Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Dennis Spicher

Stephen J Sicola

Bruce A Sardeson

Bill A Pagano

Bruce Roberts

William K Miller

Richard Franklin Lary

Allen Kelton

Clay T Wade

Mark Shepp

Mark J Conrad

Richard Bruce Roberts

A multi-cabinet mass storage system with unified management features. The system includes a first reporting group and a second reporting group each having enclosure with processors, such as an environmental monitoring units (EMUs), for generating and transmitting environmental messages pertaining to the particular enclosures. The enclosures are positioned on shelves within cabinets. A bus or cabinet cable links each enclosure to facilitate broadcasting the environmental messages. The environmental messages identify the sending device's reporting group and its physical location within the system. Additional enclosures are included in this reporting group with enclosures of each reporting group located all in one cabinet, in two or more cabinets, and each cabinet may house one, two, or more reporting groups. A network links all of the cabinets to concurrently broadcast the environmental messages throughout the system and allows enclosures in a single reporting group to be positioned in differing cabinets.

Unified management system and method for multi-cabinet data storage complexes

A controller for positioning on a shelf of a cabinet within a mass storage system for controlling communication among device enclosures in a reporting group. The controller includes an interface to a data communication loop linking device enclosures each including disk drives positioned on one or more cabinets. The interface is used to transmit control commands. A cabinet bus interface controller is provided and linked to a cabinet bus in the cabinet to receive enclosure reporting messages from the device enclosures to collect environment information. The cabinet bus interface transmits reporting messages onto the cabinet bus to provide environmental information. The interface controller determines the shelf location of the controller within the cabinet from signals on the cabinet bus and receives the cabinet identifier over the cabinet bus. A processor is linked to the interface controller and functions to create and issue the control commands to the loop interface.

Method and apparatus for controlling communications in data storage complexes

A mass storage cabinet having passive device position sensing and including shelves for racking device enclosures. A cabinet bus is linked to the shelves and adapted to provide a unique shelf identifier signal to each of the shelves. The cabinet includes a device providing a cabinet identifier to the shelves. The cabinet bus includes junction boxes having first and second sets of sensing wires and a side connectors linked to the shelves for providing the shelf identifier signal from the first and second sets of sensing wires. To provide a different signal at each junction box, the sensing wires in the first set are moved one position and the sensing wires in the second set are moved one position prior to the connection to an adjacent junction box. An additional sensing wire is linked to the side connectors and grounded and ungrounded at each side connector to alter the signal.

Method and apparatus for sensing positions of device enclosures within multi-shelf cabinets

A system and method for identifying a failed storage device in a storage system comprising a plurality of storage devices connected by a ring-type network is disclosed. In one embodiment, when a storage device fails, all storage devices on the ring-type network are disconnected to re-establish communication on the ring-type network. An iterative process of connecting a subset of storage devices to the ring-type network and testing communication on the ring-type network is performed until communication on the ring-type network is re-established. Then, individual storage devices are connected to the ring-type communication until the connection of a storage device causes communication on the ring-type network to fail, thereby identifying the failed storage device. In another embodiment, devices in a reporting group are tested on a shelf-by-shelf basis.

System and method for locating a failed storage device in a data storage system

Growing community of inventors

Monument, CO, United States of America

Dennis Spicher