Storage System Cross-Site Volume Association for Container Failover
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing storage systems face challenges in enhancing the availability of containers across multiple sites, as they cannot freely migrate between active and standby systems, leading to difficulties in maintaining continuous operation during storage device failures.
Innovation Solution
A storage system is designed with a generation unit that creates association volumes across multiple sites, allowing connected volumes to be recognized as a single unit, and an instruction unit that ensures seamless connection of these volumes with compute nodes, enabling automatic failover and maintaining I/O continuity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If container management software recognizes volumes individually at each site, then the system structure is simple and easy to manage, but the container cannot freely migrate between sites and I/O connectivity is lost during failover
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple synchronized volumes from different sites into a single logical volume unit. The storage system presents these distributed volumes as one unified volume to the container management software, enabling seamless failover while maintaining simple volume management. When a container needs to migrate between sites, the system switches the logical volume connection to the appropriate physical volume at the target site without requiring the container management software to recognize or manage individual volumes at each location.
2Reliability
If the container is connected to a single volume at its current site, then the connection is simple and direct, but I/O is disconnected when the storage device fails
Solution Approach 1:
The storage system acts as an intermediary between the container and the distributed volumes across multiple sites. Instead of directly connecting the container to a specific site's volume, the storage system receives I/O requests and redirects them to the appropriate volume based on current site availability. This intermediary layer transparently handles failover by switching connections to standby volumes at different sites without requiring the container or its management software to have adaptability for volume switching.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple synchronized volumes are recognized as individual volumes, then each volume can be managed independently, but the container cannot utilize volumes from other sites during failover
Solution Approach 1:
The storage system implements a universal volume interface that works across multiple sites. Instead of requiring the container management software to identify and manage different volumes at each site, the system provides a unified volume interface that functions consistently regardless of which site's physical volume is currently active. This multi-functional interface allows the same container to access volumes from any site through a standardized connection method.
Data Source
AI summary
A storage system with high availability is provided. The storage system is designed to be provided with: a generation unit that generates information of an association volume which is associated with each volume, on the basis of information of each volume created at each of a plurality of storage devices designated from two or more sites; and an instruction unit that issues an instruction to each storage device, at which each volume is created, to connect each volume associated with the association volume and a compute node which operates a container, on the basis of a request for activation of the container for which the information of the association volume generated by the generation unit is designated.