Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Dell Products Inc.

Arthur F Lent

Vijayan Rajan

Deepak Raghu Kenchammana-Hosekote

Jeffrey S Kimmel

Shravan Gaonkar

Herman Lee

Mohan Srinivasan

Rahul Narayan Iyer

Brian J Pawlowski

Don Bolinger

Eric P Forgette

Michael Robin Eisler

John Meneghini

James R Grier

Rebecca S Beaman

Timothy J Clayton-Luce

Jeffrey Silberman

Matthew S DeBergalis

Peter M Morrissette

Abhijeet Prakash Gole

Sumedh Wasudeo Sathaye

Nicole Reineke

Ravikanth Dronamraju

Joseph C Pittman

Michael Neil Condict

Nagender Somavarapu

Jennifer M Minarik

Vitaly Revsin

Aditya P Kulkarni

Randall David Smith

Reut Kovetz

Kelly L Lisai

Patrick East

Hooman Vassef

Peter Macko

Salimah Addetia

Mohammed Nazeem

Brian Pawloski

Brett P Cooper

David W Mitchell

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for booting a virtual machine. In response to a launch or initialization of a virtual machine, the virtual machine may attach a boot volume within a cloud-associated storage system. The boot volume contains a boot program. The boot program is loaded to the virtual machine from the boot volume. The virtual machine uses the boot program to acquire a boot configuration that includes a set of parameters and one or more commands for interfacing with a networked storage system and attaching a root volume within the networked storage system using a network-based storage interface protocol. The virtual machine boots its operating system from the root volume within the networked storage system.

Methods and systems for booting virtual machines in the cloud

Codified graphical user experience design includes finite state machine (FSM) metadata, logic describing the graphical aspects of the user experience design, and logic describing states of the user experience design and transitions between states. A GUI to API/CLI translator uses the codified graphical user experience design to automatically create corresponding CLI packages and API playbooks. The translator walks the FSM. For each visited state, a state based functional intermediate code package is created including the one or more API call basic blocks associated with API calls to be implemented at that state, and parameter definitions for each API call at that state. For each state transition, conditional intermediate code is created and attached to the API call basic blocks. The state based functional intermediate code packages with attached conditional intermediate code are used to create a CLI package or an API playbook based on the codified graphical user experience design.

Creating CLI packages and API playbooks from codified graphical user experience designs

I/O bandwidth reduction using storage-level common page information is implemented by a storage server, in response to receiving a request from a client for a page stored at a first virtual address, determining that the first virtual address maps to a page that is a duplicate of a page stored at a second virtual address or that the first and second virtual addresses map to a deduplicated page within a storage system, and transmitting metadata to the client mapping the first virtual address to a second virtual address that also maps to the deduplicated page. For one embodiment, the metadata is transmitted in anticipation of a request for the redundant/deduplicated page via the second virtual address. For an alternate embodiment, the metadata is sent in response to a determination that a page that maps to the second virtual address was previously sent to the client.

I/O bandwidth reduction using storage-level common page information

One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for hosting a virtual machine from a snapshot. In particular, a snapshot of a virtual machine hosted on a primary computing device may be created. The virtual machine may be hosted on a secondary computing device using the snapshot, for example, when a failure of the virtual machine on the primary computing device occurs. If a virtual machine type (format) of the snapshot is not supported by the secondary computing device, then the virtual machine within the snapshot may be converted to a virtual machine type supported by the secondary computing device. In this way, the virtual machine may be operable and/or accessible on the secondary computing device despite the failure. Hosting the virtual machine on the secondary computing device provides, among other things, fault tolerance for the virtual machine and/or applications comprised therein.

Virtual machine fault tolerance

Described herein are systems and methods for storage and deployment of VMs in a virtual server environment. A VM deployment module executing on a server may produce VM container objects representing VMs, a VM container object comprising VM data describing a VM and vdisk configuration data. The VM deployment module may also later produce VMs on a server using the VM container objects. The VM deployment module may do so by producing a vdisk from a VM container object, the vdisk comprising the VM and vdisk configuration data. Rather than configuring the vdisk as typically done to make the vdisk useable to the server, the vdisk configuration data is used to make the vdisk useable and the VM data on the vdisk immediately accessible to the server. As such, the VM data may be immediately read to produce a VM on the server, thus providing rapid deployment of VMs.

System and method for storage and deployment of virtual machines in a virtual server environment

I/O bandwidth reduction using storage-level common page information is implemented by a storage server. In response to receiving a request from a client for a page stored at a first virtual address, the storage server determines that the first virtual address maps to a page that is a duplicate of a page stored at a second virtual address. Or the storage server determines that the first and second virtual addresses map to a deduplicated page within a storage system. The storage server then transmits metadata to the client. The metadata maps the first virtual address to a second virtual address that also maps to the deduplicated page.

The present invention provides a system and method for creating and accessing a copy of one or more host-accessible storage entities contained in a persistent consistency point image (PCPI) of a volume served by a storage system. The storage entity may comprise a file system, logical volume, volume group, or 'file system on raw device'. The copy of the storage entity is generated using a logical unit number (lun) copying technique in conjunction with a PCPI table of contents (PTOC). The PTOC contains data describing contents of the PCPI, including luns of the storage entity. The PTOC is written to the volume of the storage system, which is configured to store the luns, i.e., in the context of an active file system, immediately prior to generation of the PCPI. After generation of the PCPI, the PTOC is deleted from the volume such that it is only stored within the PCPI and not within the active file system.

System and method for creating and accessing a host-accessible storage entity

A system and method for configuring a storage network utilizing one or more storage appliances to utilize the multi-block based protocol nature of the storage appliances. By configuring the storage network, data served by the storage appliance may be accessed by a plurality of protocols simultaneously. Illustratively, a virtual disk (vdisk) may be access by clients using the FCP protocol over a FC network while other clients access the vdisk using the iSCSI protocol over a TCP/IP network.

System and method for configuring a storage network utilizing a multi-protocol storage appliance

A system and method provides a remote direct memory access over a transport medium that does not natively support remote direct memory access operations. An emulated VI module of a storage operating system emulates RDMA operations over such a medium, e.g., conventional Ethernet, thereby enabling storage. Storage appliances in a cluster configuration utilize the non-RDMA compatible transport medium as a cluster interconnect.

System and method for providing remote direct memory access over a transport medium that does not natively support remote direct memory access operations

A system and method proxies data access commands acrossed a cluster interconnect between storage appliances and a cluster using a file-level protocol. Each storage appliance activates two ports per data access, a local port for data access requests directed to clients of the storage appliance and a proxy port for data access requests directed to the partner storage appliance. Clients utilizing multi-pathing software may send data access requests to either the local port of the storage appliance or the proxy port of the storage appliance. The system and method improves high availability, especially during a loss of connectivity due to non-storage appliance hardware failure.

System and method for proxying data access commands in a storage system cluster

The techniques introduced here provide a storage server migration that is non-disruptive to client applications. The techniques described here allow the migration of data from a source storage server to a destination storage server without the need for planned downtime typically associated with storage server migration. Using the techniques described here, data migration operations are performed while client applications continue to run and access data from the source storage server. Once data migration operations are complete, all applications and clients are transitioned to the destination storage server without disruption to the client applications.

Non-disruptive storage server migration

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Arthur F Lent