Nimble Storage, Inc.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP

Gaurav Ranganathan

Juhsun Wang

Raja Shekar Chelur

Eric P Forgette

Manu Mehrotra

Techniques are described herein which minimize the impact of virtual machine snapshots on the performance of virtual machines and hypervisors. In the context of a volume snapshot which may involve (i) taking virtual machine snapshots of all virtual machines associated with the volume, (ii) taking the volume snapshot, and (iii) removing all the virtual machine snapshots, multiple virtual machine snapshots may be created in parallel. In the process of creating virtual machine snapshots, a storage system may determine which snapshots to create in parallel. The storage system may also prioritize snapshots from certain hypervisors in order to avoid the problem of 'starvation', in which busy hypervisors prevent less busy hypervisors from creating snapshots. The techniques described herein, while mainly described in the context of snapshot creation, are readily applied to snapshot removal.

Methods and systems for concurrently taking snapshots of a plurality of virtual machines

Techniques are described herein which minimize the impact of virtual machine snapshots on the performance virtual machines and hypervisors. In the context of a volume snapshot which may involve (i) taking virtual machine snapshots of all virtual machines associated with the volume, (ii) taking the volume snapshot, and (iii) removing all the virtual machine snapshots, the virtual machine snapshots may be created in a first order and removed in a second order. Specifically, snapshots for busy virtual machines (i.e., virtual machines with higher disk write activity) may be created last and removed first. Consequently, snapshots of busy virtual machines are retained for shorter periods of time, thereby minimizing the effect of virtual machine snapshots on those virtual machines (and their associated hypervisors) that would be most negatively impacted by virtual machine snapshots.

Methods and systems for removing virtual machine snapshots

Techniques are described herein which minimize the impact of virtual machine snapshots on the performance virtual machines and hypervisors. In the context of a volume snapshot which may involve (i) taking virtual machine snapshots of all virtual machines associated with the volume, (ii) taking the volume snapshot, and (iii) removing all the virtual machine snapshots, the virtual machine snapshots may be created in a first order and removed in a second order. Specifically, snapshots for busy virtual machines (i.e., virtual machines with higher disk write activity) may be created last and removed first. Consequently, snapshots of busy virtual machines are retained for the shorter periods of time, thereby minimizing the effect of virtual machine snapshots on those virtual machines (and their associated hypervisors) that would be most negatively impacted by virtual machine snapshots.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Gaurav Ranganathan