Virtual Machine Node Placement for Storage Failover Reliability
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Solution Overview
Problem
Information processing systems with multiple nodes face challenges in maintaining high reliability and availability due to affinity rules, particularly during failovers, where virtual machines and storage controllers are restricted from being on the same node, leading to potential faults and performance issues.
Innovation Solution
The system provides a storage controller group capable of processing takeover between different nodes, allowing virtual machines and storage controllers to be arranged on the same node for data input/output, while defining restrictions on combinations that cannot be on the same node, ensuring compliance with affinity rules even during failovers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If virtual machines and storage controllers are arranged on the same node to improve IO performance, then IO performance is improved, but reliability deteriorates due to potential faults from affinity rule violations during failover
Solution Approach 1:
The management unit performs preliminary arrangement planning that anticipates failover scenarios. Before any fault occurs, the system pre-determines valid arrangement combinations that satisfy affinity rules, ensuring that when failover happens, the virtual machine and storage controller will already be in a compliant state, preventing affinity rule violations and maintaining reliability while allowing same-node arrangement for performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts arrangement decisions based on operational state. The management unit differentiates between normal operation and failover states, allowing flexible arrangement during normal operation (permitting same-node for performance) while automatically enforcing affinity rule compliance during failover (separating them for reliability), thus adapting the arrangement strategy to current system conditions.
2Reliability
If affinity rules are enforced to ensure reliability during failover, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to arrangement constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The management unit serves multiple functions: it arranges virtual machines and storage controllers during normal operation, manages failover scenarios, and enforces affinity rules. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single management component, the system achieves reliable failover enforcement without proportionally increasing overall system complexity, as the same unit handles multiple responsibilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the arrangement parameters (which node hosts which virtual machine or storage controller) based on the operational state. During normal operation, parameters allow flexible arrangement for performance. During failover, parameters automatically adjust to enforce affinity rule compliance. This parameter-based control mechanism enables reliable failover enforcement through software logic rather than hardware complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
There are provided an information processing system that operates virtual machines and storage controllers on a processor, and an information processing method executed by the information processing system. A storage controller group capable of taking over processing between the storage controllers arranged in different nodes is provided. The virtual machine is movable between the different nodes by deploy. The virtual machine and the storage controller that processes data input and output by the virtual machine are arranged in the same node. A combination of the virtual machines that cannot be arranged in the same node is defined by a restriction. A management unit arranges one of the virtual machines that cannot be arranged in the same node in the node in which the storage controller included in the storage controller group to which the storage controller used by the other virtual machine belongs is not arranged.