Pivot3, Inc.

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Choon-Seng Tan

Greg John Pellegrino

William C Galloway

Ryan A Callison

George J Scholhamer, Iii

Balaji Natrajan

Michael White

Brian J Corell

Benjamin Wayne Goodwyn

Matthew E Curley

Erick Labarca

Embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed provide a distributed RAID system comprising a set of data banks. More particularly, in certain embodiments of a distributed RAID system each data bank has a set of associated storage media and executes a similar distributed RAID application. The distributed RAID applications on each of the data banks coordinate among themselves to distribute and control data flow associated with implementing a level of RAID in conjunction with data stored on the associated storage media of the data banks.

Method and system for distributed raid implementation

Embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed provide a distributed RAID system comprising a set of data banks. More particularly, in certain embodiments of a distributed RAID system each data bank has a set of associated storage media and executes a similar distributed RAID application. The distributed RAID applications on each of the data banks coordinate among themselves to distribute and control data flow associated with implementing a level of RAID in conjunction with a volume stored on the associated storage media of the data banks. Migration of this volume, or a portion thereof, from one configuration to another configuration may be accomplished such that the volume, or the portion thereof, and corresponding redundancy data may be stored according to this second configuration.

Method and system for data migration in a distributed RAID implementation

Method and system for distributed RAID implementation

Embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed provide a distributed RAID system comprising a set of data banks. More particularly, in certain embodiments of a distributed RAID system each data bank has a set of associated storage media and executes a similar distributed RAID application. Each data bank may have a high speed memory where a write cache is stored. In certain embodiments, a virtualization layer may be executed on a data bank and the distributed RAID application may execute on the virtualization layer. The distributed RAID application may control access to the high speed memory on which the write cache is stored.

Embodiments of methods of protecting RAID systems from multiple failures and such protected RAID systems are disclosed. More particularly, in certain embodiments of a distributed RAID system each data bank has a set of associated storage media and executes a similar distributed RAID application. The distributed RAID applications on each of the data banks coordinate among themselves to distribute and control data flow associated with implementing a level of RAID in conjunction with data stored on the associated storage media of the data banks. Furthermore, one or more levels of RAID may be implemented within one or more of the data banks comprising the distributed RAID system.

Method and system for protecting against multiple failures in a raid system

Embodiments of systems and methods for a storage system are disclosed. More particularly, in certain embodiments desired locations of storage devices may be zeroed out during operation of the storage system and areas that have been zeroed out allocated to store data when commands pertaining to that data are received. Specifically, in one embodiment a distributed RAID system comprising a set of data banks may be provided where each data bank in the set of data banks may execute a background process which zeroes areas of the storage devices of the data bank. When a command pertaining to a logical location is received a zeroed area of the physical storage devices on the data bank may be allocated to store data associated with that logical location.

Method and system for initializing storage in a storage system

Method and system for protecting against multiple failures in a RAID system

A system includes a controller to store point-in-time representations (or snapshots) of data taken at different time points from storage unit of a storage subsystem. Data can be restored from one of the point-in-time representations, with point-in-time representations taken later than the one point-in-time representation maintained enabled to allow a subsequent restoring of data from the later point-in-time representations.

Restoring data from point-in-time representations of the data

A method and host bus adapter for controlling failover and failback processes within a redundant data storage system. The method is carried out by a failover mechanism in a host bus adapter linked to a host server. The system includes a communication fabric providing data paths to pairs of redundant storage controllers managing access to storage devices (such as hard disk drives arranged as RAID). The method includes operating the host bus adapter to detect a failover condition and in response, to match the failover condition to a particular failover action. The failover conditions and corresponding actions are stored in a well-defined rule set accessed by the host bus adapter. The method continues with performing with the host bus adapter the matched failover action. The method is transparent to the host computer device, as the host is not required to participate in the failover processes.

Data storage network with host transparent failover controlled by host bus adapter

A data array system, and inter-controller-link messaging method, for controlling redundant access to a storage device and providing inter-controller communication without a dedicated controller link. The host has a host bus, such as a PCI bus, and the system includes an active and a standby controller that are linked to the host bus and use the host bus for an inter-controller-link. A messaging mechanism transmits messages and data over the host bus from the active to the standby controller. The standby controller includes message and data buffers for storing the messages and data written and a message queue in which the active controller writes a signal identifier indicating that a new message has been written and defining the message for processing by the standby controller (such as a message-only transfer, a partial or all data transfer, or as a data-only transfer).

Growing community of inventors

Houston, TX, United States of America

Choon-Seng Tan