Dell Products Inc.

Eric Robert Schott

Lazarus J Vekiarides

Peter C Hayden

Paula Long

Shari Vietry

Paul Anthony Calato

Nishant Kanaiyalal Mehta

Timothy D Nolan

Daniel E Suman

Kirtley C Gillum

Neil A Swinton

Shari Ann Vietry

Paul G Koning

A method of managing snapshots on a storage system includes a storage controller (1) receiving a request to store a first snapshot associated with a first volume among a plurality of volumes on the storage system and (2) determining if an assigned snapshot reserve space remaining associated with the first volume is less than an amount of space that is required to store the first snapshot. In response to the assigned snapshot reserve space remaining being less than the amount of space required, borrowing snapshot reserve space from at least one of an unused assigned space or an unused unassigned space within the storage system and storing at least a portion of the first snapshot to the borrowed snapshot reserve space.

System and method for managing storage system snapshots

A network of data processors for providing access to a resource, such as implemented a Storage Area Network that uses iSCSI and Microsoft MPIO-based network communication protocols. In preferred embodiments, the system or method uses (a) target-side consideration of MPIO disk structures, such as by having iSCSI initiators in from iSCSI targets via an iSCSI session object that is settable by a service action; and/or (b) uploading of routing tables from iSCSI targets to iSCSI initiator(s), such as to a Device Specific Module (DSM). Implementations may also involve, in a preferred embodiment: (1) requesting that the contents of the routing table be provided from the iSCSI target side storage servers to the iSCSI initiators, and using this as one of the factors influencing path selection as performed in the MPIO DSM on the initiator side; and/or (2) transmitting information from the iSCSI initiator to the iSCSI target storage server identifying connections as belonging to the same MPIO disk, and then receiving back from the iSCSI target storage server, information about the connections that should be created, and further then having a connection load balancer on the storage server handle those connections as related connections that need to be assigned each to a different Network Interface (NIC) on the storage servers.

Storage area network with target side recognition and routing table upload

The systems and methods described herein include among other things, systems for providing a block level data storage service. More particularly, the systems and methods of the invention provide a block level data storage service that provides differentiated pools of storage on a single storage device. To this end, the systems and methods described herein leverage the different performance characteristics across the logical block name (LBN) space of the storage device (or devices). These different performance characteristics may be exploited to support two or more classes of storage on a single device.

Storage systems having differentiated storage pools

Growing community of inventors

Epsom, NH, United States of America

Eric Robert Schott