Parallel Persistent Consistency Point Images for Striped Volume Sets
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Solution Overview
Problem
In storage systems, generating consistent images of data across multiple volumes in a striped volume set (SVS) served by a cluster is challenging due to the lack of a unified mechanism to synchronize data across different storage systems, leading to inconsistencies and performance degradation when a single data container is heavily accessed.
Innovation Solution
A system and method are introduced where an agent coordinates the generation of synchronized parallel persistent consistency point images (PCPIs) by setting markers to ensure that all storage systems complete and hold operations, allowing each system to capture a consistent image of the data objects, and then removes these markers after the image is created, ensuring that all nodes in the cluster have a synchronized view of the data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple storage systems service different volumes in a striped volume set, then data access performance is improved through distribution, but data consistency across volumes deteriorates due to lack of synchronization
Solution Approach 1:
A coordinator storage system is introduced as an intermediary among multiple storage systems. The coordinator receives snapshot requests, sends snapshot initiation messages to participant storage systems, collects status information, and manages the snapshot completion process. This mediator ensures all storage systems operate in a coordinated manner, maintaining data consistency across the distributed SVS while preserving the performance benefits of distributed architecture.
2Speed
If storage systems process operations independently without coordination, then processing speed is improved, but the accuracy of consistent images deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Before capturing snapshots, the coordinator sends snapshot initiation messages to all participant storage systems, instructing them to prepare for consistent imaging. This preliminary action ensures all systems are synchronized before the snapshot operation begins, allowing parallel processing to maintain speed while ensuring consistency accuracy through pre-coordination of the snapshot timing and process across all storage systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method efficiently generates a set of parallel persistent consistency point images (PCPIs) of volumes configured as a SVS and served by a plurality of nodes interconnected as a cluster. A volume operations daemon (VOD) executing on a node of the cluster is configured to manage generation of the volume PCPIs. Notably, the set of PCPIs is generated substantially in parallel to thereby obtain a consistent and accurate point in time reference of the entire SVS.