Provisioning a pass-through disk in a virtualized computing environment
View Patent ↗A physical host machine determines that a storage device from a network storage system is available to the host machine as a pass-through disk. Virtualization software running on the host machine assigns the pass-through disk to a temporary resource group on the host machine. The pass-through disk is logically attached to the virtual machine running on the host machine and made available to an operating system and application running on the virtual machine.
1. A method, comprising:
determining, by a host machine, that a storage device from a network storage system is available to the host machine as a pass-through disk;
receiving, by the host machine a request from the virtual machine for the pass-through disk;
assigning the pass-through disk to a temporary resource group on the host machine; and
logically attaching the pass-through disk from the temporary resource group to a virtual machine running on the host machine.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
if a storage device is not available to the host machine, requesting that the network storage system provision a new storage device.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the storage device comprises a logical unit number (LUN).
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the temporary resource group comprises a first identifier to identify the virtual machine and a second identifier to identify the pass-through disk.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein logically attaching the pass-through disk to the virtual machine comprises adding a disk resource to the temporary resource group, and logically attaching the disk to a virtual storage controller on the host machine, wherein the virtual storage controller is owned by the virtual machine.
6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising:
moving the disk resource from the temporary resource group to a virtual machine resource group on the host machine; and
deleting the temporary resource group.
7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
notifying the virtual machine that the pass-through disk is available.
8. A system comprising:
an array of mass storage devices;
a network storage system coupled to the array of mass storage devices; and
a host machine running virtualization software, the virtualization software configured to:
determine that a storage device from the array of mass storage devices is available to the host machine as a pass-through disk;
receive a request from the virtual machine for the pass-through disk;
assign a disk resource representing the pass-through disk to a temporary resource group on the host machine; and
logically attach the pass-through disk from the temporary resource group to a virtual machine running on the host machine.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the virtualization software is further configured to:
request that the network storage system provision a new storage device if a storage device is not available to the host machine.
10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the storage device comprises a logical unit number (LUN).
11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the temporary resource group comprises a first identifier to identify the virtual machine and a second identifier to identify the pass-through disk.
12. The system of claim 8 , wherein when the virtualization software logically attaches the pass-through disk to the virtual machine, the virtualization software is configured to add the disk resource to the temporary resource group and logically attach the disk to a virtual storage controller on the host machine, wherein the virtual storage controller is owned by the virtual machine.
13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the virtualization software is further configured to:
notify the virtual machine that the pass-through disk is available.
14. The system of claim 8 , wherein the virtualization software is further configured to:
move the disk resource from the temporary resource group to a virtual machine resource group; and
delete the temporary resource group.
15. A processing device comprising:
a processor unit; and
a memory, coupled to the processor unit, storing instructions which, when executed by the processor unit, cause the processing device to:
receive a request from a virtual machine for a pass-through disk;
request that a network storage system provision a new storage device;
assign a disk resource representing the storage device to a temporary resource group on the host machine; and
logically attach the storage device from the temporary resource group to the virtual machine as the pass-through disk.
16. The processing device of claim 15 , wherein the storage device comprises a logical unit number (LUN).
17. The processing device of claim 15 , wherein the temporary resource group comprises a first identifier to identify the virtual machine and a second identifier to identify the pass-through disk.
18. The processing device of claim 15 , wherein when the virtualization software logically attaches the pass-through disk to the virtual machine, the virtualization software is configured to add the disk resource to the temporary resource group and logically attach the storage device to a virtual storage controller on the host machine, wherein the virtual storage controller is owned by the virtual machine.
19. The processing device of claim 15 , wherein the instructions further cause the processing device to:
move the disk resource from the temporary resource group to a virtual machine resource group; and
delete the temporary resource group.
20. The processing device of claim 19 , wherein the instructions further cause the processing device to:
notify the virtual machine that the pass-through disk is available.