Dell Products Inc.

Vmware, Inc.

Ahmad Hassan Tawil

Kevin Thomas Marks

Stephen Gouze Luning

William Price Dawkins

Gary Benedict Kotzur

Jacob Cherian

Rohit K Chawla

Nam Van Nguyen

Ahmad A J Ali

Travis Finch

Ali Ahmed

Sadiq A Shaik

Exemplary systems and methods certify a partner product for use with an originally developed product. A certification agent within a partner computing system transmits, to a certification server that is external to the partner computing system, an indication that the certification agent is ready to run a certification test of a partner product. The certification agent is configured to run the certification test. The certification agent is communicatively coupled to a testbed operating within the partner computing system and in which the partner product is to be tested. The certification agent receives, from the external certification server, an instruction to implement at least a portion of the certification test. In response to receiving the instruction, the certification agent initiates the portion of the certification test within testbed.

Ecosystem certification of a partner product

A system and method is disclosed for identifying the boot targets for an initiator port in point-to-point network, such as a Serial Attached SCSI network. In operation, the initiator port issues a command to an expander that is directly coupled to the initiator port. In response the expander identifies the expander of the network that includes a boot table that identifies the boot addresses associated with each of the initiator port. The boot addresses associated with the initiator port are returned to the initiator port in a ranked order, and the initiator port attempts to boot from the boot address locations until the initiator port successfully boots.

System and method for automated remote booting in a serial attached SCSI environment

A system for a host-based RAID solution in a shared storage environment is provided in which the compute blades of a system are coupled to one or multiple concentrators. The concentrators serve as a switch or expander to couple each of the compute blades to a shared storage resource. Within the shared storage resource, a set of drives is configured in a RAID array. The shared disk drives are partitioned so that each partition is dedicated to one of the compute blades of the system. Multiple sets of drives may be used so that the collective set of drives can be configured as part of a RAID volume that includes mirroring between at least two of the drives of the RAID volume, such as RAID 1 or RAID 0+1, in which each set of drives is a mirror of the other set of drives and the content associated with each of the compute blades is striped across multiple drives in each of the two sets of drives.

Method for host bus adapter-based storage partitioning and mapping across shared physical drives

Systems, methods, and data structures are provided for identifying host information at a physical layer of an information handling system. The method includes issuing a command from a host computer and sending a host information command to a device. The command may be issued in a first transport protocol. The host information command may include a host identifier identifying the host that issued the command and a tag identifying a reissued command, the reissued command including the command reissued in a second transport protocol.

Providing host information to devices in multi SCSI transport protocols

A system and method for enhancing read performance of at least one storage array using a spare storage array of coupled spare drives, wherein the at least one storage array includes coupled drives configured to store data according to a redundant storage methodology. Data is copied from at least one logical disk of data from the at least one storage array onto the spare storage array and read from the least busy array of the at least one storage array or the spare storage array.

System and method of enhancing storage array read performance using a spare storage array

A cluster network is disclosed in which of the storage drives of the network are distributed across the nodes of the network. Data is stored to the drives of the network according to a RAID storage methodology and without the necessity for shared external storage.

Redundant cluster network

A method and system are provided for implementing a redundant array of independent devices ('RAID') having disparate SCSI configurations and capabilities. A portion of the memory of each SCSI device of the RAID set is reserved for RAID configuration information. In one embodiment, a SCSI RAID controller is provided with a protocol for accessing user information and RAID configuration information on the SCSI devices. By reserving RAID configuration information at a common place on each SCSI device, control and configuration of the RAID array is simplified and unified. Unified configuration of the RAID members enables utilization of devices from disparate manufacturers.

RAID configuration protocol for SCSI drives and RAID controllers

An example process for controlling access to a data storage device in a distributed information handling system includes the operation of receiving, at the storage device, a login request from a host. In response to the login request, the storage device may determine whether a host access table in the storage device includes an identifier for the host. If the host access table includes an identifier for the host, the storage device may allow the host to use the storage device. However, if the host access table does not include an identifier for the host, the storage device may prevent the host from using the storage device. Additional or alternative operations may include adding identifiers for specified hosts and a list of corresponding logical storage units to a mapping table. The data storage device may then deny access to hosts without identifiers in the mapping table.

System and method for controlling access to storage in a distributed information handling system

In the present disclosure, a method and system is provided for generating worldwide names. The method and system includes reading a media access control (MAC) address associated with a network interface card (NIC). A fiber channel device associated with the NIC is then identified. A world wide name for the identified fiber channel device is then generated by appending a vendor specific identifier assigned to the fiber channel device to the MAC address obtained from the NIC.

System and method for generating world wide names

The present disclosure describes a system and method of performing failover in a storage area network. In one embodiment of the present disclosure, a computer network includes a host and a storage system associated with the host. The storage system has a first controller with a first port and a second controller with a second port. The first controller is assigned a common node name and the first port is assigned a first port name. The second controller is assigned a common node name and the second port is assigned a second port name. More specifically a multipathing driver is operable to determine a signal path for a communication sent to a storage device associated with the first controller and the second controller and operable to perform failover operations if the signal path fails.

Computer storage system and failover method

A method and system establishes a storage area network configuration by automatically determining the number of initiators associated with the storage area network. An ID engine associated with an initiator of the storage area network determines the number of initiators associated with the storage area network by detecting signals, such as port login commands, received from the initiators. The determination of the number of initiators allow an initiator to adjust its queue depth for one or more targets associated with the storage area network so that the target command queue is less likely to reach capacity, resulting in task full message overhead for the storage area network. In one embodiment, each initiator comprises an ID engine and a queue depth engine to provide each initiator with an adjusted queue depth for one or more predetermined targets. The total value of the adjusted queue depths of the initiators may be equal to or less than the command queue value of the predetermined target to reduce the likelihood of task full status for the target. Adjusted queue depths may be set on a target-by-target basis to compensate for varying initiator bandwidth demands.

Method and system for establishing a storage area network configuration

A system and method for providing reliable access by a plurality of user systems in a computer network to data in a centralized storage system. The method includes the steps of placing all storage subunits of the centralized storage system in a default locked state wherein data stored in the storage subunits is not accessible by any user system, providing a user system with an initial key corresponding to a storage subunit, and the user system using the initial key to assign the storage subunit to itself so that no other user system can access data stored therein. When so assigned the storage subunit cannot be reassigned to another user system until the storage subunit has been placed back in the default locked state. One manner of implementing the above steps is using SCSI commands.

Growing community of inventors

Round Rock, TX, United States of America

Ahmad Hassan Tawil