Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Software Engineering Company, Ltd.

Youichi Gotoh

Shizuo Yokohata

Takeshi Ido

Shinichi Nakayama

Shigeo Honma

Yasuhiko Yamaguchi

Toshiyuki Yoshino

Keishi Tamura

Hiroshi Ogasawara

Katsuhiro Uchiumi

Haruaki Watanabe

Naotaka Kobayashi

Hiroshi Abei

Ken Tokoro

Kunihito Matsuki

Michio Suetsugu

Yonggen Jin

A storage apparatus having a plurality of logical volumes includes a storage device, and a storage controller that operates each of the logical volumes as a virtual volume. A primary volume and a secondary volume are configured as a copy pair in which data in the primary volume can be copied to the secondary volume. If the primary volume receives a discard request for a unit physical storage area, the storage controller determines whether or not a unit physical storage area exists configuring the secondary volume corresponding to the unit physical storage area, which is a target of the discard request. If the unit physical storage area configuring the secondary volume exists, an instruction is transmitted to the secondary volume to discard the page or unit physical storage area assigned to the secondary volume.

Storage apparatus and method including page discard processing for primary and secondary volumes configured as a copy pair

A storage subsystem capable of processing time-critical control commands while suppressing deterioration of the system performance to a minimum. When various commands are received in a multiplex manner via the same port from plural host devices, the channel adapter of the storage subsystem extracts commands of a first kind from the received commands. Then, the adapter executes the extracted commands of the first kind with high priority within a given unit time until a given number of guaranteed activations is reached. At the same time, commands of a second kind are enqueued in a queue of commands. After the commands of the first kind are executed as many as the number of guaranteed activations, the commands of the second kind are executed in the unit time.

Storage system and method of executing commands by controller

Storage subsystem and method of executing commands by controller

Provided is a storage controller capable of improving the access performance to the storage device by preventing an I/O access request to the storage device from being concentrated on certain I/O processors among a plurality of I/O processor, and causing the plurality of I/O processors to issue the I/O access request in a well balanced manner. With this storage control system, a plurality of stripe units are formed by striping the logical volume into a stripe size of an arbitrary storage capacity, and information regarding which I/O processor among the plurality of I/O processors will output the I/O request to which stripe unit among the plurality of stripe units is stored as the control information in the memory.

Storage device controller with a plurality of I/O processors requesting data from a plurality of stripe units of a logical volume

A storage system including a queue corresponding to each priority level of command and an activation order control part. A command received from a host is accumulated in the queue corresponding to the specified priority. The activation order control part decides the number of activation object commands to be activated among accumulated commands, based on the priority corresponding to the queue. The activation order control part decides the activation order of the activation object commands, based on a activation object command number decided for each queue, so that the average value of logical response time of the activation object command may be shorter at the higher priority. The activation object command is activated in accordance with the decided activation order.

Storage system and method for controlling activation of command

When a first channel processor from among a plurality of channel processors receives an I/O request from a host system, a second channel processor, which is to execute a part of the processing to respond to the I/O request, is selected from among the channel processors based on the LM directories of the respective channel processors. The selected second channel processor checks whether there is a cache hit. If there is a cache hit, it transfers the data from the cache memory to the buffer memory. The first channel processor then processes the I/O request using the data transferred to the buffer memory.

Storage controller for cache slot management

The present invention allows a reserved state that prevails for an LDEV as a result of a host undergoing a system shutdown or the like to be confirmed and cancelled easily. The serverreserves the LDEVand uses same exclusively. When the serverundergoes a system shutdown due to a fault or similar (S), the LDEVthen remains reserved (S). The serveris therefore unable to access the LDEV. The system administrator reads exclusive control informationin the memoryvia the management terminal, and is thus able to display the reserved states of respective LDEVs on a terminal screen and confirm these states. The user then issues an instruction to cancel a reserved state from the management terminal(S). The disk array devicereceives the cancellation instruction, and then cancels the reserved state by partially rewriting the exclusive control information

Disk array device and reservation cancellation control method for disk array device

In response to requests for I/O processing sent from a computer, I/O which should be processed at a priority is enabled to be processed without being affected by other processing, by classifying I/O into those to be processed at a priority and those not to be processed at a priority. The storage control apparatus comprises an I/O processing controller with a memory that is common for the whole controller. The storage control apparatus manages information for dividing and controlling a plurality of I/O processes as priority and non-priority in that memory and operates while suppressing non-priority I/O processing on the basis of information in the memory.

Storage control apparatus

Under a hetero-environment in which different sorts of disk-systems are mixed with each other, a data guaranteeing operation can be carried out. When a cache controller of a local disk system receives a data writing request from a host computer, the cache controller stores data into a local disk provided in a disk device group. The data received from the host computer is also transmitted to a remote disk system and is stored in a remote disk. The data stored in the remote disk is immediately read, and the data written in the remote disk is compared with the data written in the local disk. As a result, since a data guarantee operation on the remote side is processed by the local disk system instead of the remote disk system, a data guaranteeing operation when a remote copying operation is performed can be carried out even in the storage system under a hetero-environment.

Remote copy operation between different sort of storage system and storage device system

A channel adapter connected to a host has a local cache memory. The channel adapter duplexes and writes the write-data in the local cache memory in response to a data-write request from the host. Then, the channel adapter sends the write-completion to the host and transfers all of the write-data within the local cache memory to the main cache memory in asynchronous timing. The channel adapter manages directory information of the data within the local cache memory. In response to a data-read request from the host, the channel adapter checks whether the read-data hits or not in the local cache memory based on the directory information. If the read-data hits, the read-data is transferred from the local cache memory to the host.

Storage system and data caching method in the system

Under a hetero-environment in which different sorts of disk-systems are mixed with each other, a data guaranteeing operation can be carried out. When a cache controller of a local disk system receives a data writing request from a host computer the cache controller stores data into a local disk provided in a disk device group. The data received from the host computer is also transmitted to a remote disk system, and is stored in a remote disk. The data stored in the remote disk is immediately read and the data written in the remote disk is compared with the data written in the local disk. As a result, since a data guarantee operation on the remote side is processed by the local disk system instead of the remote disk system, a data guaranteeing operation when a remote copying operation is performed can be carried out even in the storage system under a hetero-environment.

Storage system and storage device system

For each of a plurality of storage devices, there is stored a response time required from when an input/output request sent from a host processor is received until when a processing result of the request is sent to the host processor. One or a plurality of response-time upper limit values assigned respectively to one or a plurality of files to be stored in the storage device are stored and managed. The upper limit value of the file to be stored and each of the response times of the storage devices are compared, and according to the comparison result, a storage device for storing the file is selected. Through such a structure, an operational form of a storage control device may be optimized.

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Odawara, Japan

Youichi Gotoh