Agami Systems, Inc.

Kacper Nowicki

Waheed Qureshi

Olaf Manczak

Luis Ramos

George Feinberg

David Raccah

According to one embodiment, a storage system () may include a gateway service (), metadata service () and storage service () that each provide different storage system functions. Each service (and) may include a plurality of servers that are functionally de-coupled from one another. De-coupled servers may service requests without regard to the operation of other servers of the same service. Such a de-coupled arrangement can allow a storage system () to be scaled to meet increasing demands, as servers may be added to a system, on a service by service basis, without necessarily re-indexing stored information or reconfiguring multiple instances of a server application. Further, backup servers may be easily added to the system to enable fault tolerance. Servers of a particular service (and) may be accessed according to a quality of service policy.

Scalable storage system

According to one embodiment, a metadata management system (MDS) may include partitioned migratable metadata. Metadata may be stored in multiple metadata partitions (-to-). Each metadata partition may be assigned to a particular system resource (-to-). According to predetermined policies, such as metadata aging, metadata stored in one metadata partition may be migrated to a different metadata partition. A forwarding object can be placed in the old metadata partition to indicate the new location of the migrated metadata. Metadata partitions (-to-) may be reassigned to different resources, split and/or merged allowing a high degree of scalability, as well as flexibility in meeting storage system needs.

Storage system having partitioned migratable metadata

A system and method to allow scalability of file storage in terms of capacity and performance through a symmetric multicomputer architecture with shared storage, in which storage and protocol processing resources can be added to (or removed from) the system without any need of recognizing and/or explicitly migrating the data stored in the system. The invention permits accessing files stored (i.e., written) in any of multiple external protocol processing nodes to be retrieved from any other external protocol processing node.

Growing community of inventors

Hayward, CA, United States of America

Kacper Nowicki