International Business Machines Corporation

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Marc Thadeus Roskow

Daniel James Winarski

Nisha D Talagala

Anna Wanda Topol

James Lee Hafner

Dulce Beatriz Ponceleon

Whay Sing Lee

Fay Chong, Jr

Stephen Leonard Schwartz

Randall David Rettberg

Chia Y Wu

Deepak R Kenchammana-Hosekote

Richard Francis Freitas

Sven Oehme

Omer Ahmed Zaki

Garth R Goodson

Embodiments of the disclosure relate to storing and sharing data in a scalable distributed storing system using parallel file systems. An exemplary embodiment may comprise a network, a storage node coupled to the network for storing data, a plurality of application nodes in device and system modalities coupled to the network, and a parallel file structure disposed across the storage node and the application nodes to allow data storage, access and sharing through the parallel file structure. Other embodiments may comprise interface nodes for accessing data through various file access protocols, a storage management node for managing and archiving data, and a system management node for managing nodes in the system.

Highly scalable and distributed data sharing and storage

A collective storage system and method for restoring data in the system after a failure in the system. The system includes multiple storage nodes that are interconnected by a network and store data as extents. There are also a set of Data Service (DS) agents for managing the extents, a set of Metadata Service (MDS) agents for managing metadata relating to the nodes and the extents, and a Cluster Manager (CM) agent in each node. After a node failure is detected by one of the CM agents, the agents responsible for coordinating the data restoring are notified of the failure. The agents generate a plan to restore the data extents affected by the failure, and then collectively restoring the affected extents based on the generated plan. The coordinating agents might be the MDS agents or DS agents. The failure might be a node failure or a disk failure.

Distributed storage system capable of restoring data in case of a storage failure

A single field replaceable storage or computer system may include a processor coupled to a peripheral bus by a bridge device. The field replaceable unit (FRU) may also include system memory coupled to the processor and a network interface coupled to the peripheral bus. One or more drive controllers may also be included coupled to the peripheral bus. Additionally, the single field replaceable unit includes an array of disk drives coupled to the one or more drive controllers. The array of disk drives may be configured as one or more RAID logical volumes and exported or presented to client machines as one or more file systems through the network interface. The processor, system memory, network interface, drive controllers, and array of disk drives are all packaged together as a single field replaceable unit. The processor, system memory, network interface, drive controllers, and array of disk drives may be configured not to be individually field serviceable or replaceable. If the unit fails and needs servicing or replacement, the unit may be replaced as a whole.

Field replaceable storage array

Growing community of inventors

Los Gatos, CA, United States of America

Marc Thadeus Roskow