Netapp, Inc.

Lsi Logic Corporation

Oracle America, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Symbios Logic Inc.

Hyundai Electronics America, Inc.

At&t Global Information Solutions Company

Charles D Binford

Joseph Russell Blount

William Patrick Delaney

Joseph Moore

Randolph Wesley Sterns

Rodney A Dekoning

Keith Moyer

Mahmoud K Jibbe

Whay Sing Lee

William R Stronge

Rodney A DeKoning

Reid A Kaufmann

Michael J Gallagher

Richard W Meyer

Gerald James Fredin

William Hetrick

Wei Sun

Daniel R Cassiday

Craig C McCombs

John D Acton

Jeremy D Stover

Andrew W Wilson

Theresa Lynn Segura

Raymond J Lanza

Mark A Gaertner

Wai Chuen Yim

Dennis E Gates

Ray M Jantz

Ratnesh Gupta

Sai Rama Krishna Susarla

Tim K Emami

Stacy Lee Maydew

Lance A Lesslie

Jeff Stilger

Vishal Kumawat

Steven P Denny

Satish Sangapu

Reid Kaufmann

Mitch Blackburn

Ruth Hirt

The application relates to writing arbitrarily sized data extents using in-line descriptors, such as headers or footers, into physical blocks to describe the data extents in those physical blocks. Some data extents may be smaller than the size of a physical block, and some data extents may be larger than the size of a physical block. A given physical block therefore includes an in-line descriptor for a data extent in that block, indicating that the data extent starts within that block and also an offset from the beginning of the block to where the data extent starts. The in-line descriptor is included within the block so that when the block is read both the data and the descriptor are read, thereby eliminating performance penalty for reading the descriptor information.

Systems, methods, and computer readable media providing arbitrary sizing of data extents

A method includes: storing a first data extent on a physical medium, wherein the physical medium is divided into a plurality of storage blocks, wherein each of the storage blocks has a size that is different than a size of the first data extent, further wherein the first data extent is stored to a first block of the plurality of storage blocks; generating a descriptor for the first data extent, wherein the descriptor indicates that the first data extent starts within the first block of the plurality of blocks and indicates an offset from the beginning of the first block at which the first data extent starts; and storing the descriptor within the first block.

A system shares I/O load between controllers in a high availability system. For writes, a controller determines based on one or more factors which controller will flush batches of data from write-back cache to better distribute the I/O burden. The determination occurs after the local storage controller caches the data, mirrors it, and confirms write complete to the host. Once it is determined which storage controller will flush the cache, the flush occurs and the corresponding metadata at a second layer of indirection is updated by that determined storage controller (whether or not it is identified as the owner of the corresponding volume to the host, while the volume owner updates metadata at a first layer of indirection). For a host read, the controller that owns the volume accesses the metadata from whichever controller(s) flushed the data previously and reads the data, regardless of which controller had performed the flush.

Read and write load sharing in a storage array via partitioned ownership of data blocks

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for allocating data compression activities in a storage system are provided. A method includes tracking, by a storage controller, computing resources corresponding to a storage server. The storage controller processes one or more host read requests to access data requested by one or more hosts, the processing of the one or more host read requests including decompressing the data requested by the one or more hosts from the storage server and providing the decompressed data to the one or more hosts. The storage controller determines an amount of available computing resources after processing the one or more host read requests. Based on the amount of available computing resources, the storage controller performs inline compression of a first portion of host write requests and background compression of a second portion of the host write requests.

Systems and methods for allocating data compression activities in a storage system

A system for tracking metadata changes and recovering from system interruptions. With host I/O, corresponding metadata incremental changes are aggregated and stored in a write-ahead log before being performed to their in-memory buffers. As those buffers are flushed, checkpoints are created and stored in the log. As the log wraps to the start, older entries are overwritten after they are freed from any remaining dependencies by newer checkpoints. If metadata entities have not created new checkpoints, they are instructed to in order to free up space for new aggregated batches and checkpoints. After an interruption, the wrap point is located in the log. From the wrap point, the log is scanned backwards to provide checkpoints to metadata entities. The log is then scanned forwards to perform changes specified by aggregated batches. The metadata entities' volatile memory states are recovered to what they were before the interruption.

Write-ahead log maintenance and recovery

Methods, non-transitory computer readable media, and computing devices that determine when a storage element of a data storage device has failed. Address(es) mapped to the failed storage element are identified, when the determining indicates that the storage element has failed. Data corresponding to the address(es) is regenerated according to a data loss protection and recovery scheme (e.g., a RAID scheme). The regenerated data is written to other storage element(s) of the data storage device in order to remap the address(es) to the other storage element(s). This technology allows a data storage device (e.g., an SSD) to be repaired in-place following a failure of storage element(s) (e.g., a die) of the data storage device. Advantageously, entire data storage devices do not have to be failed with this technology as a result of a failure of an individual storage element, thereby reducing data storage device failure rates and associated overhead.

Methods for handling storage element failures to reduce storage device failure rates and devices thereof

A method, non-transitory computer readable medium, and device that assists with reducing initialization duration and performance impact during configuration of storage drives includes identifying a plurality of new storage drives in a storage system. Next, one or more zeroed out storage drives is identified from the identified plurality of new storage drives based on information present in a data portion of each the identified plurality of new storage drives. A volume group comprising the identified one or more zeroed out drives is created and this created volume group is provided for data operation.

Methods for reducing initialization duration and performance impact during configuration of storage drives

A method for mapping a first address space to a second address space is provided. In some embodiments, the method includes creating a first array of lookup entries and one or more second arrays of metadata entries for maintaining an ordering among the lookup entries using a tree structure. Each of the metadata entries includes one or more data index values identifying a corresponding one of the lookup entries by its position in the first array and one or more metadata index values identifying a corresponding one of the metadata entries by its position in one of the one or more second arrays. The method further includes receiving a request including a lookup value, traversing the tree structure to locate a lookup entry corresponding to the lookup value, and when the lookup value is located among the lookup entries, using the located lookup entry to process the request.

Memory efficient lookup structure

A system and method are provided for backing up and recovering data that allows the data to be modified and backed up even while recovery is still in progress. In some embodiments, the method includes performing a data recovery procedure on a computing system. The data recovery procedure includes identifying a set of data objects stored on a recovery system; retrieving the set of data objects; and storing data of the retrieved set of data objects to at least one storage device. Data objects may be prioritized so that data that is in demand is retrieved first. Data that is modified during the data recovery procedure is tracked and backed up to an object-storage system during the data recovery procedure. In some embodiments, backing up the modified data is part of an incremental backup procedure that excludes data objects that contains only unmodified data.

Prioritized data recovery from an object storage service and concurrent data backup

A system and method for improving storage system performance by maintaining data integrity during bulk export to a cloud system is provided. A backup host reads a selected volume from the storage system via an I/O channel. The storage system remains online during bulk export and tracks I/O to the selected volume in a tracking log. The backup host compresses, encrypts, and calculates a checksum for each data block of the volume before writing a corresponding data object to export devices and sending a checksum data object to the cloud system. The devices are shipped to the cloud system, which imports the data objects and calculates a checksum for each. The storage system compares the imported checksums with the checksums in the checksum data object, and adds data blocks to the tracking log when errors are detected. An incremental backup is performed based on the contents of the tracking log.

Online backup to an object service using bulk export

Growing community of inventors

Wichita, KS, United States of America

Charles D Binford