Emc Corporation

Emc IP Holding Company LLC

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Sachin More

Adnan Sahin

Ron Arnan

Amnon Naamad

Yechiel Yochai

Preston F Crow

Marik Marshak

Kendell Alan Chilton

Hui Wang

Xiaomei Liu

Owen Martin

Adi Ofer

Barry A Burke

Paul F Hale

Thomas Earl Linnell

Dan Aharoni

Sean C Dolan

Gilad Sade

Josef Ezra

Shanmugavelayut Muthukrishnan

Elizabeth A Shriver

William J Glynn

Kenneth Goguen

Xiaoyan Wei

Yedidia Atzmony

Daniel Lambright

Maureen Lally

Dimitar Petkov Gueorguiev

Orit Levin Michael

Ian Adams

Described is storage system and method for reducing power consumption. The storage system has first and second physical disks configured to provide mirroring. The first physical disk is placed into a power-saving mode of operation, while the second physical disk is in an active mode of operation responding to read and write requests. The first physical disk transitions from the power-saving mode of operation to an active mode of operation for destaging writes pending from cache to the first physical disk, while the second physical disk responds to read and write requests. The second physical disk transitions from the active mode of operation to the power-saving mode of operation, while the first physical disk responds to read and write requests.

Power saving mechanisms for a dynamic mirror service policy

The wear of storage devices in a storage array or storage server cluster is unleveled via modal Read/Write to create a plurality of endurance sets, each endurance set having devices with statistically similar amount of wear in a given period of time, and different endurance sets are subjected to different amounts of wear over a given period of time. The storage devices are organized into RAID groups such that multiple devices associated with the same RAID group are not members of the same endurance set. The number of devices in each endurance set may be selected to match the number of spare failover storage devices.

RAID groups based on endurance sets

Described are techniques for determining whether to move data between devices. A first cost metric is determined for a first device and a second device. At least one portion of data is selected for movement from one of the first device and the second device to another of the first device and the second device. A second cost metric is determined for the first device and the second device based on moving said at least one portion of data between said first device and said second device. It is determined using the first cost metric and the second cost metric whether to move the at least one portion of data.

Techniques for modeling disk performance

Described are techniques for reconfiguring a storage device. A first plurality of parameters characterizing the storage device at a first point in time are received. The first plurality of parameters includes a first raw capacity and a first published capacity. The first raw capacity represents a physical storage capacity of the storage device. The first published capacity represents a logical storage capacity of the storage device. A second plurality of parameters is determined characterizing the storage device at a subsequent second point in time. The second plurality of parameters includes a second raw capacity and a second published capacity, The storage device is used at the first point in time as a device having the first plurality of parameters and at the second point in time as a device having the second plurality of parameters.

Techniques for storage capacity configuration

Described are modeling techniques. In accordance with one or more criteria, a determination may be made as to whether to use a dynamic model or a static model to model performance of components, such as storage devices, of a data storage system. A system may include first and second data storage systems where the first data storage system includes a computer readable medium with first code that performs processing in connection with data storage movement optimizations using one or more models including a dynamic model, and second code that generates and maintains the dynamic model used to model performance of storage devices. The second code may include code for performing first processing to determine device sets each of which does not share back-end resources of the second data storage system with any other device sets, and performing second processing to determine sets of performance curves corresponding to the device sets.

Data storage system modeling

Described are techniques for storing data on disk drives. Each disk drive platter of each of the disk drives is partitioned into two separate regions whereby a pivot point denoting a radial distance from the center of each disk drive platter is a boundary partitioning each disk drive platter into the two separate regions. A data portion is classified in accordance with an expected activity level of the data portion. Storage is allocated for the data portion in one of the two separate regions of one of the disk drive platters of one of the disk drives in accordance with the expected activity level of the data portion and a defined allocation flow.

Techniques for storing data on disk drives partitioned into two regions

Power-saving mechanisms for a dynamic mirror service policy

Described are techniques for configuring data storage. A plurality of devices is selected. It is determined, for each of the plurality of devices, whether data for said each device should be located in a first storage tier or another storage tier. The first storage tier is higher performance storage tier than the other storage tier. For each of the plurality of devices that the determining step determines should be located in the first storage tier, data of said each device is automatically located on a physical storage device of the first storage tier.

Techniques for automated evaluation and movement of data between storage tiers

Providing quality of service levels to a plurality of sources that perform access requests to a disk resource includes providing a disk resource queue containing access requests for the disk resource, providing a source queue for each of the sources containing access requests generated by a corresponding one of the sources, determining if a new access request from a particular source is urgent according to a specified number of I/O operations per second for the particular source and a time since a previous access request from the particular source, adding the new access request to the disk resource queue if the new access request is urgent, and adding the new access request the source queue of the particular source if the new access request is not urgent and the length of the disk resource queue is greater than a predetermined queue depth value.

Disk access quality of service

Delivering different data response time performance from a plurality of disk drives having similar performance characteristics includes subdividing each disk drive platter of the disk drives into at least two separate portions, where a first portion has a first average response time and the second portion has a second average response time that is greater than the first average response time and includes placing data that is relatively frequently accessed in the first portion of the disk platters of the disk drives to provide a subset of data having a relatively higher data response time performance than other data. Data having a relatively lower data response time performance may be placed on disk drives containing data having a relatively higher data response time performance.

Drive partitioning for automated storage tiering

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Northborough, MA, United States of America

Sachin More