Protecting virtual machines against storage connectivity failures

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9361199-B2
Application number	US-201313975098-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 23, 2013
Priority date	Aug 24, 2012
Publication date	Jun 7, 2016
Grant date	Jun 7, 2016

Abstract

A system for monitoring a virtual machine executed on a host. The system includes a processor that receives an indication that a failure caused a storage device to be inaccessible to the virtual machine, the inaccessible storage device impacting an ability of the virtual machine to provide service, and applies a remedy to restore access to the storage device based on a type of the failure.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for monitoring virtual machines, the system comprising:
a host executing a virtual machine; and
a processor programmed to:
receive an indication of a storage access failure impacting an ability of the virtual machine to provide service;
determine if the storage access failure is a permanent or a transient failure; and
apply a remedy comprising:
if the storage access failure is a permanent failure, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host, and
if the storage access failure is a transient failure, waiting for a predefined period of time, and if the transient failure does not clear within the predefined period of time, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the host comprises a fault domain manager (FDM), and wherein the FDM is configured to determine if the failure is a permanent failure or a transient failure.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage device is a datastore.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the remedy further comprises resetting the virtual machine if the transient failure clears before the predefined period of time has elapsed.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein if restarting the virtual machine on the healthy host fails, the remedy further comprises retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host or another healthy host.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host is limited to a predefined number of retries.

7. The system of claim 5 , wherein retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host is continued until the virtual machine is restarted on the healthy host or another healthy host.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein, if the storage access failure is a transient failure and the host and a master host, which coordinates activity of hosts and/or virtual machines, are separated by a network partition, the virtual machine is either restarted on the healthy host or is moved to a reset state after the transient failure clears, based on a predefined policy.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the virtual machine is one of a pair of virtual machines; and
if the storage access failure is the transient failure, the virtual machine is terminated and restarted on the healthy host if the virtual machine is the only virtual machine in the pair of virtual machines impacted by the transient failure.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein if both virtual machines in the pair of virtual machines are impacted by a transient failure and the host and a master host, which coordinates activity of hosts and/or virtual machines, are separated by a network partition, the transient failure is either ignored or both virtual machines in the pair of virtual machines are restarted on one or more healthy hosts, based on a predefined policy.

11. A method for monitoring a virtual machine executed on a host, the method comprising:
receiving an indication of a storage access failure impacting an ability of the virtual machine to provide service;
determining if the storage access failure is a permanent or a transient failure; and
applying a remedy comprising:
if the storage access failure is a permanent failure, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host, and
if the storage access failure is a transient failure, waiting for a predefined period of time, and if the transient failure does not clear within the predefined period of time, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein a fault domain manager (FDM) executed on the host, determines if the failure is a permanent failure or a transient failure.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the remedy further comprises resetting the virtual machine if the transient failure clears before a predefined period of time has elapsed.

14. The method of claim 11 , wherein if restarting the virtual machine on the healthy host fails, the remedy further comprises retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host or another healthy host.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host is limited to a predefined number of retries.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein retrying to restart the virtual machine on the healthy host is continued until the virtual machine is restarted on the healthy host or another healthy host.

17. At least one computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon, wherein, when executed by at least one processor, the computer-executable instructions cause the at least one processor to:
receive an indication of a storage access failure impacting an ability of the virtual machine to provide service;
determine if the storage access failure is a permanent or a transient failure; and
apply a remedy comprising:
if the storage access failure is a permanent failure, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host, and
if the storage access failure is a transient failure, waiting for a predefined period of time, and if the transient failure does not clear within the predefined period of time, terminating the virtual machine and restarting the virtual machine on a healthy host.

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Ren Joanne
• Tarashansky Igor
• Farkas Keith
• Ziskind Elisha
• Krishnan Manoj

Classifications

• G06F11/1438

  Restarting or rejuvenating · CPC title

• G06F11/0712 Primary

  in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems · CPC title

• G06F11/202

  where processing functionality is redundant (redundant communication control functionality G06F11/2005, redundant storage control functionality G06F11/2089) · CPC title

• G06F11/1484

  involving virtual machines · CPC title

• G06F11/0793

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title