Configuration of peered cluster storage environment organized as disaster recovery group

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9928148-B2
Application number	US-201414526037-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 28, 2014
Priority date	Aug 21, 2014
Publication date	Mar 27, 2018
Grant date	Mar 27, 2018

Abstract

A technique efficiently configures a peered cluster storage environment. The configuration technique illustratively includes three phases: a discovery phase, a node setup phase and a cluster setup phase. The discovery phase may be employed to initiate discovery of nodes of a disaster recovery (DR) group through transmission of multicast advertisement packets by the nodes over interconnects, including a Fiber Channel (FC) fabric, to each other node of the group. In the node setup phase, each node of a cluster assigns its relationships to the nodes discovered and present in the FC fabric; illustratively, the assigned relationships include high availability (HA) partner, DR primary partner and DR auxiliary partner. In the cluster setup phase, the discovered nodes of the FC fabric are organized as the peered cluster storage environment (DR group) configured to service data in a highly reliable and available manner.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computing device comprising:
a memory containing computer readable medium comprising machine executable code having stored thereon instructions for performing a method; and
a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the machine executable code to cause the processor to:
receive advertisements, over a communication fabric, sent to a first node by nodes of a DR group comprising the first node and the nodes;
process the advertisements to assign roles to the nodes, wherein the roles include a high availability (HA) partner role, a disaster recovery (DR) primary partner role, and a DR auxiliary partner role;
construct a node list, indicating the roles assigned to nodes of the DR group and relationships among nodes of the DR group, as a DR group configuration; and
perform a cluster setup phase wherein the first node commits the node list to local storage to persistently store the DR group configuration and verifies the DR group configuration by comparing the node list to a cluster configuration table to determine whether the assignment of the roles of the HA partner role, the DR primary partner role, and the DR auxiliary partner role are correct.

2. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the advertisements are multicast configuration packets.

3. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the machine executable code causes the processor to:
perform a discovery phase to initiate discovery of the nodes of the DR group through multicast transmission of the advertisements over the communication fabric.

4. The computing device of claim 3 , wherein the communication fabric is a Fibre Channel (FC) fabric and wherein the multicast transmission of the advertisements over the FC fabric uses an Extended Link Service (ELS) of an FC protocol.

5. The computing device of claim 4 , wherein the machine executable code causes the processor to: cooperate with the ELS to identify ports, of an adapter of the first node, that are present in the FC fabric.

6. The computing device of claim 3 , wherein the machine executable code causes the processor to: simulate the multicast transmission by transmitting the advertisements one-by-one over ports of an adapter of the first node.

7. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein a payload of an advertisement of a node comprises role identification information embodied as properties of the node.

8. The computing device of claim 7 , wherein the properties comprise:
a cluster identifier (ID) that identifies a cluster associated with the node; and
a node system ID that identifies hardware of the node.

9. The computing device of claim 8 , wherein the node system ID comprises a non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) ID.

10. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the machine executable code causes the processor to: perform a node setup phase to assign the roles to nodes discovered in the communication fabric.

11. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the machine executable code causes the processor to: assign partner roles to the nodes according to an algorithm that specifies sorting and ordering of the nodes on HA groups, of the DR group, to enable pairing of partner nodes based on ordinal numbering of node system IDs.

12. The computing device of claim 7 , wherein the properties comprise a node system ID that identifies hardware of the node.

13. The computing device of claim 7 , wherein the properties comprise a cluster identifier (ID) that identifies a cluster associated with the node.

14. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the node list is persistently stored in response to a command that is automatically invoked by a configuration control module.

15. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein verification of the DR group configuration is enabled by a globally reachable service configured as the cluster configuration table that is replicated on each node of the DR group.

16. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein the DR group configuration of the node list is compared with global DR group configuration of the cluster configuration table to verify the DR group configuration.

17. The computing device of claim 1 , wherein mirroring is activated in the DR group in response to verification of the DR group configuration.

18. The computing device of claim 17 , wherein the mirroring comprises one of non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) mirroring and write cache mirroring.

19. A method, comprising:
receiving advertisements, over a communication fabric, sent to a first node by nodes of a DR group comprising the first node and the nodes;
processing the advertisements to assign roles to the nodes, wherein the roles include a high availability (HA) partner role, a disaster recovery (DR) primary partner role, and a DR auxiliary partner role;
constructing a node list, indicating the roles assigned to nodes of the DR group and relationships among nodes of the DR group, as a DR group configuration; and
performing a cluster setup phase wherein the first node commits the node list to local storage to persistently store the DR group configuration and verifies the DR group configuration by comparing the node list to a cluster configuration table to determine whether the assignment of the roles of the HA partner role, the DR primary partner role, and the DR auxiliary partner role are correct.

20. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions, which when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:
receive advertisements, over a communication fabric, sent to a first node by nodes of a DR group comprising the first node and the nodes;
process the advertisements to assign roles to the nodes, wherein the roles include a high availability (HA) partner role, a disaster recovery (DR) primary partner role, and a DR auxiliary partner role;
construct a node list, indicating the roles assigned to nodes of the DR group and relationships among nodes of the DR group, as a DR group configuration; and
perform a cluster setup phase wherein the first node commits the node list to local storage to persistently store the DR group configuration and verifies the DR group configuration by comparing the node list to a cluster configuration table to determine whether the assignment of the roles of the HA partner role, the DR primary partner role, and the DR auxiliary partner role are correct.

Assignees

• Netapp Inc

Inventors

• Kadayam Harihara
• Keremane Hrishikesh
• Ramasubramaniam Vaiapuri
• Mittal Rishabh
• Patel Chaitanya
• Unnikrishnan Santhosh
• Deshpande Sameer

Classifications

• H04L41/0893

  Assignment of logical groups to network elements · CPC title

• H04L41/0873 Primary

  Checking configuration conflicts between network elements · CPC title

• H04L41/0663

  Performing the actions predefined by failover planning, e.g. switching to standby network elements · CPC title

• H04L45/28

  using route fault recovery · CPC title

• G06F11/2069 Primary

  Management of state, configuration or failover · CPC title