Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Rebecca S Beaman

Arthur F Lent

Robert L Fair

Herman Lee

Vitaly Revsin

Randall David Smith

James R Grier

Hooman Vassef

Don Bolinger

Salimah Addetia

A method of making a foreign law in usable in a network storage controller includes transparently converting the foreign logical unit to the native format of the file system in place, by progressively increasing the binding between the file system of the storage controller and the foreign logical unit, while the foreign logical unit remains online, without requiring copying of the foreign logical unit.

Assimilation of foreign logical units in a network storage controller

The present invention provides a system and method for creating and accessing a copy of one or more host-accessible storage entities contained in a persistent consistency point image (PCPI) of a volume served by a storage system. The storage entity may comprise a file system, logical volume, volume group, or 'file system on raw device'. The copy of the storage entity is generated using a logical unit number (lun) copying technique in conjunction with a PCPI table of contents (PTOC). The PTOC contains data describing contents of the PCPI, including luns of the storage entity. The PTOC is written to the volume of the storage system, which is configured to store the luns, i.e., in the context of an active file system, immediately prior to generation of the PCPI. After generation of the PCPI, the PTOC is deleted from the volume such that it is only stored within the PCPI and not within the active file system.

System and method for creating and accessing a host-accessible storage entity

The system and method verifies a configuration of a storage system through versions, configurations and components failure of the various storage system components and generates a report identifying errors and/or warnings of the current configuration. A graphical representation of the storage system, including switches, clients and the like may be generated showing misconfiguration errors.

Technique for verifying a configuration of a storage environment

The present invention provides a system and method for inband management of a virtual disk. A novel volume information command, which is a vendor-specific SCSI command, is sent by a client to a storage appliance, in response, generates a data structure containing various path and networking data associated with a vdisk. This data structure is then returned to the requesting client via a SCSI connection. A client may then utilize the returned information for generating snapshots or other data integrity/backup features offered by the storage appliance.

System and method for inband management of a virtual disk

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Redding, MA, United States of America

Rebecca S Beaman