Hyper-Converged Storage Locality via Virtual Machine Copy Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
In hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) environments, the locality of non-volatile storage is not effectively preserved when a virtual machine copy is moved to a different HCI appliance, leading to increased I/O latency and network load due to reliance on network I/O operations.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves creating a copy of a virtual machine on a target HCI appliance, where I/O operations are intercepted and processed using mapping metadata to determine whether regions of the storage object are mapped to local or remote non-volatile storage, allowing for local processing of I/O operations and reducing network I/O requests to the original HCI appliance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a virtual machine copy is moved to a different HCI appliance, then load balancing and distribution across appliances is achieved, but storage access locality is lost causing increased I/O latency
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments storage object copies into multiple regions (first region from original storage, second region from local storage) and uses mapping metadata to divide I/O operations into two paths: network I/O for the first region and local I/O for the second region. This segmentation allows the system to simultaneously support VM mobility for load balancing while preserving storage locality for performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by allocating specific portions of storage object copies to local non-volatile storage on the target HCI appliance rather than relying entirely on remote storage. This creates different storage access characteristics for different regions of the same storage object, with the second region optimized for local access patterns of the copied VM.
2Reliability
If all storage accesses are routed through network I/O operations to the original HCI appliance, then storage object consistency is maintained, but network load increases and performance decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by routing only certain I/O operations (those accessing the first region of storage object copies) through network I/O to the original HCI appliance, while allowing other I/O operations (those accessing the second region) to be handled locally. This partial routing approach maintains necessary consistency while avoiding the performance penalty of routing all accesses remotely.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces mapping metadata as an intermediary layer between the virtual machine copy and the storage system. This mapping metadata tracks which regions of storage object copies are located remotely versus locally, enabling the I/O subsystem to automatically route operations through appropriate paths without requiring application-layer intervention, thus balancing consistency and performance.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for preserving locality of storage accesses to copies of storage objects in a cluster of appliances. Mapping metadata is created indicating regions in a copy of a storage object that are mapped to local storage allocated from a target appliance. Read and write operations to regions of the copy that are mapped to storage in the target appliance are processed within the target appliance. Write operations to regions that are not mapped to storage in the target appliance cause storage to be allocated to the copy in the target appliance, mapped to the regions indicated by the write operations, and used to store the write data. Read operations to regions that are not mapped to storage in the target appliance are performed on an original storage object located on a source appliance, from which the copy of the storage object was made.