Method and system for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9575784-B1
Application number	US-201313744693-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Jan 18, 2013
Priority date	Aug 10, 2011
Publication date	Feb 21, 2017
Grant date	Feb 21, 2017

Abstract

A method for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment, including receiving an I/O request for a virtual disk, determining that a service virtual machine which implements a storage controller is not registered as owner of the virtual disk, obtaining ownership of the virtual disk by the service virtual machine, the service virtual machine handling the I/O request after obtaining ownership of the virtual disk.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment, comprising:
receiving an I/O request for an unshared virtual disk owned by a first service virtual machine, wherein a second service virtual machine receives the I/O request;
determining that the second service virtual machine which implements a storage controller is not registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk, wherein only a service virtual machine registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk is permitted to access the unshared virtual disk to implement the I/O request, and wherein the act of determining occurs in response to the second service virtual machine receiving the I/O request for the unshared virtual disk owned by the first service virtual machine;
transferring ownership of the unshared virtual disk from the first service virtual machine to the second service virtual machine; and
the second service virtual machine implementing the I/O request after obtaining ownership of the unshared virtual disk.

2. The method of claim 1 , in which the unshared virtual disk is accessed by at most one user virtual machine.

3. The method of claim 1 , in which the unshared virtual disk is implemented in a shared-nothing architecture.

4. The method of claim 1 , in which ownership of the unshared virtual disk is transferred by contacting the first service virtual machine to request that ownership be relinquished.

5. The method of claim 4 , in which a distributed configuration database module is employed to contact the first service virtual machine.

6. The method of claim 1 , in which the second service virtual machine is not registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk due to a recent migration of an associated user virtual machine from a first node to a second node.

7. The method of claim 6 , in which the second service virtual machine is on the second node.

8. A computer program product embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, the non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when executed by a processor causes the processor to execute a method for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment, the method comprising:
receiving an I/O request for an unshared virtual disk owned by a first service virtual machine, wherein a second service virtual machine receives the I/O request;
determining that the second service virtual machine which implements a storage controller is not registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk, wherein only a service virtual machine registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk is permitted to access the unshared virtual disk to implement the I/O request, and wherein the act of determining occurs in response to the second service virtual machine receiving the I/O request for the unshared virtual disk owned by the first service virtual machine;
transferring ownership of the unshared virtual disk from the first service virtual machine to the second service virtual machine; and
implementing the I/O request by the second service virtual machine after obtaining ownership of the unshared virtual disk.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 , in which the unshared virtual disk is accessed by at most one user virtual machine.

10. The computer program product of claim 8 , in which the unshared virtual disk is implemented in a shared-nothing architecture.

11. The computer program product of claim 8 , in which ownership of the unshared virtual disk is transferred by contacting the first service virtual machine to request that ownership be relinquished.

12. The computer program product of claim 11 , in which a distributed configuration database module is employed to contact the first service virtual machine.

13. The computer program product of claim 8 , in which the second service virtual machine is not registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk due to a recent migration of an associated user virtual machine from a first node to a second node.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 , in which the second service virtual machine is on the second node.

15. A computer-based system for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment, comprising:
a computer processor to execute a set of program code instructions;
a memory to hold the set of program code instructions, in which the set of program code instructions comprises program code for receiving an I/O request for an unshared virtual disk owned by a first service virtual machine, wherein a second service virtual machine receives the I/O request; determining that the second service virtual machine which implements a storage controller is not registered as owner of the virtual disk, wherein only a service virtual machine registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk is permitted to access the unshared virtual disk to implement the I/O request, and wherein the act of determining occurs in response to the second service virtual machine receiving the I/O request for the unshared virtual disk owned by the first service virtual machine; transferring ownership of the unshared virtual disk from the first service virtual machine to the second service virtual machine; and implementing the I/O request by the second service virtual machine after obtaining ownership of the unshared virtual disk.

16. The system of claim 15 , in which the unshared virtual disk is accessed by at most one user virtual machine.

17. The system of claim 15 , in which the unshared virtual disk is implemented in a shared-nothing architecture.

18. The system of claim 15 , in which ownership of the unshared virtual disk is transferred by contacting the first service virtual machine to request that ownership be relinquished.

19. The system of claim 18 , in which a distributed configuration database module is employed to contact the first service virtual machine.

20. The system of claim 15 , in which the second service virtual machine is not registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk due to a recent migration of an associated user virtual machine from a first node to a second node.

21. The system of claim 20 , in which the second service virtual machine is on the second node.

22. A method for handling storage in response to migration of a virtual machine in a virtualization environment, comprising:
receiving an I/O request for an unshared virtual disk owned by a first service virtual machine, wherein a second service virtual machine that implements a storage controller receives the I/O request;
determining that the storage controller is not currently registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk, wherein only a service virtual machine registered as owner of the unshared virtual disk is permitted to access the unshared virtual disk to implement the I/O request, and wherein the act of determining occurs in response to the second service virtual machine receiving the I/O request for the unshared virtual disk owned by the first service virtual machine;
transferring ownership of the unshared virtual disk from the first service virtual machine to the second service virtual machine; and
the storage controller implementing the I/O request after obtaining ownership of the unshared virtual disk.

23. The method of claim 22 , in which the unshared virtual disk is accessed by at most one user virtual machine.

Assignees

• Nutanix Inc

Inventors

• Aron Mohit
• Pandey Dheeraj
• Singh Ajeet

Classifications

• G06F9/5022

  Mechanisms to release resources · CPC title

• G06F9/45533 Primary

  Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors · CPC title

• G06F16/1748

  De-duplication implemented within the file system, e.g. based on file segments (de-duplication techniques in storage systems for the management of data blocks G06F3/0641) · CPC title

• G06F16/1873

  Versioning file systems, temporal file systems, e.g. file system supporting different historic versions of files · CPC title

• G06F9/5083

  Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system · CPC title