Netapp, Inc.

John David Strunk

Vaijayanti Rakshit Bharadwaj

Omri Kessel

Sriram Venketaraman

Douglas Joseph Santry

John Jason Sprague

James Stephen Holden

Andrew Joseph Klosterman

Jeffrey S Kimmel

Faramarz Rabii

Ardalan Kangarlou Haghighi

Methods and systems for a networked storage environment are provided. One method includes mirroring a plurality of requests from a switch and transmitting the mirrored plurality of requests to a remote acquisition unit; extracting application layer protocol data units from assembled transport layer packets; parsing the application layer protocol data units to obtain file system requests; identifying storage volume identifiers from the parsed file system requests that are associated with a greatest number of operations; identifying network addresses for client systems initiating the greatest number of operations for the storage volumes and network addresses of target storage systems managing the storage volumes; and providing a total number of operations for the plurality of requests in a given time, the identified storage volume identifiers, the network addresses of the client systems and the network addresses of the target storage systems to a management console.

Methods and systems for managing networked storage system resources

An interface can be designed that efficiently constructs descriptors for streams of protocol data units (PDUs) and provides coherent views of the PDUs and the PDU stream for a requesting application regardless of location within a buffer pool for PDUs. The interface creates a descriptor for each PDU written into the buffer pool and links the descriptors in accordance with the appropriate order of the corresponding PDUs. The interface can create PDU descriptors hierarchically. For instance, a PDU descriptor for a PDU of a layer N protocol can refer to one or more PDU descriptors of a layer N&#x2212;1 protocol.

Protocol data unit interface

Systems and methods for hierarchical reference counting via sibling trees are provided. The hierarchical data structure, together with its associated operations, can efficiently maintain reference counts and significantly reduce input/output (IO) operations compared to traditional techniques. The data structure presented here is applicable to any directed acyclic graph (DAG-type) structure where reference counts are used. Various embodiments of the present invention use a data structure to maintain a 'sibling pointer' (pointing to the sibling node as a way to avoid reference count updates) and a 'sibling count.' When nodes in the tree diverge, the sibling pointer and sibling count are updated as opposed to directly manipulating the reference counts of the children of the diverging nodes. Various other embodiments can use additional entries or fields that allow for improved efficiency and advantages.

Systems and methods for hierarchical reference counting via sibling trees

At least certain embodiments include a method, system and apparatus for relocating data between tiers of storage media in a hybrid storage aggregate encompassing multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media including a file system to automatically relocate the data between tiers. The hybrid storage aggregate includes one or more volumes, each volume including a volume block number space spanning at least a first-tier of storage media and a second tier of storage media of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media and the hybrid storage aggregate further includes a control module to cooperatively manage the tiers of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media and a file system coupled with the control module, the file system including a policy module configured to make policy decisions based on a set of one or more policies and configured to automatically relocate data between different tiers of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media based on the set of policies.

Mechanisms for moving data in a hybrid aggregate

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Apex, NC, United States of America

John David Strunk