US 11,960,763 B2
Load balancing combining block and file storage
Shaul Dar, Petach Tikva (IL); and Amitai Alkalay, Kadima (IL)
Assigned to EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA (US)
Filed by EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA (US)
Filed on Apr. 23, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/238,877.
Prior Publication US 2022/0342598 A1, Oct. 27, 2022
Int. Cl. G06F 12/00 (2006.01); G06F 3/06 (2006.01); G06F 13/00 (2006.01); G06F 16/182 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 3/0659 (2013.01) [G06F 3/0611 (2013.01); G06F 3/0647 (2013.01); G06F 3/067 (2013.01); G06F 16/1827 (2019.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of load balancing in a data storage system, comprising:
performing, by a first storage node of the storage system and a second storage node of the storage system, I/O operations on behalf of clients, the first storage node and the second storage node each having respective control circuitry that includes a set of processing units coupled to memory;
generating performance metrics that include (i) a first performance metric for a first plurality of volumes hosted by the first storage node of the data storage system and (ii) a second performance metric for a second plurality of volumes hosted by the second storage node of the data storage system, the first plurality of volumes including a third plurality of volumes that is part of a NAS file server running on the first storage node;
detecting, based on the first performance metric and the second performance metric, a load imbalance between the first storage node and the second storage node; and
in response to detecting the load imbalance, (1) moving the NAS file server from the first storage node to the second storage node, including (a) disabling the NAS file server running on the first storage node and (b) instantiating the NAS file server on the second storage node, and (2) hosting the third plurality of volumes from the second storage node,
wherein the first performance metric and the second performance metric are generated based on respective sums of per-volume metrics for individual volumes in the first plurality of volumes and the second plurality of volumes, wherein the first performance metric is based at least in part on the third plurality of volumes that is host-accessible via the NAS file server using a file-based protocol, and wherein the second performance metric is based at least in part on a volume that is host-accessible using a block-based protocol, the method thereby providing a common mechanism based on the per-volume metrics for load balancing data accessed using both block-based and file-based protocols.