Netapp, Inc.

Jeffrey Eric Semke

James Andrew Ignatuk

Balaji Ramani

Daniel S Nydick

Andrew G Reynolds

Tom Hicks

Jeffrey David Prem

Daniel Clash

Prabhu Hariharan

Michael Joseph Accetta

Bindiya Vasudevan Syamala

Phillip G Ezolt

Andrew Ryan Dalton

Methods and systems are provided for a clustered storage system. The method assigns a network access address to a virtual network interface card (VNIC) at a first cluster node of a clustered storage system, where a physical network interface card assigned to the network access address is managed by a second cluster node of the clustered storage system; and use the VNIC by a virtual storage server at the first cluster node to communicate on behalf of the second cluster node.

Methods and systems for managing network addresses in a clustered storage environment

Methods and systems for managing access to virtual storage systems is provided. A listening socket is configured for an application for detecting communication for a plurality of virtual storage systems presented by a clustered storage system having a plurality of nodes. A packet is received at a node of the clustered storage system from a client system for a virtual storage system from among the plurality of virtual storage systems. An identifier for the virtual storage system for which the packet is destined is determined. A connection socket is cloned for the virtual storage system such that any other packet for a same connection and for the virtual storage system can be forwarded to the virtual storage system. Thereafter, the packet is processed by the application on behalf of the virtual storage system.

Methods and systems for accessing virtual storage servers in a clustered environment

Systems and methods are disclosed for monitoring and recovering from internal and external network connectivity losses. The systems and applications implement algorithms that mark sets of network ports as healthy or degraded, and this way the filer can recover from and compensate for sets that are not reachable, based on the diagnostics performed on the internal and external reachability of the set and/or individual network ports as disclosed herein.

Recovering from and avoiding network connectivity loss

DNS name resolution is integrated into each node in a network storage cluster, to allow load balancing of network addresses, using a weighted random distribution to resolve DNS requests. A node in the cluster gathers statistics on utilization of resources, such as CPU utilization and throughput, on nodes in the cluster and distributes those statistics to all other nodes. Each node uses the same algorithm to generate weights for the various IP addresses of the cluster, based on the statistics distributed to it. The weights are used to generate a weighted list of available network addresses. In response to a DNS request, a DNS in a given node randomly indexes into the weighted address list to resolve requests to a network address. The weights are chosen so that the DNS is likely to pick an IP address which has a low load, to balance port and node usage over time.

Load-derived probability-based domain name service in a network storage cluster

A system and method for offloading network processes from main processors of a storage system and performing them on parallel processing modules. Embodiments of the present invention allocate resources such as memory and/or buffers to particular connections between various storage operating system processes or between storage operating system processes and a network interface. Connections are identified by a connection identifier (CID) and are assigned particular buffers according to parameters such as buffer availability, connection priority, and/or maximum allocation thresholds. A connection associated with a CID is guaranteed access to a certain number of dedicated buffers. Deadlock is avoided even when an operating system process associated with a different CID attempts to exhaust available memory and/or buffers because such processes will only have access to their own allocated resources.

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Allison Park, PA, United States of America

Jeffrey Eric Semke