Storage Pool Identification for Redirect-on-Write Volume Cloning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Storage orchestrators like Trident do not have knowledge of the underlying physical storage backends, which prevents them from leveraging efficient cloning techniques like Redirect-on-Write (ROW) cloning when duplicating storage volumes across different physical storage pools, leading to unnecessary resource consumption.
Innovation Solution
A data management service identifies the physical storage pools and shares their identifiers across clusters, enabling the use of ROW cloning when source and destination pools match, and copying when they do not, thereby optimizing resource utilization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If storage orchestrators virtualize physical storage pools without knowledge of underlying backends, then storage management is simplified and unified virtualized pools are presented to applications, but efficient cloning techniques like ROW cloning cannot be leveraged when duplicating storage volumes across different physical storage pools
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a data management service as an intermediary layer between the storage orchestrator and the physical storage backend. This service maintains knowledge of the underlying physical storage pools while presenting a unified virtualized interface to the orchestrator. When volume duplication is requested, the intermediary identifies matching physical pools and enables ROW cloning operations, thus resolving the contradiction between simplified management and efficient duplication.
2Reliability
If storage volumes are duplicated by copying to different physical storage pools, then storage availability and redundancy are improved, but storage space and processing resources are unnecessarily consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the duplication parameter from full copy to ROW clone when the source and destination physical storage pools match. This parameter change enables the system to leverage redirect-on-write cloning technology, which stores only the differences between volumes rather than duplicating all data, thereby reducing storage space consumption while maintaining reliability through proper volume duplication across pools.
Data Source
AI summary
The technology disclosed herein enables a higher-level process to perform storage volume management with knowledge of a physical storage backend underlying a storage volume. In a particular example, a method includes mounting a storage volume to a computing node of the computing nodes. The storage volume is stored in a storage pool of a plurality of underlying storage pools. The method further includes determining an identifier for the storage pool, receiving a request to duplicate the storage volume, and determining a second identifier for a second storage pool of the plurality of underlying storage pools to which the storage volume will be duplicated. When the second identifier matches the identifier, creating a clone of the storage volume rather than copying the storage volume to the second storage pool.