Emc IP Holding Company LLC

Dell Products Inc.

Jason J Duquette

Alesia Tringale

Ian Wigmore

James Marriot Guyer

Adnan Sahin

Michael J Scharland

Steven T McClure

Jonathan I Krasner

James Marriott Guyer

Robert DeCrescenzo

Julie Zhivich

Aidan O Mahony

Jon I Krasner

Jonathan P Sprague

Kuolin Hua

Jeremy O'Hare

Keith Clifford Johnson

Anoop Raghunathan

Ilhan C Gundogan

John Krasner

Amrita Sidhu Maguire

Earl Medeiros

Ken Dorman

William Baxter

Lionel Bella

Philip O'Carroll

Thomas Mackintosh

Akash B Appaiah

A field-replaceable unit is reversibly secured in place using two captive fasteners. Each fastener includes a telescoping knob that rotates 180 degrees in a first direction to engage a latch mechanism and rotates 180 degrees in the opposite direction to disengage the latch mechanism. The knob automatically extends when the latch mechanism is disengaged. The knob alternately extends and retracts in response to being successively pressed when the latch mechanism is engaged. The knob has two cutaways formed along outside edges to facilitate a two-finger grip for knob rotation and pulling the unit out of another module. A circular groove centered on an axis of rotation of the knob has a contrasting coloration and provides a visual and tactile indication of know location. A nub indicates rotational position of the knob.

Tool-less, limited rotation, telescoping fastener

A control node and/or a storage processing node maybe configured to modify a control path between a control node and storage processing node to include at least a portion of a data fabric and another processing node. Control communications may be sent over the data fabric by encapsulating control information that is configured in accordance with a first technology of the control fabric within communications configured in accordance with a second technology of the data fabric. Control switching logic may include logic to switch to a modified control path that includes at least a portion of a data fabric: in response to a failure of the control path; to load balance management activity; and/or improve QoS of management activity.

Intelligent control plane communication

A method, computer program product, and computer system for receiving, by a computing device, an I/O request. It may be identified whether the I/O request is eligible for handling via a first path without also requiring handling via a second path. If the I/O request is eligible, the I/O request may be processed via the first path on a host I/O stack without processing the I/O request via the second path on a storage array I/O stack. If the I/O request is ineligible, the I/O request may be processed via the first path on the host.

System and method for accelerated I/O access using storage array driver in Off-the-shelf server

Mirrored volatile memory in a storage system is configured with a dual cast region of addresses. Buffers in the dual cast region are allocated for data associated with a received Write IO. A host IO device associates the dual cast addresses with the data. A switch or CPU complex recognizes the dual cast addresses associated with the data and, in response, creates and sends a first copy of the data to a first volatile memory mirror and creates and sends a second copy of the data to a second volatile memory mirror. The second copy may be sent via PCIe NTB between switches or CPU complexes.

Dual cast mirroring from host devices

Secure access to data on a storage system via direct connection to an internal fabric of the storage system may be provided. A storage system interface (SSI) may validate each I/O communication originating on the host system before allowing a corresponding I/O communication to be transmitted on the internal fabric. The validation may include applying predefined rules and/or ensuring that the I/O communication conforms to one or more technologies, e.g., NVMe. The SSI may be configured to encrypt I/O communications originating on a host system and to decrypt I/O communications received from the storage system, for example, in embodiments in which data is encrypted in flight from the host system to physical storage devices, and data may be encrypted at rest in memory of the storage system and/or on physical storage devices.

Secure host access to storage system resources via storage system interface and internal switching fabric

A hardware offload includes a hash engine that performs hashing for a block-based storage system. The hash engine calculates multiple hash values for each input buffer provided by the storage system. The hash values may be calculated with variably offset and overlapping portions of the input buffer, wherein each portion is larger than the native block size of the storage system. The hardware offload may also include a compression engine that performs compression on the input buffer using the entire input buffer and/or chunks as compression domains.

Multiple overlapping hashes at variable offset in a hardware offload

Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus comprising a memory and at least one processor. The at least one processor is configured to: dynamically obtain a plurality of metadata from a global memory of a storage system; dynamically predict anticipated metadata based on the dynamically obtained metadata, wherein anticipated metadata is relevant to anticipated input/output (I/O) operations of the storage system; and dynamically instruct the storage system to load anticipated metadata into the global memory.

Metadata management in data storage systems

Techniques for processing metadata (MD) may include: determining, in accordance with one or more criteria, a plurality of MD blocks that are similar and expected to have matching corresponding portions of MD in at least some of the plurality of MD blocks; forming a MD superblock including the plurality of MD blocks; filtering the MD superblock and generating a filtered MD superblock, wherein said filtering includes rearranging content of the MD superblock so that a first plurality of MD portions that are similar are grouped together in the filtered MD superblock, wherein at least some of the first plurality of MD portions that are similar are expected to match; and compressing the filtered MD superblock and generating a compressed filtered MD superblock. Filtering may include performing a bitshuffle algorithm that includes performing a bitwise transpose of a matrix of the MD blocks in the MD superblock.

Metadata compression techniques

A host system is connected to the internal fabric of a storage system without an intervening external network or director or other component of the storage system controlling the host system's access to the internal fabric. The host system may exchange I/O communications with physical storage devices and/or global memory over an I/O path that does not include any directors, for example, over the internal fabric to which the host system is directly attached. In embodiments in which at least a portion of the global memory is considered part of a director, the host system may be configured to communicate with such global memory over the internal fabric and without use of director compute resources.

Host system directly connected to internal switching fabric of storage system

A method for managing data includes generating, by an offload device, predicted active logical partition data using an active logical partition mapping obtained from a host computing device, generating logical partition correlation data using active memory track maps obtained from the host computing device, generating most probable tracks using the predicted active logical partition data and the logical partition correlation data, and sending the most probable tracks to the host computing device, wherein the host computing device evicts data from a memory device based on the most probable tracks.

Method and system for efficiently evicting data from memory slots in a storage system

Metadata in volatile memory is selectively compressed and destaged to non-volatile storage in the event of an emergency shutdown due to loss of like power. Compression offload hardware that is normally used for data compression is used to compress the metadata, e.g. at line speed. The compressed metadata and any uncompressed metadata that was not selected for compression may be destaged to vault drives along with compressed and uncompressed data that is in the volatile memory. Compression during vaulting may decrease power consumption when operating under standby battery power.

Enhanced vault save with compression

A storage system includes four storage engines, each storage engine including two compute nodes. Eight point-to-point connections are used to interconnect pairs of compute nodes on different storage engines, such that each compute node is connected to exactly two other compute nodes of the storage system. Atomic operations can be initiated by any compute node on any other compute node. Atomic operations received by a compute node on one of the point-to-point connections will be forwarded on the other point-to-point connection if the atomic operation is not directed to the compute node. During normal operation, atomic operations on a given compute node are performed on a host adapter associated with the compute node. Upon failure of the host adapter associated with the compute node, atomic operations may be performed on the compute node using the host adapter of the other compute node of the storage engine.

Storage system having storage engines with multi-initiator host adapter and fabric chaining

A method, computer program product, and computer system for receiving, by a computing device, an I/O request. It may be identified whether the I/O request is eligible for handling via a first path without also requiring handling via a second path. If the I/O request is eligible, the I/O request may be processed via the first path on a host I/O stack without processing the I/O request via the second path on a storage array I/O stack. If the I/O request is ineligible, the I/O request may be processed via the first path on the host I/O stack and via the second path on the storage array I/O stack.

System and method for accelerated I/O access using storage array driver in off-the-shelf server

Offload processing may be provided that is not dedicated to a primary processor or a subset of primary processors. A system may have one or more offload processing devices, including one or more APUs, coupled to data storage slots of the system, which can be shared by multiple primary processors of the system. Each offload processing device may be configured to be coupled to a storage slot, for example, as if the device were a storage drive, and include an interface in conformance with a version of an NVMe specification and may have a form factor in accordance with the U.2 specification. The APU within each offload processing device may be communicatively coupled to one or more primary processors by switching fabric disposed between the one or more primary processors and the storage slot to which the offload processing device is connected.

Offload processing using a storage slot

A method and system for proactive data migration across tiered storage that uses machine learning is shown. The method includes receiving first input-output (IO) event metadata describing a first IO event, and analyzing the first IO event metadata using an optimized learning model (OLM), to obtain a first learning model output. The first learning model output is interpreted to generate a first data migration request, and the first data is proactively migrated from a first storage tier to a second storage tier based on the first data migration request.

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Milford, MA, United States of America

Jason J Duquette