Filter Appliance for Object-Based Storage Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional storage systems employing LUNs or FS volumes face scalability issues, leading to inefficient resource allocation and service level agreement guarantees, as resource demands from one virtual machine workload affect others, and data services like snapshots and replication are provided at a granularity of LUNs or FS volumes, not per virtual disk.
Innovation Solution
A framework for transforming logical storage volumes by interposing filters on input/output operations, allowing for the redirection of IO operations through a filter appliance that can perform caching, compression, encryption, and other filtering operations, enabling per-VM storage policies and service level agreements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If workloads from multiple VMs are serviced by a single LUN or FS volume, then storage device management is simplified, but resource allocation efficiency deteriorates and service level agreement guarantees cannot be provided on a per-VM basis
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the storage resource management by introducing virtual disks as intermediate entities between VMs and physical storage devices. Each virtual disk can be independently managed and assigned to specific VMs, allowing granular control over resource allocation while maintaining simplified physical storage management through LUNs or FS volumes.
2Device complexity
If data services like snapshots and replication are provided at LUN or FS volume granularity, then storage system implementation is simplified, but per-VM data service capability is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables data services to operate at the virtual disk level rather than only at the LUN or FS volume level. This segmentation allows snapshots and replication to be applied to individual virtual disks, providing per-VM data service capability while the underlying physical storage still uses conventional LUN or FS volume structures.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual disk acts as an intermediary layer between the VM and the physical storage system. Data services are implemented at this intermediary level, allowing fine-grained control over individual VM data while maintaining compatibility with the underlying physical storage architecture that uses LUNs or FS volumes.
3Speed
If VMs are directly connected to physical disks, then storage access performance is improved, but storage system scalability deteriorates when supporting large numbers of VMs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces virtual disks as intermediary entities that maintain direct connection paths to physical storage devices while providing abstraction and management capabilities. This allows VMs to access storage with high performance through the virtual disk interface while the system maintains scalability by managing multiple virtual disks through a unified virtualization layer.
Data Source
AI summary
A framework for performing transformations of logical storage volumes in software is provided. This framework interposes on various operations that can be performed on a logical storage volume, such as input/output (IO) operations, via one or more filters, which may be implemented by an appliance that is inserted into the data path of the operations issued to the logical storage volume.