Netapp, Inc.

Lsi Corporation

Ncr Corporation

Lsi Logic Corporation

Avago Technologies General IP (singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Hyundai Electronics America, Inc.

At&t Global Information Solutions Company

Mahmoud K Jibbe

Senthil Kannan

Britto Rossario

Dhishankar Sengupta

Craig C McCombs

Madhukar Gunjan Chakhaiyar

Joey Parnell

Arunkumar Ragendran

Charles D Binford

Keith W Holt

Venkata Ramprasad Darisa

Dean Lang

Scott Terrill

Selvaraj Rasappan

Pavan P S

Karthik Krishnamurthy Satchitanand

Abhishekh P Sharma

Steven R Schremmer

Joshua Briner

Vivek Prakash

Manjunath Balgatte Gangadharan

Chandan A Marathe

Natesh Somanna

Krishanu Dhar

Ryan Rodine

Brandon Thompson

Prakash Palanisamy

Himanshu Dwivedi

Wei Sun

Kenneth Hass

Robert A DeMoss

Satish Subramanian

Elmer A Hoyer

Heng Po Chan

Kenneth J Thompson

Shivprasad Prajapati

Srirang Heroor

Preeti Badampudi

Bernard Heng Po Chan

Matthew Buller

Soham Kar

Padmanabhan Pangurangan

Rajasekaran Jeevanandham

Gary M Gaston

Uma K

Jeffery Fowler

Chin Khor

Merle E Furry

Madhukar Gunjan

Padmanabhan Pandurangan

Ciril T Ignatious

PS Pavan

Prakash Vivek

Systems and methods that result in a stable storage system are provided. In the storage system, the latency spikes may be reduced when multiple volumes are aggregated into transfer sets according to system characteristics. The storage system transfers ownership of volumes in each transfer set as a single transaction. In the storage system, connectivity between the host and the storage controller is re-established based on the connectivity in a physical transport layer and a single path. In the storage system, pre-mature failback is also avoided when ownership of volumes is transferred back to a preferred storage controller when the same number of paths existed between the host and the preferred storage controller before and after a failover operation. Further, the storage system generates connectivity reports that display connectivity paths between hosts, storage controllers, and volumes.

Building stable storage area networks for compute clusters

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for performing a multipath selection based on a determined quality of service for the paths. An example method includes a host computing device periodically polling a storage system for path information including an indication of a recommended storage controller. The host computing device periodically determines a quality of service information corresponding to a plurality of paths between the host computing device and a storage volume of the storage system, where at least one of the plurality of paths including the recommended storage controller. The host computing device identifies a fault corresponding to a path of the plurality of paths that routes I/O from the host computing device to the storage volume. The host computing device re-routes the I/O from the path to a different path of the plurality of paths, where the different path is selected for the re-routing based on the quality of service information and the path information.

High availability storage access using quality of service based path selection in a storage area network environment

A method, non-transitory computer readable medium, and device that assists with reducing initialization duration and performance impact during configuration of storage drives includes identifying a plurality of new storage drives in a storage system. Next, one or more zeroed out storage drives is identified from the identified plurality of new storage drives based on information present in a data portion of each the identified plurality of new storage drives. A volume group comprising the identified one or more zeroed out drives is created and this created volume group is provided for data operation.

Methods for reducing initialization duration and performance impact during configuration of storage drives

Systems and methods that select a cache flushing algorithm are provided. A stripe that spans multiple storage devices and includes a plurality of segments is provided. The stripe also includes dirty data stored in a picket-fence pattern in at least a subset of segments in the plurality of segments. A memory cache that stores data separately from the plurality of storage devices and a metadata cache that stores metadata associated with the dirty data are also provided. A cache flushing algorithm is selected using the metadata. The selected cache flushing algorithm flushes data from the memory cache to the stripe.

Performance booster with resolution of picket-fence I/O flushing in a storage system with heterogeneous I/O workloads

A system and method for improving the management of data input and output (I/O) operations for Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) devices in a network storage system is disclosed. The storage system includes a storage controller that receives a series of write requests for data blocks to be written to non-sequential addresses within a pool of SMR devices. The storage controller writes the data blocks from the series of write requests to a corresponding sequence of data clusters allocated within a first data cache of the storage controller for a thinly provisioned volume of the pool of SMR devices. Upon determining that a current utilization of the first data cache's data storage capacity exceeds a threshold, the sequence of data clusters including the data blocks from the first data cache are transferred to sequential physical addresses within the SMR devices.

Managing input/output operations for shingled magnetic recording in a storage system

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for replacing an unreadable sector in a storage system is provided. In some embodiments, the method includes identifying a sector from a plurality of sectors in a physical memory of a storage device in a storage system as an unreadable sector. An unreadable sector is a sector that includes data that had been corrupted and cannot be recovered from data in the storage system. In some embodiments, the unreadable sector is recovered by receiving a copy of a sector identified as the unreadable sector from a cloud storage, where the copy of the sector stores readable data and the cloud storage is a separate storage from the storage system. The method then includes replacing the unreadable sector with the copy at the sector at a memory location in the physical memory occupied by the unreadable sector.

Recovering unreadable data for a vaulted volume

A system, method, and computer program product is described for providing dynamic enabling and/or disabling of protection information (PI) in array systems during operation. A storage system receives a request to transition a volume from PI disabled to PI enabled during regular operation. The storage system synchronizes and purges the cache associated with the target volume. The storage system initiates an immediate availability format (IAF-PI) process to initialize PI for the associated data blocks of the volume's storage devices. The storage system continues receiving I/O requests as the IAF-PI process sweeps through the storage devices. The storage system inserts and checks PI for the write data as it is written to the storage devices. The storage system inserts PI for requested data above the IAF-PI boundary and checks PI for requested data below the IAF-PI boundary. The transition remains an online process that avoids downtime.

Dynamic transitioning of protection information in array systems

A clustered network-based storage system includes a host server, multiple high availability system controller pairs, and multiple storage devices across multiple arrays. Two independent storage array subsystems each include a quorum drive copy and are each controlled by a HA pair, with remote volume mirroring links coupling the separate HA pairs. The host server includes a virtualization agent that identifies and prioritizes communication paths, and also determines capacity across all system nodes. A system storage management agent determines an overall storage profile across the system. The virtualization agent, storage management agent, quorum drive copies and remote volume mirroring link all operate to provide increased redundancy, load sharing, or both between the separate first and second arrays of storage devices.

Network storage systems having clustered RAIDs for improved redundancy and load balancing

System and method for construction, fault isolation, and recovery of cabling topology in a storage area network (SAN) is disclosed. In one embodiment, in a method for construction, fault isolation, and recovery of cabling topology in a SAN, subsystem information associated with each subsystem in the SAN is obtained. Then, an IP port and zoning information associated with connections of each subsystem is obtained. Component information associated with each component is also obtained. Any other relevant information associated with each subsystem and each component is obtained from users. The obtained subsystem information, IP port and zoning information, component information, and any other relevant information are compiled. Test packets are then sent from end-to-end in SAN using compiled information. The sent test packets are tracked via each component in each subsystem in the SAN. The cabling topology of the SAN is then outputted based on the outcome of the tracking.

System and method for construction, fault isolation, and recovery of cabling topology in a storage area network

An apparatus including a storage array, a primary controller, a secondary controller and a solid state device. The storage array may be configured to be accessed by a plurality of controllers. A first of the plurality of the controllers may be configured as the primary controller configured to read and write to and from the storage array during a normal condition. A second of the plurality of the controllers may be configured as the secondary controller configured to read and write to and from the storage array during a fault condition. The solid state device may be configured to (i) store data and (ii) be accessed by the storage array and the secondary controller.

Method for handling interrupted writes using multiple cores

Network storage systems having clustered raids for improved redundancy and load balancing

Growing community of inventors

Wichita, KS, United States of America

Mahmoud K Jibbe