Network Appliance, Inc.

Netapp, Inc.

Silicon Graphics, Incorporated

Hewlett-packard Company

Facebook, Inc.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Robert M English

Peter Frank Corbett

Steven Robert Kleiman

Ashish Prakash

John K Edwards

Eric C Hamilton

Blake H Lewis

Jason Ansel Lango

Nawaf K Bitar

Ling Zheng

Paul Christopher Eastham

Emmanuel Ackaouy

Brian Mederic Quirion

Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan

David A Grunwald

Robert L Fair

Stephen Lee Manley

Matthew Benjamin Amdur

Jeffrey Rothschild

Kartik Ayyar

Robert Lieh-Yuan Tsai

Ram Kesavan

Qinghua Zheng

Peter Griess

J Chris Wagner

Michael Kazar

Richard Parvin Jernigan, Iv

Konstantinos Roussos

Daniel Ting

Alexander A Stepanov

Zdenko Kukavica

Rajiv Gupta

Mark Smith

Subramaniam Periyagaram

Cheryl Marie Thompson

William McGovern

Mohit Gupta

Yong Cho

Szu-Wen Kuo

Douglas Joseph Santry

Frederic C Amerson

J Christopher Wagner

Tan Watanabe

Jeffrey L Heller

Mehul S Shah

Yasuhiro Endo

Chia-Chiang Chao

Raghu Mallena

Alexander D Petruncola

Andrew J Wilkes

David M Jacobson

Vania N Fang

David Craig

Christopher J Wagner

Robert Leih-Yuan Tsai

John K Edwars

Paul Christoper Eastham

A load balancer allocates requests to a pool of web servers configured to have low queue capacities. If the queue capacity of a web server is reached, the web server responds to an additional request with a rejection notification to the load balancer, which enables the load balancer to quickly send the rejected request to another web server. Each web server self-monitors its rejection rate. If the rejection rate exceeds a threshold, the number of processes concurrently running on the web server is increased. If the rejection rate falls below a threshold, the number of processes concurrently running on the web server is decreased.

Load balancing web service by rejecting connections

Load balancing by circling back to a secondary port of a first web server after a request is rejected a threshold number of times

Receiving at a secondary port of a first web-server a request that has been rejected a predetermined amount of time by multiple web-servers

Systems, methods, and computer program products implementing hybrid file structures for data storage are provided. One embodiment of a method performed in a computer-based storage system includes writing a file as data blocks in an array of storage devices. The method includes associating the data blocks with metadata related to at least one location in the array of storage devices for later access to the data blocks. The file is represented as a hierarchical data structure having a plurality of nodes. A first portion of nodes has a first span type, and a second portion of nodes has a second span type. The data structure includes a buftree. The first span type includes a fixed-span type. The second span type includes a variable-span type.

Systems, methods, and computer program products implementing hybrid file structures for data storage

A method for sharing data blocks in a hierarchical file system in a storage server includes allocating a plurality of data blocks in the file system, and sharing data blocks in the file system, without using a persistent point-in-time image, to avoid duplication of data blocks. A method for identifying data blocks that can be shared includes computing a fingerprint for each of multiple data blocks to be written to a storage facility and storing the fingerprint with information identifying the data block in an entry in a set of metadata. The set of metadata is used to identify data blocks which are duplicates.

Deduplicating data blocks in a storage system

A network caching system has a multi-protocol caching filer coupled to an origin server to provide storage virtualization of data served by the filer in response to data access requests issued by multi-protocol clients over a computer network. The multi-protocol caching filer includes a file system configured to manage a sparse volume that 'virtualizes' a storage space of the data to thereby provide a cache function that enables access to data by the multi-protocol clients. To that end, the caching filer further includes a multi-protocol engine configured to translate the multi-protocol client data access requests into generic file system primitive operations executable by both the caching filer and the origin server.

System and method for caching network file systems

A file system layout apportions an underlying physical volume into one or more virtual volumes (vvols) of a storage system. The underlying physical volume is an aggregate comprising one or more groups of disks, such as RAID groups, of the storage system. The aggregate has its own physical volume block number (pvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that pvbn space. Each vvol has its own virtual volume block number (vvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that vvbn space. Notably, the block allocation structures of a vvol are sized to the vvol, and not to the underlying aggregate, to thereby allow operations that manage data served by the storage system (e.g., snapshot operations) to efficiently work over the vvols. The file system layout extends the file system layout of a conventional write anywhere file layout system implementation, yet maintains performance properties of the conventional implementation.

Extension of write anywhere file system layout

Method and apparatus for identifying and eliminating duplicate data blocks and sharing data blocks in a storage system

A filesystem can be converted to a different version by creating a new data structure according to a new format of the different version and transforming the data from the filesystem to the new data structure. Transforming the data can include changing the format of the data in the filesystem to be compatible with the new data structure format. The data may be incorporated into the new data structure by copying the data, or creating indirect reference mechanisms to point to the original data.

Methods and apparatus for changing versions of a filesystem

A file system layout apportions an underlying physical volume into one or more virtual volumes (vvols) of a storage system. The underlying physical volume is an aggregate comprising one or more groups of disks, such as RAID groups, of the storage system. The aggregate has its own physical volume block number (pvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that pvbn space. Each vvol has its own virtual volume block number (vvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that vvbn space. Notably, the block allocation structures of a vvol are sized to the vvol, and not to the underlying aggregate, to thereby allow operations that manage data served by the storage system (e.g., snapshot operations) to efficiently work over the vvols.

Multiple domains are created for processes of a storage server. The processes are capable of execution on a plurality of processors in the storage server. The domains include a first domain, which includes multiple threads that can execute processes in the first domain in parallel, to service data access requests. A data set managed by the storage server is logically divided into multiple subsets, and each of the subsets is assigned to exactly one of the threads in the first domain, for processing of data access requests directed to the data set.

Mutual exclusion domains to perform file system processes on stripes

The present invention provides a system, method, and computer program product for 'cooling' selected disks in a set of disks connected to a storage system by reducing access frequency to the selected disks and pausing the disks with the reduced access frequency. Pausing some disks advantageously reduces power consumption by the disks.

System and method for pausing disk drives in an aggregate

Embodiments of the present invention are directed to an apparatus and methods for operating a storage system. The storage system incorporates a storage device associated with a client into a logical group of storage devices managed by the storage system. Thereafter, the storage system is capable of satisfying data access requests from an incorporated storage device managed by the storage system.

Incorporation of client storage into a storage system

Growing community of inventors

Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Robert M English