Gaurav Ranganathan

US Patent:

20160103738, Apr 14, 2016

Filed:

Oct 8, 2014

Appl. No.:

14/509885

Inventors:

- San Jose CA, US
Juhsun Wang - Santa Clara CA, US
Gaurav Ranganathan - San Jose CA, US
Manu Mehrotra - San Jose CA, US

International Classification:

G06F 11/14
G06F 17/30

Abstract:

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.

US Patent:

20160063014, Mar 3, 2016

Filed:

Jun 26, 2015

Appl. No.:

14/752329

Inventors:

- San Jose CA, US
Juhsun Wang - Santa Clara CA, US
Gaurav Ranganathan - San Jose CA, US

International Classification:

G06F 17/30

Abstract:

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.