Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Candera, Inc.

Richard Meyer

Kumar Gajjar

Rahim Ibrahim

Chan Y Ng

Chandra Prasad

Nghiep Tran

Glenn Yu

Dipam Patel

Jim Collins

Tuan Anh Nguyen

Andrey Gusev

Gen-Hwa Chiang

Kwan Sang Yap

Yuri Khodosh

Glen C Yu

Andre Gusev

A storage virtualization controller for transferring data between a host and a storage device at a wire-speed data transfer rate. A downstream processing element adapted for connection to the storage device is configurable coupled to an upstream processing element adapted for connection to the host. A central processing element coupled to the upstream processing element grants permission to the upstream processing element to transfer the data at the wire-speed rate without further involvement by the central processing element.

High-speed data transfer in a storage virtualization controller

A method and system to add a storage controller in a SAN includes receiving a storage controller node to add to a logical storage controller in the storage area network having a logical nodename and a sequence of logical ports, adopting the logical nodename from the logical storage controller in place of the predetermined nodename associated with the storage controller and renumbering a set of ports associated with the storage controller to extend the sequence of logical ports associated with the logical storage controller. Removing the storage controller includes removing a storage controller node from the logical storage controller in the storage area network having a logical nodename and a sequence of logical ports, deleting the set of ports associated with the removed storage controller from the sequence of logical ports associated with the logical storage controller and renumbering the sequence of logical ports to accommodate the deleted ports.

Method and system for dynamic expansion and contraction of nodes in a storage area network

Embodiments according to the invention perform functions including discovery, classification, and profiling of storage devices, computer systems, connection elements, and other components relating to a storage area network (SAN). Changes to the SAN topology are tracked in order to show growth patterns.

Method and system for identifying storage devices

Failover processing in storage server system utilizes policies for managing fault tolerance (FT) and high availability (HA) configurations. The approach encapsulates the knowledge of failover recovery between components within a storage server and between storage server systems. This knowledge includes information about what components are participating in a Failover Set, how they are configured for failover, what is the Fail-Stop policy, and what are the steps to perform when 'failing-over' a component.

Failover processing in a storage system

In a storage server on a storage area network, a media unit manager manages disk space in a manner transparent to the host computers. The media unit manager uses media units corresponding to the physical storage devices on the storage area network to build higher-level media units. The higher level media units can have the attributes of being sliced, concatenated, mirrored, striped, etc. Thus, the host computers need not be aware of the specific physical storage devices themselves, reducing the management and reconfiguration burden on the host computers when storage devices are added to or removed from the storage area network.

Storage virtualization and storage management to provide higher level storage services

An automated, policy-based system and method provides information security at various levels in the network, including at the baseline inventory, device, network frame, and command level. This approach improves over the conventional distributed security model by centralizing security in one multi-level management structure. Embodiments of the present invention may also provide a scheme for mapping vendor-unique opcodes to access rights.

Method for device security in a heterogeneous storage network environment

Method and apparatus for identifying storage devices

A storage provisioning policy is created by specifying storage heuristics for storage attributes using storage heuristic metadata. Storage attributes characterize a storage device and storage heuristic metadata describe how to specify a storage heuristic. Using the storage heuristic metadata, storage heuristics are defined to express a rule or constraint as a function of a storage attribute. In addition, the storage provisioning policy may also specify mapping rules for exporting the storage to a consumer of the storage, such as the server or server cluster.

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Richard Meyer