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:
Nov. 07, 2000
Filed:
Dec. 11, 1997
Eric M Shank, San Diego, CA (US);
Brian J Raccuglia, Murrieta, CA (US);
NCR Corporation, Dayton, OH (US);
Abstract
A method, apparatus and article of manufacture for hardware independent system level control of storage units in an array is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of scanning the array of storage devices to find available I/O paths, storing a list of available I/O paths to each storage device in a memory, receiving an I/O request directed at a virtual disk memory location, mapping the virtual disk memory location to a corresponding storage device, selecting an I/O path for the I/O request from the list of available I/O paths in stored in the memory, and transmitting the I/O request to the storage device over the selected I/O path. The apparatus comprises a virtual disk driver functionally coupled between the computer and the disk array with a core driver and a subordinate driver customized for storage device arrays from different hardware vendors. Selection of the subordinate driver is accomplished via a switch table stored in the computer memory.