Dell Products Inc.

Citrix Systems, Inc.

Portworx, Inc.

Pure Storage, Inc.

Quest Software Inc.

Citrix Gateways, Inc.

Goutham Rao

Vinod Jayaraman

Eric Brueggemann

Murali Bashyam

Robert A Rodriguez

Carter George

Abhijit Dinkar

Dinesh Israni

Mark Taylor

Ganesh Sangle

Joseph Jobi

Michael E Root

Ratna Manoj Bolla

Timothy Ernest Simmons

Prabir Paul

Parthiban Munusamy

Lakshmi Narasimhan Sundararajan

Harsh Desai

Nikhil Subhash Bhupale

Saurabh Deoras

Lewis McCarthy

Russell P Lentini

Hui Huang

Jon N Thies

Shekhar Pardeshi

Mike Wilson

Murli Bashyam

Timothy Regovich

Terence M Weaver

Micah Wilson

Murli Thirumale

An illustrative storage system provides distributed storage for use by containerized applications running in a container system. In some implementations, this includes converting data blocks of storage resources to distributed persistent storage such as thin-provisioned volumes for use by the containerized applications. In some implementations, the conversion includes using a device mapper to virtualize the data blocks of the storage resources to create a virtual storage pool backing datastore in which the thin-provisioned volumes are created.

Converting storage resources to distributed persistent storage for containerized applications

An illustrative distributed storage system detects a request to resize an online volume that provides persistent storage for a containerized application running in a container system, wherein the online volume is backed by a virtual block device created in device namespace using a device mapper virtualization of data blocks of one or more storage devices. The distributed storage system performs, in response to the request, a resize process to resize the online volume. The resizing of the online volume includes resizing the virtual block device. In some examples, a file system implemented on the virtual block device is also resized while the online volume is online. The storage system may manage inflight IOs over the virtual block device and the online volume such that the resize process is performed without error.

Online resize of a volume of a distributed storage system

An illustrative method includes determining that a first application instance of an application is terminated, instantiating, in response to the determining that the first application instance of the application is terminated, a second application instance of the application, identifying one or more particular storage volumes based on the first application instance, and attaching the one or more particular storage volumes to the second application instance.

Systems and methods for regenerating a terminated application instance of a containerized application

An illustrative method includes receiving a request to create a storage volume; identifying, based on the request and on a configuration file propagated among a plurality of storage nodes in a cluster, status indicators of the storage nodes; identifying, based on the request, a size of the storage volume; identifying, based on the request, a replication factor representing a number of storage nodes that are to be replicated within a cluster for the storage volume; identifying, based on one or more characteristics associated with the storage volume, a traffic priority for the storage volume, the traffic priority representing a hierarchy that determines and prioritizes which traffic is allocated to available hardware and network resources in a particular order; creating, based on the status indicators, the size, the replication factor, and the traffic priority, the storage volume on one or more of the plurality of storage nodes.

Traffic priority based creation of a storage volume within a cluster of storage nodes

An illustrative method includes determining whether a virtual storage volume is successfully mounted to a mount path associated with a compute node, the mount path being marked as read-only, marking, if the determining includes determining that the virtual storage volume is successfully mounted to the mount path, the mount path as writable, and maintaining, if the determining includes determining that the virtual storage volume is unsuccessfully mounted to the mount path, the mount path as read-only.

Mount path management for virtual storage volumes in a containerized storage environment

An example system may be configured to instantiate a first application container based on a plurality of application image layers; and instantiate a second application container based, at least in part, on the plurality of application image layers; wherein a private page cache stores storage information for the plurality of application image layers and is used to provide shared access to the plurality of application image layers by the first application container and the second application container.

Private page cache-based sharing of access to application image layers by application containers

A clustered storage system may include potentially many different nodes. A node may mount a virtual storage volume for the use of a container application at the node. The node may receive a request from a different node and respond by indicating whether the virtual storage volume is in active use. In this way, the clustered storage system may safely but forcibly unmount a virtual storage volume having a failed or hanging mount point so that the volume may be mounted on a different node.

Resolving failed or hanging mount points in a clustered storage solution for containers

An example method includes identifying, based on a request to write data to a volume provided by storage nodes in a storage node cluster, a cluster hierarchy associated with the storage node cluster, the cluster hierarchy identifying storage characteristics of the storage nodes, wherein the cluster hierarchy is based on data characterizing performance and storage capabilities of the storage nodes; based on the request, selecting a storage node for storing the data in the volume, the selecting being based, at least in part, on the storage characteristics identified by the cluster hierarchy and on one or more data distribution parameters associated with the storage volume; and transmitting the data to the storage node.

Cluster hierarchy-based transmission of data to a storage node included in a storage node cluster

A clustered storage system may include potentially many different nodes, each including a storage driver and a scheduler agent. A node may mount a virtual storage volume for the use of a container application at the node. When a master node receives a request to instantiate a new containerized application, a scheduler at the master node may determine prioritization information for the new containerized application. The prioritization information may prioritize one or more nodes at which a virtualized storage volume employed by the application container instance is mounted.

Hyper-convergence with scheduler extensions for software-defined container storage solutions

Systems, devices, and methods are disclosed herein for containerized scalable storage applications. Methods may include instantiating an application instance based on a plurality of application instance parameters, the application instance being configured to utilize a plurality of storage volumes implemented in a storage cluster. Methods may also include enumerating a plurality of unattached storage volumes included in the cluster associated with the application instance, the plurality of unattached storage volumes having a plurality of underlying physical storage devices, and the plurality of unattached storage volumes being identified based on a plurality of application instance parameters. The methods may further include attaching at least some of the plurality of unattached storage volumes to the application instance, wherein the attaching enables the application instance to access data stored in the attached storage volumes.

Node regeneration in distributed storage systems

Mechanisms are provided for adjusting a configuration of data stored in a storage system. According to various embodiments, a storage module may be configured to store a configuration of data. A processor may be configured to identify an estimated performance level for the storage system based on a configuration of data stored on the storage system. The processor may also be configured to transmit an instruction to adjust the configuration of data on the storage system to meet the service level objective when the estimated performance level fails to meet a service level objective for the storage system.

Storage system deduplication with service level agreements

Techniques and mechanisms described herein facilitate the execution of a software program container having a plurality of layers. Each layer may include a plurality of files. For instance, a base layer may include a version of an operating system, while an upper layer may include a software program configured to run within the operating system. Different layers may store, create, or modify the same file. However, the precedence of the version of the data for the file may be based on an ordering of the layers. For example, the version of the file in a higher layer should supersede the version of the file in a lower layer. In some implementations, a privileged storage container that runs atop a virtualization layer may manage storage resources for other containers. The privileged storage container may store each file in a software program container as a snapshotable object.

Chain file system

Clustered containerized applications are implemented with scalable provisioning. Methods include receiving a data storage request to store one or more data values in a storage volume implemented across a storage node cluster, the storage node cluster including a plurality of storage nodes including one or more storage devices having storage space allocated for storing data associated with the storage volume. Methods may further include identifying a cluster hierarchy associated with the storage node cluster, the cluster hierarchy identifying storage characteristics of the plurality of storage nodes, the cluster hierarchy also identifying physical location information for the plurality of storage nodes, the physical location information indicating node-to-node proximity on a network graph. Methods may also include selecting a storage node on which to store the data, the selecting being based, at least in part, on the identified storage characteristics and one or more data distribution parameters associated with the storage volume.

Provisioning of clustered containerized applications

Two servers implemented as containerized applications may manage the storage of data and the access of that data by compute jobs in a distributed system. A metadata server may distribute data on ingress and assign files to particular storage volumes. The metadata server may then provide a lookup function for files and be configured to distribute a file to other volumes when necessary. A job server may launch jobs as containerized applications and coordinate data access across jobs.

Distributed job manager for stateful microservices

A custom file system in a containerized software architecture facilitates the instantiation of application containers. Each container is composed of one or more application image layers. An application container instance includes read-only application image layer data shared among application container instances associated with the same application container. An application container instance may also include read/write application container instance data that is specific to the application container instance.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Goutham Rao