Netapp, Inc.

Pure Storage, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Radek Aster

Anthony Frank Aiello

Ronald S Karr

Andrew R Bernat

Susan M Coatney

Benjamin Scholbrock

George Y Kong

Tsu-Hao Chang

Naveen Neelakantam

Joshua Freilich

Aswin Karumbunathan

Randal Thelen

Yunpeng Duan

Robert H Lee

Alan Rowe

Boris Feigin

Joydeep Sen Sarma

Mayank Saxena

Tim K Emami

John Adler

Conner Haffner

Robert Hansen

Jeffrey S Kimmel

Peter E Kirkpatrick

Ling Zheng

Steven Robert Kleiman

Steven C Miller

Timothy W Brennan

Eric D Seppanen

Douglas W Coatney

Neil Buda Vachharajani

Swaminathan Ramany

James Lin

Doug Coatney

Wayne A Booth

Timothy Vincent Lee

Ning Zhao

John Fabrizio Bevilacqua

Kurtis A Chan

Wanye Booth

Vladimir Yakubov

Phil Hord

David Kashou

Mark L Mcauliffe

Anthony F Aiello

A method of using boot-time metadata in a storage system is provided. The method includes writing a fragmentation stride to a solid-state storage device of the storage system, the fragmentation stride defining a granularity on which fragmentation of erase blocks of the solid-state storage device occurs. The method includes allocating portions of erase blocks for at least one process in the storage system, in accordance with the fragmentation stride and writing boot up metadata at offsets that are based on the fragmentation stride, in the solid-state storage device.

Erase blocks having differing sizes

Leveraging distinct storage tiers in a virtual storage system, including: receiving a request to write data to the virtual storage system; selecting, from amongst a plurality of tiers in the virtual storage system, a tier for receiving the data, wherein the plurality of tiers include a write-mostly tier and at least one other tier; and storing, within the selected tier within the virtual storage system, the data.

Leveraging distinct storage tiers in a virtual storage system

A system includes a solid-state storage array having a plurality of solid-state storage devices and a storage controller coupled to the solid-state storage array, the storage controller including a processing device, the processing device to select a segment height based on erase block sizes of the plurality of solid-state storage devices. The processing device is further to program a data segment using the segment height to a data stripe across two or more of the plurality of solid-state storage devices and store the segment height in metadata associated with the data segment.

Dynamically selecting segment heights in a heterogeneous RAID group

Servicing I/O operations in a virtual storage system, including: receiving, by the virtual storage system, a request to write data to the virtual storage system; storing, within staging memory provided by one or more virtual drives of the virtual storage system, the data; and migrating, from the staging memory to more durable data storage provided by a cloud services provider, at least a portion of data stored within the staging memory.

Virtual storage system architecture

A method of automatic load rebalancing includes determining that a new storage device was added to a storage array comprising a plurality of storage devices, wherein the new storage device is distinct from the plurality of storage devices. The method further includes, in response to the determining, identifying a first shard on a first storage device of the plurality of storage devices, wherein the first storage device has a fullness metric that is equal to or exceeds a fullness threshold. The method further includes moving, by a processing device of a storage array controller of the storage array, the first shard from the first storage device to the new storage device.

Automatic load rebalancing of a write group

Servicing I/O operations in a virtual storage system, including: receiving, by the virtual storage system, a request to write data to the virtual storage system; storing, within staging memory provided by one or more virtual drives of the virtual storage system, both the data and an erasure code based on the data; and migrating, from the staging memory to more durable data storage provided by a cloud services provider, at least a portion of data stored within the staging memory without migrating the erasure code based on the data.

Durably storing data within a virtual storage system

A method for writing to a storage memory is provided. The method includes determining erase block size for each of a plurality of erase blocks of the storage memory, wherein at least two of the plurality of erase blocks have differing erase block sizes. The method includes forming a plurality of data segments and writing the plurality of data segments across the plurality of erase blocks of the storage memory, with at least one of the plurality of erase blocks storing portions of two or more of the plurality of data segments.

Overlapping RAID groups

Overlapping raid groups

A consistency group is used as a basic unit of data management of storage containers served by a storage input/output (I/O) stack executing on one or more nodes of a cluster. The storage container may be a LUN embodied as parent volume (active volume), a snapshot (represented as an independent volume embodied as read-only copy of the active volume), and a clone (represented as another independent volume embodied as a read-write copy (clone) of the active volume). A consistency group (CG) is a set (i.e., collection) of objects, e.g., LUNs or other CGs (nested CG), which may be managed and operated upon collectively by an administrative command via a Storage Area Network administration layer (SAL) of the storage I/O stack. The SAL may interact with one or more layers of the storage I/O stack to (i) create a clone of a set of object members of the CG; (ii) create one or more snapshots of the set of object members of the CG; (iii) restore the set of object members of the CG from a group of CG snapshots; (iv) replicate the set of object members of the CG as a single entity; and (v) delete a CG and a nested CG according to specific semantics.

Consistency group management

A computer storage system includes multiple disk trays, each disk tray holding two or more physical disks. The disks on a single tray are virtualized into a single logical disk. The single logical disk reports to the RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) subsystem, creating the impression that there is one large capacity disk. In one implementation, each disk in the tray is allocated to a different RAID group. By allocating the disks in a tray to different RAID groups, if the tray is removed, only a portion of several different RAID groups are removed. This arrangement permits a simple reconstruction of the RAID groups if a disk tray is removed from the system.

Creating logical disk drives for raid subsystems

Technology is disclosed for stack isolation in a storage system including a storage network switch and multiple storage sub-systems (e.g., storage stacks). The storage network switch includes multiple ports and at least one of the ports is configured to dynamically connect to a device that can be either a storage controller device or a storage sub-system. The technology can receive an identification message indicating that a device is connected to a port of a storage network switch, determine based on the identification message at the storage network switch whether the device is a storage controller device or a storage sub-system, and transfer messages between the ports of the storage network switch such that the storage network switch prevents communications between storage sub-systems connected to the storage network switch, but allows communications between the storage sub-systems and storage controller devices connected to the storage network switch.

Stack isolation by a storage network switch

Dynamic selection of a protocol for communication between devices is disclosed. A first device may be connected to a second device by one or more communication links, such as a first communication link and a second communication link. Because the first device and the second device may not have pre-existing knowledge of what protocols are supported by the other device, the first device and the second device may perform protocol discovery by attempting protocols on the communication links in a coordinated manner. In this way, if a communication link becomes active between the first device and the second device, then a protocol attempted on the communication link may be supported by the first device and the second device, and thus may be used across the communication links. If multiple protocols are supported, then a preferred protocol is used across the communication links.

Dynamic protocol selection

One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed for enabling communication between a SAS communication port of a SAS communication component and multiple storage devices. In a first example, a first SAS to SATA bridge chip and a second SAS to SATA bridge chip may be configured to route data from a SAS communication component to multiple storage devices. In a second example, a SAS to SATA bridge chip and a port multiplier may be configured to route data from a SAS communication component to multiple storage devices. In a third example, a four port SAS to SATA bridge comprising two SAS ports and two SATA ports may be configured to route data from a SAS communication component to multiple storage devices. Supporting two or more storage devices with a single SAS communication port allows storage enclosures to increase storage capacity, while decreasing cost per slot.

Communication with two or more storage devices via one SAS communication port

Technology is provided for selecting a master node of a node group in a storage system. The technology can gather data regarding visibility of one or more storage devices of the storage system to one or more active nodes of the node group, determine a maximum visibility value for the node group and selecting an active node with associated visibility value equal to the maximum visibility value as the master node of the node group.

Storage master node

Growing community of inventors

Campbell, CA, United States of America

Radek Aster