International Business Machines Corporation

Ben Sasson

Lee Jason Sanders

Gordon Douglas Hutchison

Miles Mulholland

Ori Shalev

Paul Nicholas Cashman

Sergey Marenkov

Yosef Shatsky

Florent Rostagni

Yifat Kuttner

Jonathan Amit

Nir Halowani

Lilia Demidov

Danny Harnik

Gareth Paul Jones

Roderick Guy Charles Moore

Carlos Francisco Fuente

William James Scales

Dmitry Sotnikov

Christopher B E Beeken

Alexander Henry Ainscow

Gemma Izen

Yuval Berger

Chaim Koifman

Ety Khaitzin

Andrew Johnson

Aviv Caro

Fenglian Xu

Joanna Katharine Brown

Timothy John Baldwin

Dominic Tomkins

Peter J Johnson

Shai Ishaya Tahar

Leonor Maria Quintais

Dmitry Sotniknov

Dolev Ish Am

A system for managing a storage array in a storage system may include an analysis component for analyzing a set of compression ratios used for a set of storage blocks written on a first storage device and a second storage device to determine a pattern. The system may include a determination component for determining, responsive to the pattern, a first compression ratio and a second compression ratio; the first compression ratio may be different from the second compression ratio. The system may include a data read/write component for writing a storage block to the first storage device with the first compression ratio and writing the storage block to the second storage device with the second compression ratio.

Storage data copies with differing compression algorithms

A method, system, computer program product and computer program for managing a storage system, the storage system comprising a first storage device, a second storage device, a source storage device, a target storage device, and a cache, the method comprising: receiving a first host access request for a data block on the first storage device; receiving a mapping between the source storage device and the target storage device; and in response to the first host access request and the mapping: accessing a corresponding data block on the second storage device; and updating metadata for the cache.

Maintaining cache validity

A method, system, and computer program product for managing a storage system, comprising: analyzing an access request for a first storage block of the set of storage blocks; in response to the access request comprising a read request: in response to the first storage block residing in the cache: processing the read request from the cache; promoting the first storage block within the cache; and destaging the first storage block to the storage device with the first compression ratio; and in response to the first storage block not residing in the cache: processing the read request from the storage device; and copying the first storage block to the cache; in response to the access request comprising a write request: writing the first storage block to the cache; and destaging the first storage block to the storage device using the first compression ratio.

Reactive deep-frozen adaptive replacement cache and drive interface

Method and system are provided for recycling container storage objects at a storage controller. The method includes receiving a create operation of a new container by an orchestrator, including information indicating a purpose of the container, and associating a label with the new container, with the label indicating the orchestrator-defined information. The method includes checking labels of soft-deleted container objects for a suitable match with the label of the new container, where soft-deleted container objects are logical objects for deleted containers that are maintained for recycling. The method includes recycling metadata of a matched soft-deleted container object for the new container. The method includes checking received input/output operations for the new container against already stored data of the matched soft-deleted container to recycle data and skip writes where they match.

Recycling container storage objects at a storage controller

Aspects of the present invention disclose a method, computer program product, and system for stale data recovery using virtual storage metadata. The method includes one or more processors generating a primary virtual storage metadata structure having virtual address areas for a data chunk. Each area includes a plurality of most recent updates of metadata for the data chunk. The metadata of each update includes a sequence number for the update and a pointer to the physical location of the data. The method further includes one or more processors generating an overflow virtual storage metadata structure for multiple virtual address areas. The overflow metadata structure includes updates that have overflowed from the virtual address areas. In addition, wherein an oldest update in a full virtual address area of the primary virtual storage metadata structure includes a link to an overflow location.

Stale data recovery using virtual storage metadata

Described are techniques for managing data locations of derived storage objects. The techniques include accessing a primary metadata tree providing a lookup path using a virtual address to locate data for a primary object in physical storage pointed to by a leaf node of the primary metadata tree and providing a sub-tree from a leaf node of the primary metadata tree associated with the primary object, the sub-tree providing lookup paths using virtual addresses for derived objects. Wherein a derived object is a view of the primary object at a specific point in time, with copy leaf nodes of the sub-tree pointing to stored data of the derived objects. The techniques further include maintaining an ancestry graph associated with the sub-tree with the ancestry graph linking derived object identifiers to provide an ancestral chain lookup to identify derived object identifiers of the closest stored physical data of a derived object.

Managing locations of derived storage objects

A method, computer system, and a computer program product for storing a write data in a storage system that operates using a log-structured filing system is provided. The present invention may include compressing a write data. The present invention may also include identifying a region of a storage system based on a first size of the compressed write data. The present invention may further include the storage system operating using a log-structured filing system. The present invention may also include a different region of the storage system having a different compression ratio. The present invention may further include writing the compressed write data in the identified region of the storage system.

Storing write data in a storage system

Method, apparatus, and computer program product utilizing a hot-spare node in a storage network having a deduplication fingerprints database. A plurality of nodes is provided in the storage network including at least one active node and at least one hot-spare node. A portion of the deduplication fingerprints database is stored on each active node and on each hot-spare node. Data from the deduplication fingerprints database is provided from at least one of said at least one hot-spare node during normal operation. Responsive to a failure of one of said at least one active node, a portion of the deduplication fingerprints database associated with data stored on the failed one of said at least one active node is retained on one of the at least one hot-spare node. The failed one active node is replaced with one of the at least one hot-spare node.

Utilizing spare network nodes for deduplication fingerprints database

A cache storage system indexing method is provided that indexes a data address in a cache storage system based on a data fingerprint of the cached data, wherein the data fingerprint is generated by a deduplication fingerprint function used for referencing deduplication of data in the cache storage system. A computer-implemented method of data operations to a cache storage system is also provided including: obtaining a data fingerprint for the data of the data operation, either by applying a deduplication fingerprinting function to data of a write operation or by accessing deduplication metadata for a read operation to obtain the data fingerprint generated by using a deduplication fingerprinting function used for deduplication of data in the cache storage system; and using an indexing service to the cache storage system having an address schema based on the data fingerprints of the data.

Cache indexing using data addresses based on data fingerprints

A method, computer program product and computer system are provided. A processor receives a host input/output write operation, wherein the host input/output write operation includes host metadata regarding data represented by the host input/output write operation. The processor stores the host input/output write operation in one or more physical storage data units. A processor assigns a priority to the one or more physical storage data units. In response to receiving a host volume delete command associated with at least one of the one or more physical storage data units, a processor prioritizes data units of the host volume for deletion based, at least in part, on the assigned priority of the data units of the host volume, wherein data units with a lower priority are permanently deleted before data units with a higher priority.

Prioritization of stored data during a delete process in a virtualized storage system

An apparatus for improved version updates in data deduplication includes a baseline module that stores a baseline referrer link in a first cohort of baseline referrer links pointing to a first location in storage where a baseline version data block is stored. The apparatus includes a signpost module that stores to metadata a signpost that points to an updated referrer link in a second cohort of updated referrer links that points to a second location in the deduplicating storage device where an updated version data block is stored in response to the updated version data block being generated. The apparatus includes a cohort update module that replaces the baseline referrer link with the updated referrer link in response to determining that an additional updated version data block matches the updated version data block pointed to by the signpost. A method and a system implement functions of the apparatus.

Cohort management for version updates in data deduplication

A data storage system configured to deduplicate and store sets of data is presented. The system comprises a computer readable storage device configured to store a plurality of sets of data for a plurality of hosts, wherein each sets of data of the plurality of sets of data corresponding to each host of the plurality of hosts is encrypted with one or more different encryption keys, and wherein at least one of the plurality of sets of data contains deduplicated data. The system also comprises a key translator configured to create at least one translation key based, at least in part, on the one or more different encryption keys and the deduplicated data, and wherein the at least one translation key is configured to translate from a first encryption key to a second encryption key of the one or more different encryption keys.

Deduplication of encrypted data

Embodiments of the present invention provide concepts for handling a handover of ownership of data from a source to a referrer in a data deduplication environment. By performing a handover of the ownership of the data from the source to the referrer, the number of processes required to access the data may be reduced and so the performance of the system may be improved. The identification of a source for performing the handover on may be performed by way of a volatile cache.

Data deduplication

An apparatus for dynamically adjusting a journal snapshot window is disclosed. A computer-implemented method and computer program product also perform the functions of the apparatus. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a failure detection module detects a potential failure of at least a portion of a non-volatile storage device. The non-volatile storage device includes a journal for tracking metadata changes for data that is stored on the non-volatile storage device prior to committing the metadata changes to metadata for the non-volatile storage device. A notification receiving module receives an indication of the potential failure of the non-volatile storage device. A snapshot module adjusts a snapshot window for the journal in response to the indication of the potential failure. The snapshot window includes a set of metadata changes in the journal that have not been committed to the metadata of the non-volatile storage device.

Dynamically adjusting a journal snapshot window

Storing data volumes in virtual and physical address spaces such that the data units are contiguous in virtual address space but fragmented in physical address space. The mapping between virtual and physical address space is managed by a storage controller that is configured to implement deletes reversibly with a so-called soft delete, the soft delete being reversible up to a later permanent or hard delete. A soft delete triggers a compaction in which the data units of the to-be-deleted volume are gathered together in physical address space. During the time between compaction and hard delete (or restore), the soft deleted volume is thus stored in a space efficient manner. Moreover, the subsequent hard delete can be performed more quickly than if the soft deleted volume were still fragmented across physical address space freeing up space quicker.

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North Baddesley, United Kingdom

Ben Sasson