Emc Corporation

Mikhail Zelikov

Stephen J Todd

John S Harwood

Jeffrey Alan Brown

James W Espy

A method provides a storage service, and is performed on a set of computerized devices. The method includes connecting the computerized devices to a computer network. The computerized devices include direct attached storage devices (e.g., SCSI disk drives). The method further includes configuring the computerized devices to behave as hosts which individually and logically couple to an array of storage devices through a shared bus, and performing a host IO operation among the computerized devices. The host IO operation involves accessing data from a particular computerized device through the computer network to the direct attached storage devices of the computerized devices in lieu of accessing the data from the particular computerized device through an actual shared bus to an actual array of storage devices.

Techniques for providing storage services using networked computerized devices having direct attached storage

One embodiment relates to a computer system comprising at least one host, at least one object addressable storage (OAS) system and at least one communication medium that couples the at least one host to the at least one OAS system. The at least one OAS system has a plurality of storage devices and stores a plurality of content units on the plurality of storage devices. Each of the at least one host and the at least one OAS system has software that provides a OAS interface so that each one of the content units stored on the OAS system may be identified between the at least one host and the at least one OAS using an object identifier. The computer system maps the object identifier for a first of the plurality of content units to at least one of the plurality of storage devices over at least one first path. In response to a failure that prevents the at least one host from accessing the first content unit via the at least one first path, the computer system is automatically reconfigured to establish at least one previously non-established second path that enables the at least one host to access the first content unit using the object identifier for the first content unit.

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Needham, MA, United States of America

Mikhail Zelikov