center fails and the second data center is determined to be the failover location;
copy all pieces of data from the one or more volumes of the second storage area to the one or more volumes of the third storage area, if the system of the first data center fails and the third data center is determined to be the failover location; and
obtain data from the one or more volumes of the third storage area, if the data has been requested from one or more volumes of the first storage area that have not been copied.

12. A data management method for a storage system for managing a plurality of data centers comprising:
executing, by a business server, an application in response to an input/output request;
ranking pages of one or more volumes of a first storage area managed by a first storage system of a first data center based on tier;
determining a second data center and a third data center from the plurality of data centers based on available resources of each of the plurality of data centers;
determining a failover location from the plurality of data centers;
copying, by a management server, all pieces of data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to the one or more volumes of a second storage area managed by a second storage system of the second data center;
determining a subset of the data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area based on the ranking of the page on which the data is stored; and
copying, by the management server, the subset of the data stored in the one or more volumes of the first storage area to one or more volumes of a third storage area managed by a third storage system of the third data center.

Assignees

• Hitachi Ltd

Inventors

• Suzuki Tomohiko
• Tezuka Keiichi
• Abe Tetsuya

Classifications

• G06F11/1662 Primary

  the resynchronized component or unit being a persistent storage device (re-synchronization of failed mirror storage G06F11/2082; rebuild or reconstruction of parity RAID storage G06F11/1008) · CPC title

• G06F11/2048

  where the redundant components share neither address space nor persistent storage · CPC title

• H04L67/1095

  Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes · CPC title

• G06F11/2035

  without idle spare hardware · CPC title

• G06F11/3433

  for load management (allocation of a server based on load conditions G06F9/505; load rebalancing G06F9/5083; redistributing the load in a network by a load balancer H04L67/1029) · CPC title