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:
Jul. 15, 1997
Filed:
May. 22, 1995
James G Hanko, Redwood City, CA (US);
Gerard A Wall, San Jose, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides a mass storage system suitable for incorporation in a video-on-demand server that is capable of detecting and correct errors without a substantial increase in processor capacity or memory buffer size, and without any increase in disk input/output (I/O) bandwidth. The mass storage system includes a server controller, a cluster of data disk drives and a parity drive associated with the cluster of data disk drives. The controller provides video data streams to a number of viewers. Data is stored as contiguous data strips in the cluster of data drives. Each data strip includes a plurality of contiguous data slices logically distributed across the cluster of data drives. A plurality of parity slices, each parity slice corresponding to each data strip, is stored in the parity drive. When the failure of one of the data drives is detected, the parity drive is read in place of the failed drive. Hence, all functional data drives are read along with the parity drive before the erroneous slice is needed. A replacement data slice is reconstructed from the parity slice and 'good' data slices. Alternatively, the data drives of the mass storage system are partitioned into multiple sub-clusters of data drives to minimize the impact of a failed drive. Accordingly, the mass storage system includes multiple parity drives, each parity drive associated with a sub-cluster of data drives. Such an arrangement is useful because data reconstruction is limited to the data slices and parity slices of the affected sub-cluster.