Hitachi, Ltd.

Mikio Fukuoka

Eiju Katsuragi

Takeki Okamoto

Hiroaki Akutsu

Yutaka Takata

Shintaro Inoue

Hisaharu Takeuchi

Eijyu Katsuragi

Akira Yamamoto

Naoto Matsunami

Toshio Nakano

Ikuya Yagisawa

Takao Sato

Kenichi Takamoto

Takao Satoh

Keishi Tamura

Jun Matsuda

Takahiro Yamamoto

Masaaki Kobayashi

Ai Satoyama

Masakuni Agetsuma

Yoshinori Ohira

Takeru Chiba

Hiroto Ebara

Yasuyuki Nagasoe

Seiki Morita

Masaki Aizawa

Yuta Yamasaki

Manabu Sakuramoto

Manabu Shirasawa

A storage apparatus includes a plurality of storage devices, and a control unit for providing a predetermined storage area of the plurality of storage devices to the host computer as a virtual volume group including one or more virtual volumes. The control unit configures one or more data sets having one or more redundancy levels from the plurality of storage devices, provides a storage area of a storage pool including the plurality of data sets to a part of a storage area of the virtual volume, limits a combination of the storage devices configuring the data sets to be assigned to the virtual volume to a given number of combinations of two combinations or more, uniformly distributes the storage devices, and uses a given number of different combinations of the storage devices to be assigned to the virtual volume in units of the virtual volume group.

Storage system and data management method

In a storage system including a plurality of nodes that provide a storage area and a drive that physically stores data, a parity group is configured with a plurality of data including user data stored in the storage area and redundant data for protecting the user data, a plurality of data in the parity group are stored in a storage area within one predetermined range across a plurality of nodes, and processing for dividing the predetermined range or processing for merging a plurality of predetermined ranges is performed based on a state of the predetermined range.

Storage system and processing method

System and data management method

The storage apparatus has a control unit that includes: an identification unit that is configured to determine that a first data element contained in the data is incorrect, when a first restoration calculation first data element, which is restored from the first data element using other data elements of the data excluding the first data element and a new redundancy code obtained from the data by a first calculation method, coincides with a second restoration calculation first data element, which is restored from the first data element using the other data elements and a new redundancy code obtained from the data by a second calculation method; and a restoration unit that is configured to correct the first data element in the storage devices that is determined to be incorrect by the identification unit, to either the first restoration calculation first data element or the second restoration calculation first data element.

Storage apparatus, storage system, and data management method

The device controller (a) executes a data I/O process with respect to a physical storage area in accordance with an I/O command, and (b) sends to the storage controller an I/O command-related response comprising status information subsequent to being changed in accordance with the I/O process. The storage controller (A) receives the response from the target physical storage device, and (B) based on the status information included in the response received in (A), makes a determination as to whether or not to execute internal processing, and in a case where the result of the determination is to execute internal processing, sends to the target physical storage device an internal processing execution command instructing the execution of internal processing. The device controller in the target physical storage device (c), upon receiving the internal processing execution command, executes internal processing in accordance with the internal processing execution command.

Storage system and storage system control method

This storage apparatus for providing a dynamically expandable virtual volume to a host system to access the virtual volume comprises an allocation unit for configuring a group with a plurality of disks for providing a storage area to be allocated to the virtual volume, and allocating the storage area respectively from a plurality of the groups to the virtual volume; and a storage area arrangement unit for rearranging the storage area in each of the groups being used by the virtual volume to become optimal among each of the groups based on external operation.

Storage apparatus and method for arranging storage areas and managing error correcting code (ECC) groups

A virtualization system, upon judging that a write operation from a higher-level device is an operation to write in the format of the virtual volume, even when the write position of the write operation is in a virtual area different from a virtual area to which an allocated actual area has been allocated, if there is an unused area in the allocated actual area, writes management information to the unused area according to the write operation, and if there is no unused area in the allocated actual area, newly allocates an unallocated actual area, and writes management information to the newly allocated actual area according to the write operation.

Virtualization system and area allocation control method

A storage controller of the present invention can input and output data even when the track size, which is the host management unit, is not consistent with the block size of the storage device. A boundary correction unit adds gap data corresponding to a gap size to data in a buffer memory so that the boundary of the track and boundary of the block inside the storage device match. A guarantee code is added to each logical block received from the host, and these guarantee code-appended blocks are stored in a cache memory. By providing a gap in the storage device every 116 extended logical blocks, the start position of the lead block of a track matches up with the start position of the logical blocks of the storage device.

Storage controller and method for control of a data storage device

A storage system includes a plurality of disk apparatuses configuring a plurality of RAID groups, a spare disk apparatus, and a controller. The controller is adapted to copy data stored in a disk apparatus, whose error count exceeds a first threshold, to the spare disk apparatus. If an error count of a disk apparatus included in a RAID group exceeds a second threshold which is lower than the first threshold, the controller is adapted to check error counts of other disk apparatuses included in the same RAID group. If any of the error counts of the other disk apparatuses included in the same RAID group exceeds the second threshold, the controller is adapted to change the first value of the first disk apparatus and the other disk apparatuses included in the same RAID group.

Array-type disk apparatus preventing data lost and providing improved failure tolerance

A storage control system in which a first storage controller is connected to a storage device in a second storage controller and the first storage controller is configured to be able to read and write data from/to the storage device in the second storage controller in response to a request from a host device connected to the first storage apparatus, the first storage controller including: a controller for controlling data transmission and reception between the host device and the storage device in the second storage controller; and a cache memory for temporarily storing the data, wherein the controller sets a threshold value for storage capacity in the cache memory assigned to the storage device according to the properties of the storage device.

Storage system with cache threshold control

Disclosed is storage system, that is, an array-type disk apparatus which is provided with an error monitor section which monitors the status of error occurrence in a disk drive and instructs initiation of mirroring between the disk drive and a spare disk drive when the number of errors occurred of the disk drive exceeds a specified value, and a mirror section which performs mirroring between the disk drive and spare disk drive. Storage system, that is, the array-type disk apparatus may be provided with an error monitor section which monitors the status of error occurrence in a disk drive and gives such an instruction as to set the status of the disk drive in a temporary blocked state, and a data restoring section which executes data restoration by reading data from the temporary blocked disk drive when reading from another disk drive constituting a disk array group is not possible during data restoration.

Array-type disk apparatus preventing lost data and providing improved failure tolerance

Growing community of inventors

Odawara, Japan

Mikio Fukuoka