Vast Data Ltd.

International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Asaf Levy

Yariv Bachar

Avi Goren

Yogev Vaknin

Lior Aronovich

Renen Hallak

Oded Sonin

Liran Loya

Eyal Gordon

Shay Haim Akirav

Aviv Kuvent

Vladimir Zdornov

Alex Turin

Aviv Caro

Ron Edelstein

Samuel Krikler

Hillel Costeff

Ofer Leneman

Elena Drobchenko

Tzafrir Z Taub

Vlad Zdornov

Amit Schreiber

Shachar Fienblit

Dan Melamed

Ehud Meiri

Shira Ben-Dor

Alon Horev

Ido Yellin

Konstantin Muradov

Dov N Hepner

Eli Malul

Lior Klipper

Oren Ashkenazi

Alon Horowitz

Asaf Weissman

Johnny David

Or Dahan

Amir Miron

Erez Zilber

Niko Farhi

Ilan Steinberg

Elez Shenhar

Jeff Denworth

Amir Kredi

Yair Elharrar

Asaf Weisman

A method for metadata blocks access, the method includes (i) accessing, following a reception of an access request, a metadata block related to a file system entity; the metadata block is associated with a transaction identifier that is indicative of a transaction that is a most recent transaction that modified the metadata block; (ii) traversing, starting from the metadata block, metadata blocks that are transaction related, using linkage metadata within the metadata blocks; (iii) determining, based on an outcome of the traversing, a status of the transaction; (iv) when it is determined that the transaction was successfully completed then completing the access request by using content that was written by the transaction to the metadata block; and (v) when it is determined that the transaction failed then ignoring content that was written by the transaction to the metadata block.

Efficient transaction management

A method for user-defined validation of content stored in a storage system, the method may include receiving a request to execute a user-defined validation process (UDVP) on the content that is stored in the storage system; wherein the request is associated with means for executing the UDVP, and a content identifier; scheduling, by the storage system, at least one execution of the UDVP; executing the UDVP according to the scheduling to provide one or more validation results; and finding that the one or more validation results are indicative of potential security issues and performing one or more validation-triggered security measures.

User defined validation on content stored in a storage system

A method for writing data to a shared write buffer, the method includes (i) receiving, by a processing circuit of a compute node of a storage system, a write request for writing to the shared write buffer an information unit associated with an accessing entity located outside the storage system; wherein the shared write buffer is stored in a non-volatile memory of a storage node of the storage system; the storage node is in communication with the compute node; (ii) determining, by the processing circuit whether to (a) store the information unit in a non-shared segment of the shared write buffer, or (b) store the information unit in a shared segment of the shared write buffer while applying a locking mechanism; wherein the determining is based on parameters, the parameters include a writing parameter of the accessing entity, a writing latency parameter associated with the accessing entity, and a locking timing parameter; and (iii) storing the information unit according to the determination.

Writing data to a shared write buffer

A method for compression of cells of a tabular database (TD), the method may include (i) receiving data elements, by a storage system; (ii) calculating a compressed representation (CR) of the data elements by applying a compression process that includes (ii.a) defining sets based on data element values, (ii.b) associating a set value per set; and (ii.c) generating the CR of the data elements based on differences between the data elements and corresponding set values; (iii) generating compression metadata related to the CR of the data elements, wherein the compression metadata comprises the set values and a mapping between the CR of the data elements and the set values; and (iv) storing, in the TD, the CR of the data elements.

Compression of cells of a tabular database

A method for managing tasks in a storage system, the method may include: (a) obtaining, by a scheduler, a shared budget for background storage tasks and foreground storage tasks; (b) obtaining, by the scheduler, a background budget for background storage tasks; wherein the background budget is a fraction of the shared budget; (c) allocating, by the scheduler, resources to pending storage tasks according to the shared budget and the background budget; wherein the allocating comprises (i) allocating the shared budget while prioritizing foreground storage tasks over background storage tasks; and (ii) allocating the background budget to background storage tasks; and (d) participating, by the scheduler, in executing of storage tasks according to the allocation.

Scheduling storage tasks

A method for accessing a database that is stored in a storage system, the method includes: (a) receiving a request to obtain a database entity (DE) of a requested version line out of multiple version lines that differ from each other by one or more transactions; (b) obtaining, for each DE portion out of multiple DE portions of the DE, content of the DE portion as written during a transaction of the requested version line that was a last transaction of the requested version line that wrote the DE portion to the database; wherein the obtaining includes (i) using first metadata that is indicative of transactions of the requested version line, and (ii) using second metadata that is indicative of which transactions were involved in writing to a logical address range that is associated with the DE portion; and (d) sending a response to the request, wherein the response comprises, for each DE portion of the DE portions, the obtained content.

Database versioning based on transactions

A method for network group based access control, the method may include (i) receiving a request to access content stored in a storage system, the request is associated with a user and a network group that is suggested to include the user; (ii) generating a user key based on an identifier of the user and the network group; (iii) determining, based in part on the user key, whether the user is a current user of the network group, and (iv) declining the request when the user is not the current user of the network group. The determining may include determining that the user is not a current user of the network group when a user finding timestamp of the user precedes a network group finding timestamp of the network group.

Caching netgroups

A method for obtaining information related to a filesystem path in a file system that is stored in a storage system, the method may include (i) receiving a request to obtain hierarchy information related to file system entities stored under the filesystem path; and (ii) retrieving the hierarchy information; wherein the retrieving comprises accessing a filesystem hierarchy table that stores information regarding pathnames of file system entities of the file system; wherein the retrieving includes searching for path components of the filesystem path in subsets of cells of the filesystem hierarchy table, wherein each subset of cells is part of a set of cells that include path components of a certain pathname of a filesystem entity that belong to the file system.

Metadata for quering file system pathnames

A method for protecting a lock data structure, the method includes obtaining, by a compute entity of a storage system, a lock recovery indication and a cycle counter; executing, by the compute entity, at least a part of the current lock recovery process, wherein the executing of the at least part of the current lock recovery process includes (i) determining, by the compute entity, using a compute entity data structure that is indicative of lock fields that represent locks acquired by the compute entity, whether the segment comprised a compute-entity-relevant lock field, wherein the compute-entity-relevant lock field (a) belonged to the segment upon the occurrence of the failure and (b) represents a lock was acquired by the compute entity; and (ii) re-acquiring, by the compute entity, a re-acquired lock that corresponds to the compute-entity-relevant lock field, when it is determined that the segment comprised the compute-entity-relevant lock field.

Protecting a lock data structure

A method for protecting a disaster recovery site, the method may include receiving by source compute nodes of a storage system, during source storage periods, write requests for storing content in the storage system; writing by source compute nodes, during the source storage periods, the content into the storage nodes of the storage system; maintaining replication compute nodes of the storage system deactivated during the source storage periods; reading the content by the replication compute nodes from the storage nodes during replication periods; participating, by the replication compute nodes, in outputting the content to one or more data recovery sites during the replication periods; and maintaining the source compute nodes deactivated during the source storage periods.

Protecting disaster recovery site

A method for managing a transaction data structure, the method may include (a) receiving, at a first point in time that corresponds to a first value of a clock signal, a request to commit a transaction, and updating a status of the transaction, within the transaction data structure, as being a commit in progress; (b) updating the status of the transaction within the transaction data structure as being committed following (i) a completion of the committing, and (ii) a change of a value of the clock signal from the first value to a second value that differs from the first value; and (c) updating, using a background process, a database segment (DS) version metadata associated with the transaction regarding the completion of the committing. The DS version metadata belongs to a DS version metadata data structure. The DS version metadata data structure and the transaction data structure are selectively accessed during transactions.

Managing a transaction isolation

A method for storing a received data chunk (DC) in a storage system, the method includes (a) obtaining a received fingerprint of the received DC, the received fingerprint may include received fingerprint elements that are indicative of occurrences, within the received DC, of content elements, the received fingerprint elements are ordered according to a given order; (b) searching, within a tree, for a similar stored fingerprint; the tree may include tree nodes that represent multiple stored fingerprints of stored data chunks that are stored in the storage system; different levels of the tree are allocated to different content elements; (c) compressing, when finding the similar stored fingerprint, the received DC based on a similar DC associated with the similar stored fingerprint, and updating storage system metadata to indicate that the received DC is stored in the storage system in a compressed form, and based on the similar stored DC.

Searching for and storing data chunks based off similarity

A method for managing access to a shared file system entity (FSE), the method includes (i) managing access requests for reading and writing accessed parts of the FSE, by a current point of access storage system (POASS), the current POASS currently acts as a point of access (POA) for the access requests; wherein stored parts of the FSE are stored at multiple POASSs, the multiple POASSs comprise the current POASS and former POASSs; (ii) determining, by the current POASS and while managing the access requests, to store the stored parts of the FSE at a fewer number of the former POASSs; and (iii) reducing, by two or more of the former POASSs, the number of former POASSs that store the stored parts of the FSE.

Global access to filesystem content

A method for receiving paths information of a file system (FS) that is stored in a storage system, the method includes (a) receiving a request to receive paths information of at least part of the FS; wherein the request is received at a request point in time (PIT); (b) determining a current path name information of the at least part of the FS, wherein the determining is based on: (i) a FS paths data structure that includes path name information that is updated up to a last update PIT, and (ii) FS paths change information that is indicative of FS path names changes introduced between the last update PIT and the request PIT; wherein the FS paths change information associates at least one of excluded FSEs and included FSEs for each direct or indirect ancestor FSE of any FSE that had its path name changed between the last update PIT and the request PIT; and (c) generating a response to the request, wherein the generating of the response comprises using the current FS path name information of the FS.

Filesystem pathnames indexing using path change annex

A method for managing a read statement of a transaction, the method may include: (a) receiving the read statement, wherein the read statement is for receiving a data unit that is stored in a relational database; (b) finding one or more candidate versions of the data unit; wherein the finding may include: (i) accessing a database segment (DS) version metadata of one or more DS versions of one or more DSs that are related to the data unit and are stored in the relational database; (ii) performing a timestamp based determination that may include checking whether to ignore a database segment version when the database segment version metadata identifies the database segment version by a database segment commit timestamp; and (iii) performing a transaction metadata based determination of whether to ignore the database segment version when the database segment version metadata identifies the database segment version by a transaction identifier; and (c) responding to the read statement by outputting a version of the one or more candidate versions of the data unit.

Managing a read statement of a transaction

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Rishon Lezion, Israel

Asaf Levy