Dell Products Inc.

Nam Van Nguyen

Jacob Cherian

Richard K Golasky

Ananda Chinnaiah Sankaran

Bharath Vasudevan

Ahmad Hassan Tawil

Edward H Yardumian

Michael Kosacek

Mohana R Mullapudi

Ahmad H Tawill

Daniel Moges

The invention provides for a method and corresponding Information Handling System (IHS) to protect storage systems from device discontinuity caused by misconfigurations. An embodiment of the IHS comprises a network switch coupled for communication to a storage group where a member of the storage group is a group leader. The group leader has access to configuration information for each member of the group and the network switch. The IHS further comprises an agent monitor that communicates a proposed change affecting the switch and/or a member of the group to the group leader. The group leader in response to the proposed change determines the acceptability of the proposed change using the accessed configuration information and in turn, communicates the determined acceptability to the agent monitor at the network switch. The agent monitor or the group leader then provides output indicating the acceptability of the proposed change to a network administrator.

Method to protect storage systems from discontinuity due to device misconfiguration

A system for optimizing communication paths between two given network ports. More specifically, the system for optimizing communication paths identifies an optimal port between a multi-ported target node and a multi-ported initiator node and then couples the multi-ported target node and the multi-ported initiator node using an optimal path corresponding to the identified optimal port.

Optimized internet small computer system interface path

A method of managing storage device resets in a system using shared storage is provided. A reset instruction is received at a shared storage device from a first node. In response, the storage device is at least partially reset, including aborting one or more queued I/O commands including a first I/O command received from a second node. A reset notification timer is started. If an I/O command is received from the second node during the reset notification timer, in response to receiving the I/O command the second node is notified of the storage device reset such that the second node can determine that the first I/O command was aborted. If no I/O command is received from the second node during the reset notification timer, at the expiration of the timer, the second node is notified of the storage device reset such that the second node can determine that the first I/O command was aborted.

System and method for managing resets in a system using shared storage

An architecture and method for executing write commands in a storage array is disclosed. The data strips of the data stripes of the storage array each include a parity check bit. The parity strip of each stripe includes a plurality of parity check bits, each of which is uniquely associated with one of the data strips of the stripes. The inclusion within each data stripe of parity bits associated with each data strip and the party strip provides a method for identifying a corrupted or degraded data condition that occurs as a result of a server failing fails during a write command.

System and method for handling write commands to prevent corrupted parity information in a storage array

A system and method is disclosed for failure recovery and communications in a shared storage system. The shared storage system includes at least two host nodes, each of which includes two ports. Each of the ports of each of the nodes is coupled to input ports of a storage enclosure. The input ports of the storage enclosures are in turn coupled to one another to form communications links between each of the host nodes. When the communications links between the host nodes fail, the host nodes are able to pass configuration information to each other by saving configuration information to a central location in a shared storage, such as a dedicated location in one of the storage drives of the storage enclosure that is directly coupled to both host nodes. The host nodes are able to force their peer nodes to read configuration changes before accessing possibly corrupted data from a previous configuration.

System and method for failure recovery in a shared storage system

According to various illustrative embodiments of the present invention, a method for adaptive cluster input/output control includes starting a nonessential input/output operation using a first controller in a first node of a cluster, informing at least a second controller in a second node of the cluster about starting the nonessential input/output operation, and increasing the nonessential input/output operation by a predetermined utilization percentage. The method also includes waiting for a predetermined amount of time, determining whether the nonessential input/output operation has been completed, and determining whether the at least the second controller in the second node has substantially decreased performance. The method also includes decreasing the nonessential input/output operation by the predetermined utilization percentage if the nonessential input/output operation utilization percentage is greater than the predetermined utilization percentage and if the at least the second controller in the second node has substantially decreased performance, and informing the at least the second controller in the second node of the cluster about the completion of the nonessential input/output operation if the nonessential input/output operation has been completed.

Adaptive input/output bus sharing method to improve performance of SCSI/SAS clusters

A system and method is disclosed for the automatic assignment, or reassignment, of shared storage resources to blade computers in a blade server environment. A chassis manager is implemented as a processing entity on the mid-plane of a blade server chassis to provide, independently or in conjunction with other systems and/or attached storage devices, management of shared storage resources. Management of these resources includes, but is not limited to, creation of logical units, assignment of logical units to predetermined blade server chassis slots, and deletion of logical units. Host-based software is not required to assign shared resources to a computer blade, only its presence in a predetermined slot of a blade server chassis. Logical unit numbers (LUNs) are assigned by the chassis manager based on blade server slot IDs while host-unique identifiers, such as world wide names (WWNs) are used by one or more shared storage controllers for internal LUN addressing.

System and method for automatic reassignment of shared storage on blade replacement

A cluster network is provided in which the storage enclosures of the network are grouped into storage sets or columns of storage enclosures. Each server node of the cluster network is coupled to an interface of the storage enclosure of each of the storage sets. The storage enclosure within each set are coupled together to provide a redundant peer communications link between the server nodes.

Cluster network with redundant communication paths

A SAN-based cluster backup system and method are provided. The system and method are automated, do not use a LAN for backup data, and are made aware of application failover events. The system and method are composed of two main components: a backup service, and a primary coordinator. The backup service performs the backup of the applications that are hosted on a particular node. The backup service periodically checkpoints the state of the backup job and communicates the status to the primary coordinator. The primary coordinator controls all backup operations in the cluster. The user submits backup jobs for the applications through the primary coordinator. If a node fails during a backup operation, the primary coordinator can ensure that the failed backup job can be resumed from the last checkpoint on the failed-over node. In this way, repetitive backups can be avoided, thereby increasing efficiency.

Distributed failover aware storage area network backup of application data in an active-N high availability cluster

A system and method for updating the firmware of storage drive in a drive array is disclosed. The method includes the steps of updating the firmware of a spare drive. The spare drive is swapped for a drive of the drive array having unupdated firmware. The content of the spare drive is built on the basis of the content of the other storage drives of the storage arrays and according to the data recovery scheme of the drive array. The firmware of the selected storage array is updated and the updated storage drive is swapped with the spare storage drive in the drive array. The content of the updated storage array is then rebuilt or restored.

System and method for updating firmware of a storage drive in a storage network

A bus reset control module associated with a fibre-SCSI bridge manages target resets sent from a fibre bus to one or more SCSI buses to reduce or eliminate unnecessary bus resets of SCSI buses having sequential devices, such as tape storage drives. The bus reset control module accepts target resets from a fibre bus host to intercept the initiation of bus resets and communicates with target devices of the SCSI bus to determine whether the target devices are faulty. The bus reset control module issues bus resets to SCSI buses having a faulty target device but prevents issuance of bus resets to SCSI buses that do not have a faulty target device so that a sequential device interfaced with a SCSI bus is not subject to a bus reset if all devices associated with the SCSI bus are operating properly.

System and method for managing target resets

A system, method and apparatus for network computing are disclosed. According to teachings of the present disclosure, a switching appliance having redundant Fibre Channel switches and redundant power supplies is provided. Also included on the switching appliance is a user selection mechanism allowing a user to port-zone each of the switches by selecting one of a plurality of pre-programmed port-zoning configurations. The switching appliance may be further configured to indicate cabling connections to be made between the ports of the switching appliance and a plurality of computing components.

Fibre channel switching appliance

A system and method for managing storage resources in a clustered computing environment are disclosed. A method incorporating teachings of the present disclosure may include holding a reservation on a storage resource for a first node of a clustered computing environment. A third party process log out for the first node may be performed and the reservation held for the first node may be released.

System and method for managing storage resources in a clustered computing environment

A system and method for recovering from a server failure in a computer network, wherein the network contains several stand-alone, non-clustered, servers, and a cluster, wherein a clustered server also serves as the spare server, is disclosed. This cluster will have one standby recovery group for each non-clustered server in the computer network. Each recovery group contains the IP address and network name of the associated stand-alone server. The cluster monitors the health of the stand-alone servers, preferably through the use of a heartbeat mechanism. If the cluster detects a failure, it will reassign the LUNs owned by the failing server to the cluster. After the cluster has reassigned the LUNs, it will activate the recovery group containing the IP address and network name of the failing server. Subsequently, the cluster will assume the identity of the failing server and serve its users, until the failing server is repaired or replaced.

Growing community of inventors

Round Rock, TX, United States of America

Nam Van Nguyen