Copan Systems Inc.

Crossfield Technology LLC

Gary McMillian

Aloke Guha

Chris T Santilli

Christopher T Santilli

Dennis D Ferguson

Brett McMillian

In a particular embodiment, a multi-path bridge circuit includes a backplane input/output (I/O) interface to couple to a local backplane having at least one communication path to a processing node and includes at least one host interface adapted to couple to a corresponding at least one processor. The multi-path bridge circuit further includes logic adapted to identify two or more communication paths through the backplane interface to a destination memory, to divide a data block stored at a source memory into data block portions, and to transfer the data block portions in parallel from the source memory to the destination node via the identified two or more communication paths.

System and method of multi-path data communications

Systems and methods for providing scalable, reliable, power-efficient, high-capacity data storage, wherein large numbers of closely packed data drives having corresponding metadata and parity volumes are individually powered on and off, depending upon their respective usage. In one embodiment, the invention is implemented in a RAID-type data storage system which employs a large number of hard disk drives that are individually controlled, so that only the disk drives that are in use are powered on. The reduced power consumption allows the disk drives to be contained in a smaller enclosure than would conventionally be possible. In a preferred embodiment, the data protection scheme is designed to utilize large, contiguous blocks of space on the data disk drives, and to use the space on one data disk drive at a time, so that the data disk drives which are not in use can be powered down.

Method and apparatus for power-efficient high-capacity scalable storage system

A hybrid centralized and distributed processing system includes a switching device that connects a storage processor to one or more servers through a host channel processor. The switching device also connects the storage processor to one or more storage devices such as disk drive arrays, and to a metadata cache and a block data cache memory. The storage processor processes access request from one or more servers in the form of a logical volume or logical block address and accesses the metadata cache to determine the physical data address. The storage processor monitors the performance of the storage system and performs automatic tuning by reallocating the logical volume, load balancing, hot spot removal, and dynamic expansion of storage volume. The storage processor also provides fault-tolerant access and provides parallel high performance data paths for fail over. The storage processor also provides faster access by providing parallel data paths for, making local copies and providing remote data copies, and by selecting data from a storage device that retrieves the data the earliest.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Gary McMillian