iSCSI Live Mounting of Cloud VMs Without Nesting or Full Restoration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Public cloud computing environments do not support live mounting of virtual machines (VMs) from non-cloud-native secondary copies, requiring full restoration of data, which is time-consuming and costly, and existing solutions are limited by technological barriers for Windows-based VMs and depend on multiple protocols or VM nesting.
Innovation Solution
A method to live-mount a native cloud-based VM using ISCSI protocol without nesting, supporting both Windows and Unix-like operating systems, and handling multiple partitions without repeated mounting, enabling access to various secondary copies and snapshots within or outside the cloud environment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If full restoration of secondary copy is performed to access data, then complete data availability is achieved, but restoration time and storage space occupation increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary data blocks from the secondary copy based on access patterns rather than restoring the entire secondary copy. The system identifies and retrieves only the specific data blocks needed by the VM, leaving the rest of the secondary copy intact in its compressed or archived state.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of performing a complete restoration action, the system performs partial restoration by recovering only the portion of data that is currently needed. This allows the VM to access critical data without the overhead of restoring all data in the secondary copy.
2Reliability
If full restoration of secondary copy is performed to access data, then complete data availability is achieved, but storage space occupation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and restores only the specific data blocks that are needed, rather than restoring the entire secondary copy to the cloud storage. This significantly reduces the temporary storage space required during the restoration process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs temporary, disposable storage mechanisms for the restored data blocks, using ephemeral storage resources only when needed rather than maintaining permanent restored copies in expensive cloud storage.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple protocols or VM nesting is used to support live mounting, then compatibility with different operating systems is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal live mounting mechanism that works across different operating systems (Windows and Unix-like) through a single standardized interface. The system uses a generic block device interface that abstracts away OS-specific details, allowing the same live mounting process to function on multiple platforms without requiring protocol translation or nested VMs.
Data Source
AI summary
A native cloud-based VM in a cloud computing environment of choice is live-mounted without requiring nesting techniques. All operating system data needed to live-mount the VM is accessed over ISCSI. The disclosed technology: supports both Windows and Unix-like (e.g., Linux) operating systems; handles any number of partitions of the root file system without repeated mounting, exporting, and unmounting; and uses only internet protocols (e.g., HTTP, ISCSI) to live-mount the VM. The live-mounted VM gains access to a variety of secondary copies, e.g., made with file-level techniques or with block-level techniques, made within or outside the public cloud computing environment, made from other VMs having the same or a different hypervisor than the public cloud computing environment, and/or made from non-virtualized sources. Access to snapshots as a data source for the live-mounted VM is also disclosed. Thus, a streamlined and source-agnostic technology is disclosed for live-mounting VMs in a public cloud.