Dell Products Inc.

Nigel Hislop

Paul Bradley

Xuedong Jiang

Management applications (hosts) implement management operations on a storage system by passing system calls (syscalls) to a management system. In some embodiments, all management traffic is passed from one or more instances of a management application to a management daemon executing in the context of the storage system operating system. The management daemon sorts syscalls received from the management applications and implements the syscalls using one or more array control devices. The array control devices are special target devices configured on external control hosts for sending management commands to the storage system operating system and receiving information from the storage system. In some embodiments, Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) devices to be used as array control devices, and enable TCP connections to be used as logical array control devices. Adding multiple protocol support in the existing management software infrastructure enables users to seamlessly migrate to the new data center technologies.

Multiple protocol array control device support in storage system management

A management daemon sorts syscalls received from the management applications into First In First Out (FIFO) queues and, when there is an available array control device, selects a syscall from one of the FIFO queues, and spawns a thread on the available array control device to service the selected syscall. The management system has a syscall scheduler configured to optimize handling of syscalls, by breaking long running syscalls into discrete operations, implementing a portion of the syscall, and then stopping operation of the syscall while saving the state of the partially executed syscall. The partially executed syscall is placed back into a queue for subsequent operation, thus freeing up the array control devise for use in connection with other syscalls. By optimizing syscall scheduling, and incremental processing of long running syscalls, it is possible to reduce the overall syscall processing time for a set of syscalls.

Growing community of inventors

Springfield, VA, United States of America

Nigel Hislop