Using dynamic I/O load differential for load balancing
AssigneeEMC IP Holding Company LLC
InventorsTimothy C. Ng, Alan L. Taylor, Nagapraveen V. Seela
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The subject disclosure is generally directed towards load balancing between storage processors based upon dynamic redirection statistics, in which load balancing includes changing a preferred path/a mounted file system from one storage processor to another. In one example, load balancing technology compares a current delta of directed and redirected I/O counts to a previous delta. If the result turns from negative to positive, that is, redirection is becoming prevalent, a load balancing threshold may be changed based upon the current delta value. Load balancing is thus based on the latest trend of I/O redirection.
Claims15
A method in a computer network or computer system, comprising, using dynamic redirection statistics to determine whether to perform load balancing, and if so, performing load balancing by changing a preferred path from a first storage processor to a second storage processor, including to unmount a file system from the first storage processor and mount the file system on the second storage processor and notify a redirector of the preferred path changing from the first storage processor to the second storage processor.
A system comprising, one or more processors and a memory, the memory configured to contain executable code executed by the one or more processors, including code corresponding to a redirector, the redirector configured to redirect I/O requests to a LUN that is not owned by a storage processor corresponding to a preferred path and having a file system mounted thereon, and to provide dynamic statistics on directed and redirected I/O requests, the redirector further configured to participate in load balancing, including to change the preferred path to another storage processor based upon the dynamic statistics.
One or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media having machine-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:
- maintaining dynamic statistics with respect to I/O requests directed to a first storage processor and I/O requests redirected to a second storage processor;
- accessing the dynamic statistics to determine whether the I/O requests redirected to the second storage processor indicate that load balancing is likely to increase performance;
- and
- if load balancing is likely to increase performance, performing load balancing, including unmounting a file system from the first storage processor and mounting a file system on the second storage processor, and directing I/O requests to the second storage processor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.