The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 02, 1988
Filed:
Jun. 12, 1986
Brian E Clark, Rochester, MN (US);
Francis D Lawlor, Saugerties, NY (US);
Werner E Schmidt-Stumpf, Patterson, NY (US);
Terrence J Stewart, Rochester, MN (US);
George D Timms, Jr, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A storage management mechanism distributes parity blocks corresponding to multiple data blocks substantially equally among a set of storage devices. N storage units in a set are divided into a multiple of equally sized address blocks, each containing a plurality of records. Blocks from each storage unit having the same address ranges form a stripe of blocks. Each stripe has a block on one storage device containing parity for the remaining blocks of the stripe. Further stripes also have parity blocks, which are distributed on different storage units. Parity updating activity associated with every change to a data record is therefore distributed over the different storage units, enhancing access characteristics of the set of storage devices. The parity updating activity also includes the use of an independent version number stored with each data record and corresponding version numbers stored with the parity record. Each time a data record is changed, its version number is incremented and the corresponding version number in the parity record is incremented with the parity record update.