Protocol Endpoint QoS Binding for Virtual Storage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing multiple Quality of Service (QoS) policy instances in a virtual storage environment is resource-intensive due to the need to enforce QoS policies on each virtual volume, which can scale to thousands or tens of thousands, leading to inefficiencies in bandwidth distribution and potential I/O delay variations.
Innovation Solution
Enforcing QoS policies on a protocol endpoint level instead of each virtual volume, where virtual volumes are bound to protocol endpoints with assigned QoS policies, allowing different QoS performance levels to be managed through separate I/O queues, reducing resource consumption and improving bandwidth distribution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If QoS policies are enforced on each virtual volume, then storage resource fairness and predictable performance are improved, but storage resource consumption and system complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple QoS policy instances into a single shared QoS policy that is applied across all virtual volumes through the protocol endpoint. Instead of managing individual QoS policies for each virtual volume, the system consolidates QoS enforcement at the protocol endpoint level, reducing the total number of policy instances while maintaining performance guarantees through the binding relationship between protocol endpoints and virtual volumes.
2Reliability
If QoS policies are enforced on each virtual volume, then storage resource fairness is improved, but storage resource consumption increases intensively
Solution Approach 1:
The patent consolidates multiple QoS policy instances into a single shared QoS policy that is applied across all virtual volumes. The protocol endpoint holds this shared QoS policy and enforces it uniformly for all bound virtual volumes, eliminating the need to maintain separate policy instances for each volume and thereby reducing overall storage resource consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared QoS policy at the protocol endpoint level serves multiple virtual volumes simultaneously, making the QoS mechanism universal rather than individualized. This multi-functional approach allows a single policy instance to manage quality of service for numerous virtual volumes, reducing the quantity of storage resources required for policy management.
3Manufacturing precision
If multiple QoS policy instances are managed for each virtual volume, then performance control precision is improved, but system efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual QoS policy management into a unified shared policy framework at the protocol endpoint level. This consolidation maintains performance control precision through the binding relationship between protocol endpoints and virtual volumes while significantly improving management efficiency by reducing the number of policies that must be individually tracked and enforced.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are provided for managing quality of service (QoS) policies in a virtual storage environment. A data storage system receives a request from a host system to connect to a target virtual volume in a storage array of the data storage system, and determines a protocol endpoint which has an assigned QoS policy which corresponds to a QoS policy of the target virtual volume. The data storage system binds the target virtual volume to the protocol endpoint which is determined to have an assigned QoS policy which corresponds to the QoS policy of the target virtual volume, and sends a unique identifier of the protocol endpoint, which is bound to the target virtual volume, to the host system. The data storage system utilizes the protocol endpoint, which is bound to the target virtual volume, to handle data access requests received from the host system for accessing the target virtual volume.