Patent · US Active

Methods and systems for concurrently taking snapshots of a plurality of virtual machines

US9778990B2 · kind B2 · utility

4Cited by
18References
20Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateOct 8, 2014
Grant dateOct 3, 2017
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 6, 2035

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F16/972
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

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.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.