Virtual Machine Pass-Through Disk Provisioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional virtualization systems lack the ability for users to provision and manage pass-through disks directly within virtual machines, limiting flexibility and availability, especially in high-availability cluster configurations where disk provisioning and removal are not transparent or automated.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves software components running on hypervisors and virtualization software that collaborate to provision a pass-through disk from a network storage system as a shared cluster disk, creating a temporary resource group, logically attaching it to the virtual machine, and managing it across host machines in a cluster, ensuring high availability and transparent failover.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If pass-through disks are assigned through virtualization software APIs, then disk provisioning is possible, but user autonomy and flexibility are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables virtual machines to autonomously provision pass-through disks by mounting storage devices directly from the host machine without requiring manual intervention through virtualization software APIs. The virtual machine operating system automatically detects available storage devices and mounts them as pass-through disks, granting user autonomy while eliminating manual complexity.
2Productivity
If pass-through disks are provisioned manually, then disk assignment is possible, but automation and efficiency are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically provisions pass-through disks by enabling the virtual machine operating system to detect, mount, and manage storage devices directly on the host machine. This self-service mechanism eliminates manual provisioning steps and significantly improves disk assignment efficiency without requiring administrator intervention.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual machine operating system acts as an intermediary between the host machine's storage subsystem and the virtualized environment. It directly mounts storage devices from the host and manages pass-through disk assignments, automating the provisioning process while maintaining integration with the virtualization infrastructure.
3Reliability
If pass-through disks are assigned to virtual machines, then direct storage access is enabled, but availability during host failures is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a failover mechanism where pass-through disk mounts are tracked and managed in advance. When host machine failures occur, the system has pre-established procedures to detect the failure and automatically remount the pass-through disks on alternative host machines, ensuring continuous availability without requiring complex real-time decision-making during the failure event.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements monitoring and feedback mechanisms that track the status of pass-through disk mounts across host machines. When failures are detected, the feedback loop triggers automatic failover actions to remount disks on available hosts, maintaining reliability while managing complexity through automated response protocols.
Data Source
AI summary
A physical host machine determines that a storage device from a network storage system is available to the host machine as a pass-through disk. Virtualization software running on the host machine assigns the pass-through disk to a temporary resource group on the host machine. The pass-through disk is logically attached to the virtual machine running on the host machine and made available to an operating system and application running on the virtual machine.