I/O Accelerator Device for Virtualized Storage Latency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional virtualized information handling systems face performance limitations in data transfer and storage resource access due to high latency and low throughput in hypervisor driver stacks, especially when communicating with applications executing on neighboring virtual machines, which hinders the benefits of advanced storage technologies like flash caches and virtual storage area networks.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of an I/O accelerator device programmed by a storage virtual appliance that uses direct memory access (DMA) for storage operations, providing managed access to local and remote storage resources and accelerating data transfers between storage virtual appliances and guest operating systems, thereby bypassing processor involvement and improving data throughput.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional hypervisor driver stacks are used for data transfer between virtual machines, then system compatibility and ease of operation are maintained, but data throughput is limited and latency is high
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the I/O acceleration function from the conventional hypervisor driver stack by introducing a separate I/O accelerator device. This device operates independently from the hypervisor, allowing data transfers to bypass the processor involvement and driver stack processing, thereby achieving higher throughput and lower latency while maintaining system compatibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The I/O accelerator device acts as an intermediary between storage virtual appliances and guest operating systems. It provides a dedicated hardware path for data transfers, mediating between the virtualized storage layer and the compute layer, thus improving performance without requiring changes to the hypervisor or guest OS.
2Productivity
If processor involvement is used for data transfer operations in virtualized systems, then control and management are simplified, but processor workload increases and performance decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The I/O accelerator device performs data transfer operations autonomously without requiring processor involvement. It manages its own operations, including data movement between storage virtual appliances and guest OSes, thereby reducing processor workload and energy consumption while improving transfer speed.
3Productivity
If advanced storage technologies like flash caches and virtual storage area networks are implemented, then storage performance is improved, but access efficiency is hindered by hypervisor driver stack limitations
Solution Approach 1:
The I/O accelerator device serves as an intermediary that enables efficient access to advanced storage technologies. It provides a direct hardware path to flash caches and virtual storage area networks, bypassing the hypervisor driver stack limitations, thus improving storage access efficiency without complicating the overall system architecture.
Data Source
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AI summary
Methods and systems for I/O acceleration using an I/O accelerator device on a virtualized information handling system include pre-boot configuration of first and second device endpoints that appear as independent devices. After loading a storage virtual appliance that has exclusive access to the second device endpoint, a hypervisor may detect and load drivers for the first device endpoint. The storage virtual appliance may then initiate data transfer I/O operations using the I/O accelerator device. The data transfer operations may be read or write operations to a storage device that the storage virtual appliance provides access to. The I/O accelerator device may use direct memory access (DMA).