Method and apparatus for raid virtual pooling

1. A method of decoupling physical characteristics of protected storage in a storage environment comprising:

providing a data protection scheme requiring tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and physical characteristics of a plurality of physical storage resources among which the data protection scheme is provided;

providing a first set of physical storage resources having a first set of physical characteristics, and a second set of physical storage resources having a second set of physical characteristics different than the first set of physical characteristics;

providing a cache in a data path over which the data protection scheme is provided between the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources;

providing a virtual pool of storage resources comprising the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources protected by the data protection scheme, the providing of the virtual pool including providing a rebuild profile for a RAID rebuild within the virtual pool, the rebuild profile prioritizing a rebuild destination, the rebuild profile being provided at a time of initial allocation of the virtual pool;

providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of protection storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources, the first virtual pool being isolated from the second virtual pool, the first virtual pool and the second virtual pool being configured to operate in a RAID 5 or RAID 6 mode, and the second virtual pool being configured to store parity data for the first virtual pool;

providing a data protection, based on the data protection scheme, between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage according to: (i) the data protection among the first set of physical storage resources, (ii) the second set of physical storage resources, and (iii) the cache; and

detecting a failure in the first set of physical storage resources and performing a protection rebuild in response,

wherein performing the protection rebuild includes: (i) performing an initial rebuild to the cache, and (ii) performing a background rebuild to the rebuild destination that is prioritized by the rebuild profile, the background rebuild being performed after the initial rebuild is completed, and

wherein providing data protection between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage comprises providing a layer of abstraction between the data protection and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources among which the data protection scheme is provided, the layer of abstraction configured to decouple the tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources, the decoupling comprising isolating the protection storage from the production storage.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of production storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources comprises providing the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage from tiered storage.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of protection storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources comprises:

providing storage types having a first composition from the virtual pool of storage resources for the production storage; and

providing storage types having a second composition from the virtual pool of storage resources for the protection storage,

wherein the first composition differs from the second composition.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising enabling configuration of the data protection to disable parallel inputs/outputs (IOs).

5. The method of claim 4 wherein enabling configuration of the data protection to disable parallel IOs comprises preventing parallel reads from the production storage and the protection storage.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising enabling oversubscription of protection storage.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising enabling deduplication of protection storage.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein providing a layer of abstraction comprises implementing the first and second virtual pools using RAID.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein, the cache is configured to mitigate at least a portion of a performance variance arising from the difference in physical characteristics between the first and second sets of physical storage resources.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing inline deduplication as input/output (I/O) is either written to or offloaded from the cache.

11. The method according to claim 1 , wherein deduplication is performed as writes come into the cache and/or as IOs are offloaded from the cache to the second of physical storage resources.

12. The method according to claim 1 , wherein data in the first virtual pool of production storage is striped into the second virtual pool of protection storage, wherein the production storage and the protection storage have different performance characteristics.

13. The method according to claim 1 , wherein parity data is stored in the second virtual pool of protection storage, wherein the second pool of protection storage has lower performance than the first virtual pool of production storage in which unprotected production data is stored.

14. An apparatus for of decoupling physical characteristics of protected storage in a storage environment comprising:

a processor; and

memory storing instructions that, when executed on the processor, cause the apparatus to:

provide a data protection scheme, requiring tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and physical characteristics of a plurality of storage resources among which the data protection is provided;

provide a first set of physical storage resources having a first set of physical characteristics, and a second set of physical storage resources having a second set of physical characteristics different than the first set of physical characteristics;

provide a cache in a data path over which the data protection scheme is provided between the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources;

provide a virtual pool of storage resources comprising the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources protected by the data protection, the providing of the virtual pool including providing a rebuild profile for a RAID rebuild within the virtual pool, the rebuild profile prioritizing a rebuild destination, the rebuild profile being provided at a time of initial allocation of the virtual pool;

provide a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of protection storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources, the first virtual pool and the second virtual pool being configured to operate in a RAID 5 or RAID 6 mode, the first virtual pool being isolated from the second virtual pool, and the second virtual pool being configured to store parity data for the first virtual pool; and

provide a data protection, based on the data protection scheme, between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage according to: (i) the data protection among the first set of physical storage resources, (ii) the second set of physical storage resources, and (iii) the cache; and

detect a failure in the first set of physical storage resources and perform a protection rebuild in response,

wherein performing the protection rebuild includes: (i) performing an initial rebuild to the cache, and (ii) performing a background rebuild to the rebuild destination that is prioritized by the rebuild profile, the background rebuild being performed after the initial rebuild is completed, and

wherein providing data protection between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage comprises providing a layer of abstraction between the data protection and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources among which the data protection scheme is provided, the layer of abstraction configured to decouple the tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources, the decoupling comprising isolating the protection storage from the production storage.

15. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of production storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources comprises providing the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage from tiered storage.

16. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of protection storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources comprises:

providing storage types having a first composition from the virtual pool of storage resources for the production storage; and

providing storage types having a second composition from the virtual pool of storage resources for the protection storage,

wherein the first composition differs from the second composition.

17. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein the memory further stores instructions that, when executed on the processor, cause the apparatus to prevent parallel reads from the production storage and the protection storage.

18. A computer program product including a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with computer program code that, when executed on a processor of a computer, causes the computer to decouple data protection of a storage environment from physical characteristics of protected storage in the storage environment, the computer program product comprising:

computer program code for providing a data protection scheme, requiring tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and physical characteristics of a plurality of storage resources among which the data protection is provided,

computer program code for providing a first set of physical storage resources having a first set of physical characteristics and a second set of physical storage resources having a second set of physical characteristics different than the first set of physical characteristics;

computer program code for providing a cache in a data path over which the data protection is provided between the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources;

computer program code for providing a virtual pool of storage resources comprising the first set of physical storage resources and the second set of physical storage resources protected by the data protection, the providing of the virtual pool including providing a rebuild profile for a RAID rebuild within the virtual pool, the rebuild profile prioritizing a rebuild destination, the rebuild profile being provided at a time of initial allocation of the virtual pool;

computer program code for providing a first virtual pool of production storage and a second virtual pool of protection storage from the provided virtual pool of storage resources, the first virtual pool being isolated from the second virtual pool, the first virtual pool, the first virtual pool and the second virtual pool being configured to operate in a RAID 5 or RAID 6 mode, and the second virtual pool being configured to store parity data for the first virtual pool;

computer program code for providing a data protection between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage according to; (i) the data protection among the first set of physical storage resources, (ii) the second set of physical storage resources, and (iii) the cache; and

computer program code for detecting a failure in the first set of physical storage resources and performing a protection rebuild in response,

wherein performing the protection rebuild includes: (i) performing an initial rebuild to the cache, and (ii) performing a background rebuild to the rebuild destination that is prioritized the rebuild profile, the background rebuild being performed after the initial rebuild is completed, and

wherein providing data protection between the first virtual pool of production storage and the second virtual pool of protection storage comprises providing a layer of abstraction between the data protection and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources among which the data protection scheme is provided, the layer of abstraction configured to decouple the tight coupling between resources allocated for the data protection scheme and the physical characteristics of the plurality of physical storage resources, the decoupling comprising isolating the protection storage from the production storage.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 , wherein the data protection scheme requiring tight coupling comprises Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) and wherein providing a layer of abstraction comprises implementing the first and second virtual pools using RAID.