Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Edward Ramon Zayas

Andy Kahn

John F Gillono

Thomas Haynes

Blake H Lewis

Susan M Coatney

Stephen H Strange

Raymond C Chen

Randal Thelen

Sreelatha Sunkara Reddy

Dongfeng Li

Douglas Joseph Santry

Nitin Muppalaneni

The present invention uniquely names storage devices in a global storage environment with hierarchical storage domains. In particular, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention a storage device (e.g., a disk) is connected at a particular location within the global storage environment. That particular location is associated with a path of each of one or more hierarchical storage domains in which the storage device is located. Accordingly, a name is assigned to the storage device that is the path of the hierarchical storage domains in which the storage device is located.

Uniquely naming storage devices in a global storage environment

A system and method verifies and restores the consistency of inode to pathname mappings. In a first embodiment, an off-line verification procedure is modified to verify and correct the primary name inode to pathname mapping information within inodes of a file system. In a second embodiment, an on-line file system verification process is modified to verify inode to pathname mapping information upon the loading of each inode within the file system.

System and method for verifying and restoring the consistency of inode to pathname mappings in a filesystem

A system and method maintains mappings from data containers to their parent directories within a file system of a storage system. Each inode is modified to include a primary name data structure comprising a parent directory inode and a parent directory cookie value. The parent directory cookie value identifies a particular directory entry within a specified block of a directory identified by parent directory inode. An alternate name file is utilized to store alternate names, such as those associated with hard links.

System and method for maintaining mappings from data containers to their parent directories

The present invention provides techniques for managing ownership (i.e., control) of one or more memory buffer (mbuf) data structures within a network subsystem and a storage subsystem of a storage operating system implemented in a storage system. When the storage system receives data to be written to a storage medium, the network subsystem stores the received data in one or more variable-length chains of mbufs. Unlike conventional approaches, the received data is not subsequently copied out of the mbufs into fixed-sized data buffers for use by the storage subsystem. Instead, the storage subsystem can directly manipulate the received data stored in the mbufs. By eliminating the steps of copying data out of the mbufs and into fixed-sized data buffers, the invention reduces the amount of time and system resources consumed by the storage system when writing blocks of received data to disk storage.

Managing ownership of memory buffers (mbufs)

The present invention provides a technique for efficiently generating and validating external file handles at a storage operating system of a filer. According to one aspect of the technique, the storage operating system associates a unique internal file handle with each file or directory stored in the filer. This unique internal file handle is used to generate a corresponding external file handle. Unlike previous approaches, the internal file handles' representations do not change depending on the location of their corresponding files or directories, e.g., on-disk or in-core, within the filer, thereby simplifying file management within the filer. According to another aspect of the inventive technique, the filer executes a file-handle validation procedure to determine whether an external file handle received with a file access request has become invalid (or 'stale') as a result of an NVRAM failure in the filer. The file-handle validation procedure enables the filer to efficiently determine the validity of the external file handle without having to perform conventional time-consuming and processing-intensive operations. Advantageously, the inventive technique is preferably only applied to generation and validation of external file handles configured in accordance with a stateless file-system protocol, such as the NFS protocol. In this way, there is no overhead added to the filer's storage operating system for generating and validating external file handles configured in accordance with stateful file-system protocols.

Efficient, robust file handle invalidation

A shared implementation for multiple system interfaces. An embodiment of a method includes receiving a command for a system, the command being a command for one of a plurality of interfaces for the system; generating a data structure for the command, the data structure including an opcode from a common library; and parsing the command using one of a plurality of parsing functions, parsing of the command including inserting an argument from the command into the data structure for the command.

Shared implementation for multiple system interfaces

Interfaces for flexible storage management. An embodiment of a system includes a data storage, the data storage including one or more of a first storage system, the first storage system including a file structure that is coextensive with a set of memory devices, or a second storage system, the second storage system including a storage structure that is coextensive with a set of memory devices, the storage structure including zero or more file structures. The system further includes an interface system for the data storage, the interface system being used for both the first storage system and the second storage system.

Interfaces for flexible storage management

A method of serializing administrative operations on virtual volumes includes operating a storage system to maintain a plurality of virtual volumes that share a pool of block storage, where each of the virtual volumes containing data stored on one or more physical storage devices. Administrative access to each of the virtual volumes is controlled individually by imposing serialization on administrative operations directed to each virtual volume.

Growing community of inventors

Milpitas, CA, United States of America

Edward Ramon Zayas