Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Sunitha Sunil Sankar

Ananthan Subramanian

Cheryl Marie Thompson

Scott A Schoenthal

Loellyn Jane Cassell

Tomislav Grcanac

Jeffrey S Kimmel

Atul Goel

Anil Paul Thoppil

Ravikanth Dronamraju

Manish Katiyar

Methods and systems for a networked system are provided. One method includes receiving a request by a processor to transfer a data block stored at a first storage tier to the second storage tier; using an object staging data structure to determine that an object is available for transferring the data block from the first storage tier to the second storage tier. The object staging data structure an indicator providing a status for the object and an object length and an offset value of a transfer log indicating where information regarding the data block is stored. The method further includes updating an address of the storage tier where the information regarding data block is stored at the transfer log; increasing the object length and the offset value at the object staging data structure; and creating the object at the second tier.

Methods and systems for efficiently storing data at a plurality of storage tiers using a transfer data structure

Methods and systems for a networked storage environment are provided. One method includes scanning a first data structure by a processor executing instructions out of a memory for a storage operating system to determine whether any data chunk of a first object stored at a first storage tier is referenced by the storage operating; when the storage operating system references a certain number of data chunks, the processor using an object staging data structure to identify a second object that is in the process of being built with space for transferring the certain number of data chunks from the first object to the second object; and updating information regarding the second object at a transfer log with location information of the certain number of data chunks at the first storage tier.

Methods and systems for efficiently storing data

Methods and systems for a storage server are provided. One method includes storing data at a first storage tier by a processor executable storage operating system; tracking the data stored at the first storage tier for moving the data to a second storage tier; transferring the data from the first storage tier to the second storage tier; and updating a data structure that tracks a transfer block number of a block that stores the data, where the transfer block number is based on a virtual identifier, a generation count and an offset value of a storage chunk that is a portion of a physical volume block number address space.

Methods and systems for storing data at different storage tiers of a storage system

Embodiments of the present invention provide novel, reliable and efficient technique for tracking, tolerating and correcting unrecoverable errors (i.e., errors that cannot be recovered by the existing RAID protection schemes) in a RAID array by reducing the need to perform drastic recovery actions, such as a file system consistency check, which typically disrupts client access to the storage system. Advantageously, ability to tolerate and correct errors in the RAID array beyond the fault tolerance level of the underlying RAID technique increases resiliency and availability of the storage system.

Mechanism for correcting errors beyond the fault tolerant level of a raid array in a storage system

A technique manages the addition of disks to a volume of a storage system. A disk addition procedure is encapsulated into a DISKADD object conforming to a configuration management framework used to implement a RAID subsystem of the storage system. The DISKADD object is responsible for determining a set of available disks required to satisfy a disk addition request issued by an operator through a user interface of a storage operating system executing on the storage system. Furthermore, the DISKADD object is responsible for monitoring the state of the disks, including preparation/initialization of the disks (e.g., disk zeroing) and possible disk failures, as well as placing those disks into RAID groups of the volume once preparation completes. Persistent storage of the state of a pending disk addition is then accomplished using an implementation of the configuration management framework.

Technique for managing addition of disks to a volume of a storage system

A query-based spares management technique enables a storage operating system of a storage system to select disks to be added to one or more RAID groups of a volume. The spares management technique includes an attributes-based disk selection procedure that is performed by the storage operating system in response to an operator-initiated request to add disks to the volume or in response to a demand-driven request resulting from a requirement imposed by the system to add disks to the volume. The disks that are added to the RAID groups of the volume are retrieved from one or more spare pools of disks maintained by the storage system.

Query-based spares management technique

A storage server stores data in a redundancy group of mass storage devices according to a data redundancy scheme. The redundancy scheme enables reconstruction of all data stored in the redundancy group if N or fewer mass storage devices in the redundancy group contain erroneous data, where N is at least 2. In response to determining that the redundancy group contains erroneous data, N&#x2212;1 mass storage devices in the redundancy group can be specifically identified as containing the erroneous data.

Lost writes detection in a redundancy group based on RAID with multiple parity

A storage system includes a set of mass storage media and a plurality of functional layers that provide a data storage path between a file system and the set of mass storage media. The storage system can detect that a write issued by the file system was lost by one of the functional layers that provide the data storage path between the file system and the mass storage media.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Sunitha Sunil Sankar