Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Data Systems Engineering UK Limited

Simon Crosland

Mitsuo Hayasaka

Yuko Matsui

Christopher J Aston

Daniel Picken

James Gibbs

Jonathan Smith

Philip J Newton

John Teloh

Wai Chuen Yim

Jonathan Soon Yew Teh

Matthew Lester Hanham

Hieu Hanh Le

Raymond Christopher Brown

Andrew Peter Royal

Daniel James Nigel Picken

In a distributed storage of data objects in a cluster system, a data object is distributed across a group of node apparatuses in units of data blocks. For each child object, the metadata structure of the respective child object is stored to one of the node apparatuses of the group of node apparatuses for managing locations of data blocks of the data object and includes a root metadata node and one or more direct metadata nodes, optionally further including one or more indirect metadata nodes; and the metadata structure of the parent object is distributed across the plural node apparatuses of the group of node apparatuses for managing locations of child objects of the data object and includes, on each node apparatus of the group of node apparatuses, a root metadata node and one or more direct metadata nodes, optionally further including one or more indirect metadata nodes.

Data storage system and process for providing distributed storage in a scalable cluster system and computer program for such data storage system

A data de-duplication in a distributed storage of data objects in a cluster system, in which plural data objects are distributed across a group of node apparatuses and stored in units of data blocks. Each metadata structure including a root metadata node and one or more direct metadata nodes, and optionally including one or more indirect metadata nodes; and a metadata object is stored for managing de-duplicated data blocks based on a metadata structure of the metadata object wherein at least one direct metadata node of the metadata structure of the metadata object includes a block reference pointing to a de-duplicated data block being associated with two or more data objects. Preferably, each of the metadata structures of the two or more data objects being associated with the de-duplicated data block includes a respective direct metadata node including an object reference to the metadata structure of the metadata object.

Data storage system, process, and computer program for de-duplication of distributed data in a scalable cluster system

The apparatus includes: a hardware-side processing section including one or more programmable hardware-implemented chips configured to process request packets, which are received from host computers and relate to access requests to one or more file systems managed by the apparatus, and to generate response packets for the processed request packets; and a software-side processing section including one or more CPUs configured to execute decoding of requests packets sent from a host computer based on one or more computer programs stored in a memory of the software-side; wherein at least one programmable hardware-implemented chip of the hardware-side processing section is configured to process a credit request included in a received request packet, in particular without involvement of the software-side processing section.

Method and an apparatus, and related computer-program products, for managing access request to one or more file systems

A bitmap manager creates a cached copy of a bitmap and a shadow copy of a bitmap. The contents of the shadow copy are examined as are the bitmap cache to determine when it is necessary to write bitmap data to persistent storage. Extra bits are set or left set in the bitmap shadow copy to minimize the frequency of having to write bitmap data to persistent storage.

Reducing bitmap management overhead

A method and apparatus for performing remote data replication. The method and apparatus can detect an interruption in the remote data replication process and begin local logging of all local data writes that occur while the remote data replication process is unavailable. The method and apparatus can perform remote data replication across multiple remote storage devices or the method and apparatus can replicate a data structure from a first storage device to multiple locations on one or more remote storage devices. In addition, the method and apparatus can halt the remote data replication and copy data from the local storage device to the remote storage device to ensure data uniformity on all storage devices.

Storage network data replicator

A storage system which supports distributed management of client configurations by storing such configuration information for a number of products across the storage network in a central repository is provided. The system further includes an external parser configuration file to provide a framework allowing users to access configuration data. The parser is separate from the configuration information repository. The parser is key-driven and extensible, facilitating programming, updates and modifications without modifying the binary library containing the configuration information.

Configuration for a storage network

Growing community of inventors

Woking, United Kingdom

Simon Crosland