International Business Machines Corporation

Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Brent William Jacobs

James Albert Pieterick

Ajay Kumar Mahajan

Douglas Michael Boecker

Kraig Bottemiller

Nathan D Miller

Daniel Frank Moertl

Charles Scott Graham

Timothy J Schimke

Venkatesh Sainath

Gary Dean Anderson

Anis M Abdul

Sheldon Ray Bailey

Matthew Scott Spinler

Shaun Allan Wetzstein

Robert W Ellis

Todd Jon Rosedahl

Lee Anton Sendelbach

Christopher Landon Wood

Marc Dickenson

Paul Edward Movall

Michael Joseph Carnevale

Adam Michael Espeseth

Joseph Edward Bolan

Patrick Leo Caporale

Michael Youhour Lim

Christopher Harry Austen

Atit D Patel

Kevin M O'Toole

Salim Ahmed Agha

Kevin Gene Kehne

Wayne Allan Britson

Stephanie Maria Forsman

Nicholas Anthony Pietraniec

Joseph Donald Armstrong

William Thomas Truskowski

Aspects of a storage device including a memory and an encryption core are provided. The storage device may be configured for providing secure data storage, as well as one or more post-processing operations to be performed with the data. The encryption core, which may be configured to decrypt data, may control execution of one or more post-processing operations using the data. A read command received from a host device may include a tag associated with data identified by the read command. When encrypted data is retrieved from memory according to the read command, the encryption core may decrypt the encrypted data and provide the decrypted data for post-processing based on the tag. A corresponding post-processing operation may return a result when executed using the decrypted data. Rather than raw data identified by the read command, the result may be delivered to the host device in response to the read command.

Just-in-time post-processing computation capabilities for encrypted data

A method and apparatus for accessing a storage device is disclosed. More specifically, for load balancing by dynamically transferring memory address range assignments. In one embodiment, a storage device receives, from a host apparatus, an access request directed at two or more storage addresses, assigns, based on a first storage address of the two or more storage addresses, the access request to a first processor of two or more processors of the storage device, obtains a local memory lock based on the first storage address, determines, based on a second storage address of the two or more storage addresses, that the second storage address is assigned to a second processor of the two or more processors, obtains a remote memory lock from the second processor based on the second storage address and processes the access request.

Load balancing by dynamically transferring memory range assignments

To select a master controller from a plurality of controllers, a computing system may consider whether connections between components within field replaceable units (FRUs) are functional as well as the data dependencies between the FRUs. For example, in addition to identifying whether the connections between the FRUs and the controllers are functional, the computing system sends instructions to each of the FRUs coupled to the controllers to determine if inter- and intra-FRU connections required for booting a compute node hosting the FRUs are functional. For instance, one FRU may depend on data from another FRU in order to boot. If a communication link between the FRUs is non-functional, the compute node may fail to boot. The computer system uses these evaluations to determine which of the controllers to select as the master.

Evaluation of field replaceable unit dependencies and connections

To perform a workload, a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) may be assigned to a plurality of blade servers. To assign the VMs, a computing system uses the characteristics of the workloads that will be executed by the virtual machines such as the number of processors or the amount of memory, storage the workload is estimated to use, and the like. Based on these workload characteristics, the computing system determines an optimal solution for deploying the VMs onto the blade servers. In one embodiment, the computing system determines whether two or more of the blade servers should be stitched together. For example, the computing system compares the workload characteristics of one of the virtual machine to the combined available resources of at least two of the blade servers. If the combined available resources satisfy the workload characteristics, the computing system stitches the blade servers together.

Combining blade servers based on workload characteristics

In an embodiment, a plurality of stack depths of a stack are sampled from all stack depths of the stack. An average of the plurality of stack depths is calculated. If a number of the plurality of stack depths is greater than a maximum sample threshold and the average of the plurality of stack depths is greater than or equal to a current depth of the stack, then pages are deallocated from the stack that are above the average of the plurality of stack depths. If the number of the plurality of stack depths is greater than the maximum sample threshold and the average of the plurality of stack depths is less than the current depth of the stack, then pages are deallocated from the stack that are above the current depth of the stack.

Adjusting the amount of memory allocated to a call stack

A system and method are directed towards a pseudo multi-master operation on a serial bus. The pseudo multi-master operation allows multiple devices without standard multi-master functionality to operate on the serial bus as masters. In a disclosed example, the serial bus is an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus, which is isolated when an adapter card requires access to the I2C bus, such as to update vital product data (VPD) to a memory device, and to cache the updated VPD to a chassis management module.

Pseudo multi-master I2C operation in a blade server chassis

A method for maintaining vital product data (VPD) of each field replaceable unit (FRUs) in a computer system, the computer system including a first FRU and a second FRU operatively coupled with the first FRU. The method includes calculating a parity for the VPD of the second FRU, and upon detecting a failure of the second FRU, regenerating the VPD for the failed second FRU using the parity.

Parity-based vital product data backup

A method for maintaining vital product data (VPD) contained in an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) on a field replaceable unit (FRU) of a computer system that has a cache. The method includes maintaining a copy of the VPD in the cache, retrieving the copy of the VPD from the cache upon receiving a read request of the VPD, and, upon receiving a write request to write data to the VPD, writing the data to the copy of the VPD, determining whether the VPD in the EEPROM is in synchronization with the copy of the VPD in the cache, and, if the VPD and the copy of the VPD are in synchronization, writing the data to the EEPROM.

Recovering failed writes to vital product data devices

A method, a system and a computer program product for selecting a primary controller for a server system based on the services offered by each controller. A primary controller designator (PCD) utility determines the relative importance of a controller based upon the services provided by the controller and the weighted importance assigned to these services. The PCD utility classifies the services provided by a system-controller according to the following: (1) the number of OS partitions a system-controller is able to communicate with; and (2) the number of hardware devices that a controller has access to. The importance of the services is determined by the host OS partition information and the degree of importance of a partition that utilizes/requires the particular service(s). The PCD utility designates a controller as a 'Primary' if the designated 'Primary' is capable of providing services that are required for the most important OS partitions, according to the classification of controller services.

Selection of a redundant controller based on resource view

A method, system, and computer usable program product for managing multi-node multi-version systems are provided in the illustrative embodiments. A process associates a version identifier with a first version of data available at a first node in the multi-node multi-version system. The version identifier corresponds to the first version of the data. The data includes an update. The process sends the data and the associated version identifier to a second node without learning a second version of data available at the second node. In one embodiment, the first version of data may be a subset of the second version of data. In another embodiment the second version of data may be a subset of the first version of data. The process repeats the sending for each update at the first node.

Managing multi-node multi-version systems

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for implementing atomic data tracing in a processor system including an auxiliary processor unit (APU) coupled to a central processor unit (CPU). The auxiliary processor unit (APU) processes a trace instruction. When a trace instruction is identified by the APU, the APU signals the CPU with a pipeline stall signal for stalling the CPU and checks for an enabled trace engine as specified by the trace instruction. When the trace engine for the trace instruction is enabled, then the trace data is written into a trace buffer. The APU signals the CPU with an op done signal for allowing the CPU to continue with instruction processing.

Apparatus and computer program product for implementing atomic data tracing

In response to the start of an initialization sequence at a service processor, if power to a main processor was interrupted at a most-recent time that an operating system executed on the main processor, power to the main processor is turned on, the operating system is started executing on the main processor, data from the non-volatile memory of the service processor is provided to the operating system, and the service processor is reset, which restarts the initialization sequence. If the power to the main processor was not interrupted at the most-recent time that the operating system executed on the main processor, and if the operating system is currently executing on the main processor, a monitoring function is started in the service processor, which monitors for errors at a computer system.

Initialization after a power interruption

The aspects of the present invention provide a computer implemented method, an apparatus, and a computer usable program code for identifying a service processor with current setting information. First stored information for a service processor is retrieved from a first memory in the first service processor. Second stored information for the service processor is retrieved from a second memory in a data processing system to which the service processor is connected. The first stored information is compared with the second stored information to form a comparison as to whether the service processor was previously connected to the data processing system and to determine whether the service processor was a last service processor to fully communicate with system firmware in the data processing system. The service processor has current setting information if the service processor was previously connected to the data processing system and was the last service processor to fully communicate with the system firmware.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Brent William Jacobs