Oracle America, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle International Corporation

Brian L Wong

Nisha D Talagala

Richard McDougall

Spencer Shepler

David G Robinson

Sunay Tripathi

William H Moore

Siddheshwar Mahesh

Gerald Thornbrugh

Chunli Zhang

Adrian Nicholas Cockcroft

Richard A McNeal

Allan Packer

Glenn A Colaco

Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems and methods for passing optimization information, which may be used to optimize input/output ('I/O') requests, from a database management system to a file system, using various protocols of a network file system. The optimization information provided by the database management system may relate to various aspects of an I/O request that may be optimized.

Systems and methods for automatically passing hints to a file system

A method for processing a first input/output (I/O) request on a network attached storage (NAS) device that includes receiving the first I/O request from a source by the NAS device, placing the first I/O request in an I/O queue associated with the NAS device, wherein the first I/O request is placed in the I/O queue based on a priority of the first I/O request using a remote storage access protocol, and when the first I/O request is associated with the highest priority in the I/O queue, determining whether a bandwidth associated with the source of the first I/O request is exceeded, processing the first I/O request if the bandwidth associated with the source of the first I/O request is not exceeded, and placing the first I/O request in sleep mode if the bandwidth associated with the source of the first I/O request is exceeded.

Reflecting bandwidth and priority in network attached storage I/O

A method for specifying input/output (I/O) settings for a virtual machine that includes specifying a bandwidth for the virtual machine, specifying a priority for the virtual machine, sending a mount request for a volume on a network attached storage (NAS) device by the virtual machine, where the bandwidth and priority are transmitted to the NAS device as part of the mount request, and receiving a mount handle by the virtual machine, where the mount handle is associated with the volume.

Priority and bandwidth specification at mount time of NAS device volume

A system and method for emulating the input/output performance of an application. A workload description language is used to produce a small but accurate model of the application, which is flexible enough to emulate the application's performance with varying underlying system configurations or operating parameters. The model describes I/O operations performed by the application, and reflects any dependencies that exist between different application threads or processes. The model is then executed or interpreted with a particular system configuration, and various parameters of the I/O operations may be set at the model's run-time. During execution, the input/output operations described in the model are generated according to the specified parameters, and are performed. The system configuration and/or I/O operation parameters may be altered and the model may be re-run.

System and method for emulating input/output performance of an application

A system and method for ensuring or verifying the integrity of data transmitted between protection domains. When the data is transmitted, it may be received in a different logical configuration (e.g., as a different number of 'chunks'). The receiving domain computes its data integrity metadata (e.g., checksum, CRC, parity) on its form of the data using its protection scheme (e.g., checksum algorithm), and also applies the sending domain's protection scheme to the data as it was received from the sending domain. Similarly, the sending domain applies the receiving domain's protection scheme to compute data integrity metadata on the transmitted data as it appears in the receiving domain. The metadata may be compared to determine whether the data was corrupted during the transfer. Either domain may forward its data integrity metadata to the other, which may store and/or forward it as needed.

System and method for protecting data across protection domain boundaries

A system and method for generating a probability distribution indicating the probability of a range of performance ratios between computer systems. Benchmark and/or other testing results are obtained for both computer systems. For each test, a ratio of one system's performance to the other is calculated. The ratios and/or testing results may be weighted. From the performance ratios, a histogram is produced to indicate the probabilities of achieving the various ratios. Based on the distribution of probabilities, a particular performance ratio can be predicted with a corresponding level of confidence, and used for capacity planning or configuring a computing environment.

System and method for generating a probability distribution of computer performance ratios

A system and method for decreasing the protocol processing incurred by an NFS (Network File System) client, and the network bandwidth consumed, when multiple NFS requests are issued close in time to each other. Requests received close in time to each other within one NFS client are aggregated into a single communication packet, even if they are from different NFS users, processes or applications. The per-request overhead of the NFS requests is thus avoided, and multiple streams of requests may be merged into one. When a first request is received by the client, it may be delayed for a short time to determine whether any other requests can be sent at the same time. NFS requests may be aggregated on an NFS client from multiple applications, processes, users or other entities. An NFS client may include an aggregator or other mechanism for performing the aggregation.

System and method for aggregating NFS requests

A system and method for facilitating a consistent point-in-time copy (PITC). A data provider offers access to data by one or more clients. A client issues a PITC request for a set of data to the data provider, or the provider initiates its own request. The data provider instructs one or more clients, particularly clients accessing the set of data, to flush any pending updates involving the files. The clients acknowledge the flush request, flush their data, and notify the data provider when their flushes are complete. Post-consistency updates are deferred (e.g., using a write-aside buffer). If a client fails to acknowledge the flush request or notify of flush completion, the data provider may abort the PITC or continue because the data may not be consistent or consistency may not be assured. If not aborted, the PITC may be marked to indicate that it is incomplete.

System and method for facilitating a consistent point-in time copy

A method for dirty region logging of a file that includes receiving a request to open the file, determining each of a plurality of component files associated with the file, opening each of the plurality of component files, writing to a region of the at least one of the plurality component files, and updating a dirty region log (DRL) associated with the one of the plurality of component files to reflect the write to the region.

Per file dirty region logging

A protection domain for a set of errors is defined using an association between data and first integrity metadata to protect data traversing an input/output datapath. The datapath has a storage device as one endpoint and a first generation integrity point for a host as an opposite endpoint. A first sub-domain is defined within the protection domain using an association between the data and second integrity metadata to further protect a portion of the datapath having a second generation integrity point as one endpoint. In another aspect, a second sub-domain is defined within the protection domain using an association between the data and third integrity metadata further protect data traversing a portion of the datapath having a third generation integrity point as one endpoint. The first and second sub-domains are nested within the protection boundary and may be in a hierarchical relationship.

Maintaining high data integrity

A file is striped across multiple filers, file servers or other devices, to create a sparsely striped multi-component file. Each filer stores one sparse component. In particular, each component physically stores only those stripes allocated to that component. The other stripes are represented as holes. Thus, instead of contiguously packing each component's stripes at the block level, each component is a file having the same logical structure. A component of a sparsely striped multi-component file can be easily converted to a mirror by filling in its holes. Similarly, a mirror can be easily converted to one component of a sparsely striped multi-component file by removing or ignoring it unallocated stripes. In either case, the layout or logical of the component does not need to be reconfigured.

Sparse multi-component files

Diagnosis of corruption in interrelated data entities uses a graph of nodes and edges. Datum nodes represent the data entities, relationship nodes represent the relationships among the data entities. The datum nodes are connected through their relationship nodes by the edges. When corruption is detected, the relationships are analyzed and each edge connecting a datum node to a relationship node is removed from the graph when the corresponding relationship is invalid. The datum nodes that remain connected to their relationship nodes form a subgraph and the corresponding data entities are considered correct. In one aspect, if more than one subgraph is formed, the datum nodes in the largest are used. In another aspect, the data entities and relationships are analyzed to create the graph when the data entities are assumed correct. The data entities may be data and metadata of various types that can be associated with the data.

General techniques for diagnosing data corruptions

A method for detecting errors in streaming media devices is described. In one embodiment, when a command to write a block of data to a streaming media device is received, integrity metadata associated with the data block is attached to the data block and written to the streaming media device together with the data block. Subsequently, when a read command pertaining to this data block is received, new integrity metadata is determined and compared to the attached metadata. If the new integrity metadata does not match the attached metadata, an error message is generated.

Growing community of inventors

Gordonsville, VA, United States of America

Brian L Wong