Emc IP Holding Company LLC

Emc Corporation

Dell Products Inc.

Wayne E Garrett, Jr

Peter Puhov

Zhiqi Liu

Ashok Tamilarasan

Ronald D Proulx

Lili Chen

Shay Harel

Gerry Fredette

Eric Petsching

David W Harvey

Shuyu Lee

Robert Foley

Brion Patrick Philbin

Mike Xizhan Song

Joseph J Burbage, Jr

Ronald Proulx

A technique is directed to handling a storage device error within storage equipment that includes a client and a driver. The technique involves providing an IO status communication from the driver to the client. The IO status communication indicates status of an IO operation performed by a storage device coupled with the driver. The technique further involves, in response to the IO status communication indicating that an error occurred while the storage device performed the IO operation, providing a query communication from the client to the driver. The query communication requests sense data corresponding to the IO operation. The technique further involves, in response to the query communication, providing the sense data corresponding to the IO operation from the driver to the client.

Real-time sense data querying

Techniques described herein manage failed storage devices. A number of failed storage devices is determined to exceed a number of redundancies in a storage configuration of the storage system. The status of a failed storage device is changed to permit solely read operations. Valid data from the failed storage device is copied to a spare storage device. Invalid data on the failed storage device is reconstructed based on corresponding data from other storage devices, and the reconstructed data is stored on the spare storage device. The failed storage device is removed from the storage system.

Techniques for managing failed storage devices

A technique involves, in response to encountering a predefined number of consecutive I/O errors using a drive path to a storage drive, transitioning the drive path from online to quarantined to temporarily deny further I/O operations from being processed using the drive path. The technique further involves starting a quarantine timer that defines a quarantine time period. The technique further involves performing an update operation that updates the drive path. The update operation (i) changes the drive path from quarantined to removed to continue denying further I/O operations from being processed using the drive path when a removal notification is received before the quarantine time period expires, and (ii) changes the drive path from quarantined to back to online to allow further I/O operations to be processed using the drive path when a removal notification is not received before the quarantine time period expires.

Using path quarantining to identify and handle backend issues

There are disclosed herein techniques for use in acquiring data storage metrics. The techniques comprise monitoring an I/O operation relating to data storage. The techniques also comprise producing a metric value in connection with the I/O operation. The techniques also comprise determining a current metric value associated with a memory location in an operating system kernel. The techniques also comprise performing a computation to generate a new metric value. The computation is based on the metric value and the current metric value. The techniques further comprise storing the new metric value in the memory location in the operating system kernel.

Method, apparatus and computer program product for storing data storage metrics

A method is used in managing data in a data storage system. A first set of flash drives in arranged into a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) group and a wear indicator for each of the flash drives in the first set of flash drives is determined. A second set of flash drives are configured, where the second set of flash drives are configured as spare flash drives and a wear metric is determined for each of the flash drives in the second set of flash drives. A first flash drive in the first set of flash drives that is to be replaced is identified. A spare flash drive from the second set of flash drives is selected, where the spare flash drive is selected based on a wear metric. A rebuild process is initiated where the first flash drive is replaced with the selected spare flash drive.

Intelligent sparing of flash drives in data storage systems

A technique is directed to providing resiliency to a redundant array of independent disk (RAID) group which includes multiple storage devices. The technique involves operating the RAID group in a normal state in which each storage device is (i) initially online to perform write and read operations and (ii) configured to go offline in response to a respective media error count for that storage device reaching an initial take-offline threshold. The technique further involves receiving a notification that a storage device of the RAID group has encountered a particular error situation. The technique further involves transitioning, in response to the notification, the RAID group to a high resiliency state in which each storage device that is operable is (i) still online to perform write and read operations and (ii) configured to stay online even when the respective media error count for that storage device reaches the initial take-offline threshold.

Providing resiliency to a raid group of storage devices

Technique provides resiliency to RAID group including storage devices. Technique involves operating RAID group in normal state in which each storage device is initially online to perform write and read operations and configured to go offline in response to a media error count for that storage device reaching an end-of-life threshold and other storage devices in RAID group being healthy. Technique involves receiving a notification that a storage device of RAID group has encountered an error situation. Technique involves determining whether other storage devices of RAID group are healthy. Technique involves transitioning, in response to receiving notification and determining that other storage devices are healthy, RAID group from normal state to high resiliency degraded state in which the storage device is taken offline and the other storage devices are configured to remain online for facilitating the reconstruction of data associated with the storage device.

The system and method provide establishment of hooks in a send-path at inter-object interfaces of a layered stack of the storage driver and hooks in the completion-path execution sequence of storage driver of a storage system, the completion-path hook inserts replacement storage response messages to simulate the specified storage access error.

Storage device error simulator tool

Described are techniques for performing a firmware update. A drive management object determines one or more physical drives matching criteria of a first received request. The drive management object sends to provision drive objects a second request to update firmware on physical drives. Firmware update processing is performed independently for each physical drive. Each provision drive object is associated with one of the physical drives. Firmware update processing for said one physical drive includes determining whether to perform the firmware update at a current point in time; in response to determining to perform the firmware update at the current point in time, performing preparation processing; notifying, upon completion of said preparation processing, a physical drive object associated with said one physical drive to download the firmware update to the one physical drive; and resuming I/O operations to the one physical drive upon successfully completing the firmware update.

Techniques for parallel drive upgrade while maintaining host accessibility

A method is used in managing drive problems in data storage systems. It is determined, by a physical drive object, whether an I/O with a drive is able to be retried by another object. An overall retry time for the I/O is tracked. If the overall retry time is excessive, the drive is taken offline.

Growing community of inventors

Bellingham, MA, United States of America

Wayne E Garrett, Jr