Hitachi, Ltd.

Akinobu Shimada

Hideo Tabuchi

Toshio Nakano

Masataka Innan

Yasuaki Nakamura

Yoshiaki Eguchi

Yasutomo Yamamoto

Ai Satoyama

Hiroshi Ohno

Masafumi Nozawa

Akira Murotani

Kouji Arai

Kozue Fujii

Yoshinori Okami

Seiichi Higaki

Shotaro Ohno

Akira Yamamoto

Tatsuya Murakami

Shigeo Homma

Motohiro Kanda

Kazuo Takaragi

Hisashi Takamatsu

Yasuhiro Ishii

Hiroshi Morishima

Tokuhiro Tsukiyama

Fujio Fujita

Toshifumi Nishimura

Katsuharu Kakuse

Kiyoshi Yata

Hironori Yasukawa

Yasushi Kuba

The present invention is able to improve the processing performance of a storage system by respectively virtualizing the external volumes and enabling the shared use of such external volumes by a plurality of available virtualization storage devices. By virtualizing and incorporating the external volume of an external storage device, a first virtualization storage device is able to provide the volume to a host as though it is an internal volume. When the load of the first virtualization storage device increases, a second virtualization storage deviceis newly introduced, and connected to the storage system. When a transfer direction is issued from a management terminal, the external volume relating to the selected logical volume is transferred from the first virtualization storage device to the second virtualization storage device.

Storage system and operation method of storage system including first and second virtualization devices

A storage system including: a storage apparatus including a plurality of storage devices on which a plurality of logical units is configured and a first controller that controls accesses to the plurality of logical units; and a file server coupled to said storage apparatus and including a second controller and a memory storing management information which indicates relationships between each of the plurality of logical units and each of a plurality of indicators; wherein the first controller, in response to a request to create a first folder with a first indicator, creates the folder on one or more first logical units included in the plurality of logical units, the one or more first logical units related to the first indicator.

Storage system

The storage system includes a first storage system and a second storage system. The first storage system, which is coupled to a computer and the second storage system, includes a first storage control device and a plurality of first storage units. The second storage system includes a plurality of second storage units. The first storage control device provides the computer with a logical unit assigned to at least one of the second storage units, receives a first access request from the computer and sends a second access request to one of plurality of the second storage units, obtains performance information relating to the second access request, and moves data stored in at least one of the plurality of second storage units to at least one of the first storage units according to the performance information.

Storage subsystem and performance tuning method

Storage system and operation method of storage system

There is provided a storage system including a file server connecting to a computer over a network and a storage apparatus connecting to the file server connecting over the network, wherein the file server includes a first controller, the storage apparatus includes multiple storage devices having multiple storage areas and a second controller that controls accesses to the multiple storage areas, each of the multiple storage areas has at least one power saving mode among multiple power saving modes with different shift times from the power saving modes to a ready mode, the first controller, in response to the reception of data from the computer, sets an indicator relating to the performance of response to an access from the computer to the data and refers to the indicator of the data and selects a first storage area having the power saving mode satisfying the indicator, and the second controller stores the data to the first storage area.

The storage system includes a storage subsystem including a plurality of storage units and a storage control device coupled to a computer and the storage subsystem, the storage control device providing the host computer with a logical unit assigned to a storage unit of the storage subsystem. The storage control device receives a first access request from the computer to the logical unit and sends a second access request to the storage unit of the storage subsystem according to a relation between the storage unit of the storage subsystem and the logical unit assigned to the storage unit. Performance information relating to the second access request by the storage control device is obtained so that the storage control device determines performance relating to the logical unit assigned to the storage unit of the storage subsystem.

A method for controlling a storage system including a host computer, and a first and a second storage control apparatuses each receiving a data input/output request from the host computer and executing a data input/output process for a storage device in response to the request, comprises connecting a first communication path between the host computer and the first apparatus; connecting a second communication path between the first apparatus and the second apparatus; receiving by the first apparatus a first data input/output request from the host computer through the first path; when the first apparatus has judged that the first request is not for the first apparatus, transmitting by the first apparatus a second data input/output request corresponding to the first request, to the second apparatus through the second path; and by the second apparatus, receiving the second request and executing a data input/output process corresponding to the second request received.

Method for controlling storage system, and storage control apparatus

A disk array apparatus capable of effecting saving and operation of data through a simple construction. When a host computer sets 'write inhibit' or 'read/write inhibit' for an LDEV which is set on a first storage device, this setting is registered in an access attribute management table and is also reflected onto a migration management table. A migration control program moves the LDEV for which access limitation has been set to a lower-speed (lower-performance) second storage device or to an external storage device. When the access limitation is released, the moved LDEV is restored to the first storage device from the storage device to which the LDEV has been moved. By performing migration control in interlocking relation to control of access attributes, it is possible to obtain a simple data saving function and data management function.

Disk array apparatus and control method for disk array apparatus

In a storage subsystem, performance tuning is performed with respect to whole logical devices including external storage subsystems that are not directly connected to host computers. Physical storage units presented by the external storage subsystems are defined as logical devices of the storage subsystem itself, and I/O processing requests from the host computers are relayed to those logical devices. At the time of relaying, I/O processing conditions are monitored. When there exists an external storage subsystem whose load is high, then, operating conditions of ports and processors are examined. In the case where the load can be reduced by changing the configuration of those ports and processors, the configuration is changed to reduce the load. In the case where the load can not be reduced, data is migrated from a logical device having a high load to a logical device having a sufficient performance.

Device for performance tuning in a system

A computer system including: disk array system to cause a snapshot corresponding to the selected backup time accessible with the specific address to which the computer can access; wherein if the snapshot corresponding to the selected backup time is associated with the specific address to which the computer cannot access, then the disk array system making the snapshot accessible with an address to which the computer can access; and wherein the snapshot relates to differential data between initial backup data and actual backup data at the selected backup time, thereby an acquisition time of the snapshot is different than the selected backup time corresponding to the specific address that can be accessed initially by the computer.

Storage system and method for acquisition and utilization of snapshots

Disk array apparatus including controller that executes control to move data between storage areas based on a data protection level

In a storage subsystem, performance tuning is performed with respect to all of the logical devices including external storage subsystems that are not directly connected to host computers. The physical storage units presented by the external storage subsystems are defined as logical devices of the storage subsystem, and I/O processing requests from the host computers are relayed to the logical devices. At the time of relaying, I/O processing conditions are monitored. When the load of an external storage subsystem is high, then operating conditions of ports and processors are examined. When the load can be reduced by changing the configuration of those ports and processors, the configuration is changed to reduce the load. When the load can not be reduced, data is migrated from a logical device having a high load to a logical device having a sufficient performance.

A method of selecting logical volumes that are the targets for data migration to equilibrate the load on a system, based on the accessing data of the physical drives and logical drives under the disk array controllers, without increasing the load of the disk array controller. An external manager communicates with two or more disk array controllers, gathers and manages the access data and the configuration data relating to the physical drives and logical volumes of each disk array controller, and prepares an optimum data migration instruction to equilibrate the access load.

Method for hierarchical control of data migration in a storage system

A DBMS performs a checkpoint process for maintaining consistency of data. A snapshot acquisition control program detects the checkpoint process externally to the DBMS and creates a snapshot in an external storage according to the timing of the checkpoint. Correspondence between checkpoints and snapshots is maintained in a CP-SH correspondence management table to make it possible to restore in a short time data at the time of an arbitrary checkpoint.

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Chigasaki, Japan

Akinobu Shimada