Lsi Logic Corporation

Netapp, Inc.

Lsi Corporation

William Patrick Delaney

Joseph Moore

Joseph Russell Blount

Charles D Binford

Randolph Wesley Sterns

Rodney A Dekoning

Bret S Weber

Rodney A DeKoning

William Hetrick

Ray M Jantz

Donald Roman Humlicek

William V Courtright, Ii

Scott Hubbard

Keith Moyer

Kenneth Fairclough Day, Iii

Sai Rama Krishna Susarla

Carey Wayne Lewis

Mohamad H El-Batal

Gerald James Fredin

Charles E Nichols

Reid A Kaufmann

Shyam Kaushik

Stanley Krehbiel, Jr

Jeff Stilger

Keith W Holt

Andrew J Spry

Martin Jess

Sridhar Balasubramanian

Gregory A Yarnell

Stanley E Krehbiel

Sandeep Kumar Reddy Ummadi

Reid Kaufmann

Praful Dambal

Kevin W Copas

Walter Bramhall

Stan Krehbiel

Rod DeKoning

The application relates to writing arbitrarily sized data extents using in-line descriptors, such as headers or footers, into physical blocks to describe the data extents in those physical blocks. Some data extents may be smaller than the size of a physical block, and some data extents may be larger than the size of a physical block. A given physical block therefore includes an in-line descriptor for a data extent in that block, indicating that the data extent starts within that block and also an offset from the beginning of the block to where the data extent starts. The in-line descriptor is included within the block so that when the block is read both the data and the descriptor are read, thereby eliminating performance penalty for reading the descriptor information.

Systems, methods, and computer readable media providing arbitrary sizing of data extents

A method includes: storing a first data extent on a physical medium, wherein the physical medium is divided into a plurality of storage blocks, wherein each of the storage blocks has a size that is different than a size of the first data extent, further wherein the first data extent is stored to a first block of the plurality of storage blocks; generating a descriptor for the first data extent, wherein the descriptor indicates that the first data extent starts within the first block of the plurality of blocks and indicates an offset from the beginning of the first block at which the first data extent starts; and storing the descriptor within the first block.

A system shares I/O load between controllers in a high availability system. For writes, a controller determines based on one or more factors which controller will flush batches of data from write-back cache to better distribute the I/O burden. The determination occurs after the local storage controller caches the data, mirrors it, and confirms write complete to the host. Once it is determined which storage controller will flush the cache, the flush occurs and the corresponding metadata at a second layer of indirection is updated by that determined storage controller (whether or not it is identified as the owner of the corresponding volume to the host, while the volume owner updates metadata at a first layer of indirection). For a host read, the controller that owns the volume accesses the metadata from whichever controller(s) flushed the data previously and reads the data, regardless of which controller had performed the flush.

Read and write load sharing in a storage array via partitioned ownership of data blocks

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for allocating data compression activities in a storage system are provided. A method includes tracking, by a storage controller, computing resources corresponding to a storage server. The storage controller processes one or more host read requests to access data requested by one or more hosts, the processing of the one or more host read requests including decompressing the data requested by the one or more hosts from the storage server and providing the decompressed data to the one or more hosts. The storage controller determines an amount of available computing resources after processing the one or more host read requests. Based on the amount of available computing resources, the storage controller performs inline compression of a first portion of host write requests and background compression of a second portion of the host write requests.

Systems and methods for allocating data compression activities in a storage system

A system for tracking metadata changes and recovering from system interruptions. With host I/O, corresponding metadata incremental changes are aggregated and stored in a write-ahead log before being performed to their in-memory buffers. As those buffers are flushed, checkpoints are created and stored in the log. As the log wraps to the start, older entries are overwritten after they are freed from any remaining dependencies by newer checkpoints. If metadata entities have not created new checkpoints, they are instructed to in order to free up space for new aggregated batches and checkpoints. After an interruption, the wrap point is located in the log. From the wrap point, the log is scanned backwards to provide checkpoints to metadata entities. The log is then scanned forwards to perform changes specified by aggregated batches. The metadata entities' volatile memory states are recovered to what they were before the interruption.

Write-ahead log maintenance and recovery

A system and method for managing application performance includes a storage controller including a memory containing machine readable medium comprising machine executable code having stored thereon instructions for performing a method of managing application performance and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor is configured to execute the machine executable code to receive storage requests from a plurality of first applications via a network interface, manage QoS settings for the storage controller and the first applications, and in response to receiving an accelerate command associated with a second application from the first applications, increase a first share of a storage resource allocated to the second application, decrease unlocked second shares of the storage resource of the first applications, and lock the first share. The storage resource is a request queue or a first cache. In some embodiments, the second application is a throughput application or a latency application.

System and method for managing application performance

A method for mapping a first address space to a second address space is provided. In some embodiments, the method includes creating a first array of lookup entries and one or more second arrays of metadata entries for maintaining an ordering among the lookup entries using a tree structure. Each of the metadata entries includes one or more data index values identifying a corresponding one of the lookup entries by its position in the first array and one or more metadata index values identifying a corresponding one of the metadata entries by its position in one of the one or more second arrays. The method further includes receiving a request including a lookup value, traversing the tree structure to locate a lookup entry corresponding to the lookup value, and when the lookup value is located among the lookup entries, using the located lookup entry to process the request.

Memory efficient lookup structure

Methods and systems for storing data at a storage device of a storage system are provided. The data is first temporarily stored at a first write cache and an input/output request for a persistence storage device used as a second write cache is generated, when an I/O request size including the received data has reached a threshold value. The data from the first cache is transferred to the persistence storage device and a recovery control block with a location of the data stored at the persistence storage device is updated. An entry is added to a linked list that is used to track valid data stored at the persistence storage device and then the data is transferred from the persistence storage device to the storage device of the storage system.

Methods and systems for using a write cache in a storage system

A method, a computing device, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium for indexing data on a storage server are provided. A method includes providing, by a storage server, a plurality of sorted keys. A subset of the plurality of sorted keys that include a bit prefix is stored on a memory page. A trie representation is constructed that includes an entry corresponding to the memory page, wherein a position of the entry in the trie representation is determined based on a binary value of bits of the bit prefix. The trie representation is traversed, by the storage server, to access a record stored in the memory page, wherein the record corresponds to a key having the bit prefix.

Memory page indexing data structure

Systems and techniques for recovering a storage array are disclosed. These systems and techniques include determining a size corresponding to a storage stripe of the storage array. Pieces assigned to the storage stripe are identified. A storage configuration corresponding to the pieces assigned to the storage stripe is detected. Ordinal information and parity information are determined corresponding to the pieces assigned to the storage stripe. The size determined corresponding to the storage stripe, identification of the pieces assigned to the storage stripe, the storage configuration, the ordinal information, and the parity information is stored in a data store to reconstruct lost or corrupted metadata corresponding to the storage array.

System and method for recovering a storage array

Growing community of inventors

Wichita, KS, United States of America

William Patrick Delaney