Storage Process Metrics Management for Virtualized Data Centers
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current data center storage systems lack efficient methods for collecting and processing storage process metrics across virtual machine instances, which hampers performance monitoring and service level commitment assessments.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system where a virtual machine manager component issues storage requests using protocols like SCSI or iSCSI, and the storage subsystem collects and returns storage process metric information, which is then processed by a storage process metrics management component for performance analysis and service level evaluations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If virtualization technologies are used to host multiple virtual machines on a single physical computing device, then resource utilization increases, but monitoring and managing storage processes across multiple virtual machine instances becomes complex and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a storage process metrics management component as an intermediary that collects, aggregates, and manages storage metrics from multiple virtual machine instances. This mediator component receives storage requests, tracks associated metrics, and provides a unified view of storage processes across all virtual machines, simplifying monitoring while maintaining high resource utilization through virtualization.
2Measurement precision
If storage process metric information is collected and returned for each storage request, then performance monitoring capability improves, but system overhead and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by selectively collecting storage process metrics based on configuration and request type. The storage process metrics management component determines which metrics to collect and return, avoiding unnecessary metric collection for every storage request. This approach provides sufficient performance monitoring capability while minimizing the time overhead associated with metric collection and processing.
3Measurement precision
If comprehensive storage process metric information is collected across all virtual machine instances, then service level commitment assessment accuracy improves, but data processing and storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and aggregates storage process metrics at the storage process metrics management component level, rather than maintaining separate comprehensive data sets for each virtual machine instance. The component collects metrics from multiple sources, aggregates them, and stores only the necessary aggregated data required for service level commitment assessments. This extraction approach maintains assessment accuracy while reducing the total volume of metric data that must be processed and stored.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are disclosed that facilitate the collection, transmission and processing of information related to the storage processes initiated in conjunction with virtual machine instances instantiated on a hosted virtual network. A virtual machine manager component, such a hypervisor component, receives a storage request from one or more virtual machine instances hosted on a host computing device. Additionally, the virtual machine manager component can further request via the storage protocol that the storage subsystem should collect and return storage process metric information. If the storage subsystem supports the collection of the storage process metric information, the storage subsystem will provide a response to the storage request and at least some of the requested storage process metric information. The virtual machine manager component can then process the response to the storage request as appropriate and forward any storage process metric information to a storage process metrics management component.