Hitachi, Ltd.

Ken Matsuda

Yoshiaki Eguchi

Ai Satoyama

Yoichi Mizuno

Yutaka Takata

Daisuke Orikasa

Yutaka Tanaka

Masamitsu Takahashi

A storage apparatus includes: a plurality of microprocessors; a plurality of storage areas formed into a drive group constituted from a plurality of physical drives; and a control unit for managing one of the microprocessors, which takes charge of data input to and output from one or more storage areas of the plurality of storage areas, as a microprocessor having ownership of the one or more storage areas; wherein the microprocessor executes dump processing for having an external physical drive store data of the one or more storage areas, for which the microprocessor takes charge of the data input and output, in response to a received I/O request; and wherein the control unit transfers the ownership of the microprocessor according to processing load bias of the dump processing which the plurality of microprocessors take charge of.

Storage apparatus and data management method

Multiple storage area groups into which multiple storage areas provided by multiple storage devices are classified with reference to storage area attributes are managed. The multiple logical volumes to which, in accordance with a write request to at least one address included in multiple addresses in the logical volume, at least one storage area included in the multiple storage areas is allocated are provided. In accordance with the access condition of the at least one address in the logical volume, the data written to the at least one address by the write request is migrated from the at least one storage area included in one of the multiple storage area groups to at least one storage area in another storage area group included in the multiple storage area groups.

Storage system providing virtual volumes

If an I/O load on a first virtual storage area falls below a first threshold, a controller copies data in a first storage area, which is allocated to the first virtual storage area, to a third storage area in a second tier storage area, and allocates the third storage area instead of the first storage area to the first virtual storage area. If an I/O load on a second virtual storage area exceeds a second threshold which is greater than said first threshold, the controller copies data in a second storage area, which is allocated to the second virtual storage area, to a fourth storage area in a first tier storage area, and allocates the fourth storage area instead of the second storage area to the second virtual storage area.

Storage system providing heterogeneous virtual volumes and storage area re-allocation

Growing community of inventors

Odawara, Japan

Ken Matsuda