Hibernating and resuming nodes of a computing cluster

A system comprising:

• a storage medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions;
• and
• a processor that executes the sequence of instructions to cause the processor to perform a set of acts comprising:
• maintaining a cluster on a plurality of nodes of a virtualization system, the cluster having a distributed metadata system that uses a persistent data structure to store system metadata, wherein a storage pool of the cluster is managed using the system metadata, the system metadata is stored on multiple nodes of the plurality of nodes, the system metadata comprises a plurality of portions of metadata, individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata are stored as both a primary copy on a node of the multiple nodes and at least one redundant copy on at least one other node of the multiple nodes, and at least two nodes of the multiple nodes store both a primary copy of at least one individual portion and a redundant copy of at least one other individual portion;
• determining that the system metadata is to be migrated to a backup storage that is external to the cluster;
• and
• migrating the system metadata to the backup storage at least by:
• identifying and selecting, from the primary and redundant copies, a single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata for transfer to the backup storage, wherein the primary copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata is selected as the single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata, and
• transmitting the identified and selected single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata from the multiple nodes to the backup storage.

A method comprising:

• maintaining a cluster on a plurality of nodes of a virtualization system, the cluster having a distributed metadata system that uses a persistent data structure to store system metadata, wherein a storage pool of the cluster is managed using the system metadata, the system metadata is stored on multiple nodes of the plurality of nodes, the system metadata comprises a plurality of portions of metadata, individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata are stored as both a primary copy on a node of the multiple nodes and at least one redundant copy on at least one other node of the multiple nodes, and at least two nodes of the multiple nodes store both a primary copy of at least one individual portion and a redundant copy of at least one other individual portion;
• determining that the system metadata is to be migrated to a backup storage that is external to the cluster;
• and
• migrating the system metadata to the backup storage at least by:
• identifying and selecting, from the primary and redundant copies, a single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata for transfer to the backup storage, wherein the primary copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata is selected as the single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata, and
• transmitting the identified and selected single copy of the individual portions of the plurality of portions of metadata from the multiple nodes to the backup storage.