Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Arne De Coninck

Stijn Devriendt

Sam De Roeck

Lien Joke Boelaert

Thomas Demoor

Frederik De Schrijver

Annelies Cuvelier

Example distributed storage systems, controller nodes, and methods provide hierarchical blacklisting of storage system components in response to failed storage requests. Storage elements are accessible through hierarchical storage paths traversing multiple system components. Blacklisted components are aggregated and evaluated against a hierarchy threshold at each level of the hierarchy and all components below the component are blacklisted if the hierarchy threshold is met. Blacklisted components are avoided during subsequent storage requests.

Hierarchical blacklisting of storage system components

Example distributed storage systems, controller nodes, and methods provide distributed and redundant data blocks accessed based on storage path cost values. Storage elements are accessible through hierarchical storage paths traversing multiple system components. Data blocks are distributed among the storage elements. System costs are calculated based on the storage path for reaching each storage element and a storage path is selected based on a comparison of the system costs for each storage element. Data blocks are accessed through the selected storage path.

Distributed data blocks using storage path cost values

Example distributed storage systems, controller nodes, and methods provide selective allocation of redundant data blocks to background operations. Background operations may be identified targeting a data unit stored in redundant data blocks in a storage pool with a plurality of storage elements. A subset of data units may be selected for the background operation and the system components including those data units may be isolated. Data requests to the isolated system components may be selectively prevented while the background operation executes on the subset of data units in the isolated system components.

Selective allocation of redundant data blocks to background operations

Systems and methods for distributed storage systems using dynamic spreading policies are described. Distributed storage elements may be accessed using various storage paths through hierarchically organized storage system components to store data blocks corresponding to data elements. A higher priority hierarchical spreading policy is selected for determining the storage elements to receive the data blocks. If the first hierarchical spreading policy is determined not to have been met, a lower priority hierarchical spreading policy is selected and the data blocks are stored according to the lower priority hierarchical spreading policy. Data block stored at the lower priority hierarchical spreading policy may automatically be migrated to the higher priority hierarchical spreading policy.

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Arne De Coninck