Virtual machine bring-up with on-demand processing of storage requests

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9946569-B1
Application number	US-201615018395-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Feb 8, 2016
Priority date	Feb 8, 2016
Publication date	Apr 17, 2018
Grant date	Apr 17, 2018

Abstract

A method commences upon receiving a request to migrate a subject virtual machine from a first computing machine to a second computing machine. An agent determines which storage assets are used by the subject virtual machine. The agent collects volume metadata pertaining to the storage assets and clones volume metadata from the first computing machine to the second computing machine. The data blocks comprising the volumes are not moved to the second computing machine until after migrating the subject virtual machine from the first computing machine to the second computing machine. After starting the migrated instance of the subject virtual machine, the migrated instance mounts volumes using the cloned metadata. The first computing machine and the second computing machine cooperate by processing storage asset block requests issued by the migrated virtual machine. Data blocks comprising the volume are moved on demand. The migrated virtual machine can be migrated yet again.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
receiving a request to move a subject virtual machine from a first computing machine to a migrated virtual machine on a second computing machine;
determining a set of storage assets within a virtual disk that are accessible by the subject virtual machine, the virtual disk comprising a first portion and a second portion, the first portion corresponding to a bootable portion of an operating system and a second portion corresponding to a mountable volume;
determining volume metadata pertaining to the second portion of the virtual disk of the subject virtual machine, the volume metadata corresponding to a metadata map of the mountable volume within the virtual disk;
moving at least some of the first portion corresponding to a bootable portion of the virtual disk to the second computing machine;
moving the volume metadata pertaining to the second portion of the virtual disk from the first computing machine to the second computing machine;
starting the migrated virtual machine on the second computing machine by performing a boot sequence, the boot sequence comprising execution of at least some of the bootable portion of the virtual disk;
mounting the mountable volume on the second computing machine without moving the virtual disk in its entirety, wherein the mountable volume is mounted by accessing the volume metadata that was moved from the first computing machine to the second computing machine; and
processing storage asset block requests corresponding to the mountable volume that are issued by the migrated virtual machine, wherein the storage asset block requests comprise a retrieval operation for one or more storage asset blocks within the mountable volume that are served by the first computing machine.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing, by the second computing machine, a set of pre-fetch operations to prospectively retrieve hot blocks.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the volume metadata comprises at least one of, a parent indication, or a modified flag, or a path, or an extent, or a parent cluster ID, or an origin cluster ID, or a block list, or a mutated block list, or any combination thereto.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the volume metadata comprises at least one of, a volume history, or a hot block list, or any combination thereto.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising analyzing the volume history to determine frequently accessed blocks.

6. The method of claim 4 , further comprising analyzing the hot block list to determine frequently mutated blocks.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising performing, by the second computing machine, a set of pre-fetch operations to prospectively retrieve blocks from the hot block list.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising moving the volume metadata from the second computing machine to a third computing machine.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising performing, by the third computing machine, retrieval of a set of pre-fetch operations to prospectively retrieve hot blocks.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing, by the second computing machine, retrieval of portions of OS configuration data.

11. A computer readable medium, embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium, the non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform a set of acts, the acts comprising:
receiving a request to move a subject virtual machine from a first computing machine to a migrated virtual machine on a second computing machine;
determining a set of storage assets within a virtual disk that are accessible by the subject virtual machine, the virtual disk comprising a first portion and a second portion, the first portion corresponding to a bootable portion of an operating system and a second portion corresponding to a mountable volume;
determining volume metadata pertaining to the second portion of the virtual disk of the subject virtual machine, the volume metadata corresponding to a metadata map of the mountable volume within the virtual disk;
moving at least some of the first portion corresponding to a bootable portion of the virtual disk to the second computing machine;
moving the volume metadata pertaining to the second portion of the virtual disk from the first computing machine to the second computing machine;
starting the migrated virtual machine on the second computing machine by performing a boot sequence, the boot sequence comprising execution of at least some of the bootable portion of the virtual disk;
mounting the mountable volume on the second computing machine without moving the virtual disk in its entirety, wherein the mountable volume is mounted by accessing the volume metadata that was moved from the first computing machine to the second computing machine; and
processing storage asset block requests corresponding to the mountable volume that are issued by the migrated virtual machine, wherein the storage asset block requests comprise a retrieval operation for one or more storage asset blocks within the mountable volume that are served by the first computing machine.

12. The computer readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform, by the second computing machine, a set of pre-fetch operations to prospectively retrieve hot blocks.

13. The computer readable medium of claim 11 , wherein the volume metadata comprises at least one of, a parent indication, or a modified flag, or a path, or an extent, or a parent cluster ID, or an origin cluster ID, or a block list, or a mutated block list, or any combination thereto.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 11 , wherein the volume metadata comprises at least one of, a volume history, or a hot block list, or any combination thereto.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform the acts of analyzing the volume history to determine frequently accessed blocks.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform the acts of analyzing the hot block list to determine frequently mutated blocks.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16 , further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform the acts of performing, by the second computing machine, a set of pre-fetch operations to prospectively retrieve blocks from the hot block list.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor causes the processor to perform the acts of moving the volume metadata from the second computing machine to a third computing machine.

19. A system comprising:
a memory to hold a sequence of instructions; and
a processor or processors that execute the instructions to causes the processor or processors to perform a set of acts, the acts comprising,
receiving a request to move a subject virtual machine from a first computing machine to a migrated virtual machine on a second computing machine;
determining a set of storage assets within a virtual disk that are accessible by the subject virtual machine, the virtual disk comprising a first portion a

Assignees

• Nutanix Inc

Inventors

• Beedu Bharat Kumar
• Ramachandran Parthasarathy
• Jain Kshitiz

Classifications

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G06F2009/45595

  Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances · CPC title

• G06F2009/45583

  Memory management, e.g. access or allocation · CPC title

• G06F2009/4557

  Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing · CPC title

• G06F2009/45579

  I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage · CPC title