STORAGE SYSTEM WITH VIRTUAL DISKS

摘要

An administrator provisions a virtual disk in a remote storage platform and defines policies for that virtual disk. A virtual machine writes to and reads from the storage platform using any storage protocol. Virtual disk data within a failed storage pool is migrated to different storage pools while still respecting the policies of each virtual disk. Snapshot and revert commands are given for a virtual disk at a particular point in time and overhead is minimal. A virtual disk is cloned utilizing snapshot information and no data need be copied. Any number of Zookeeper clusters are executing in a coordinated fashion within the storage platform, thus increasing overall throughput. A timestamp is generated that guarantees a monotonically increasing counter, even upon a crash of a virtual machine. Any virtual disk has a “hybrid cloud aware” policy in which one replica of the virtual disk is stored in a public cloud.

主权项

1. A method of provisioning a virtual disk within a storage platform of computer nodes, said method comprising:
accessing said storage platform remotely using a computer; selecting a name and a size for said virtual disk; choosing at least one policy for said virtual disk that is respected by said virtual disk within said storage platform; storing said virtual disk name, said size and said at least one policy as metadata on one of said computer nodes; and attaching said virtual disk to a computer server located in a compute farm remote from said storage platform, whereby a software application of said computer server is able to write into said virtual disk in order to save data into said storage platform after said attaching.