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:
Dec. 10, 2002
Filed:
Oct. 01, 1998
Steven R. Soltis, Rochester, MN (US);
Matthew T. O'Keefe, Plymouth, MN (US);
Thomas M. Ruwart, Fridley, MN (US);
Gerald A. Houlder, Bloomington, MN (US);
James A. Coomes, White Bear Lake, MN (US);
Michael H. Miller, Eden Prairie, MN (US);
Edward A. Soltis, Elk River, MN (US);
Raymond W. Gilson, St. Paul, MN (US);
Kenneth W. Preslan, Minneapolis, MN (US);
Other;
Abstract
A system includes shared Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) storage devices for processing clients coupled by a fiber channel interface. The storage devices include storage blocks, and locks controlling their use by clients. Clients issue actions to the storage devices for performing operations on the locks. A client may exclude other clients from using storage blocks using a state element to acquire the lock for shared or exclusive use. If the client modified the data, a version counter in the lock is updated when the lock is released. If an activity bit is set, the version counter is updated upon both reading and writing. Other clients can forcibly release a lock owned by a failed client by monitoring its version counter. Expiration timers associated with the locks allow acquired locks to be released by timing out. A serverless global file system (GFS) manages use of the shared storage resources, and allows remapping of the locks to the storage blocks, for example, based on activity of the locks.