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:
Sep. 20, 2005
Filed:
Apr. 04, 2003
Steven J. Valin, Nevada City, CA (US);
Brad A. Reger, Dublin, CA (US);
Steven J. Valin, Nevada City, CA (US);
Brad A. Reger, Dublin, CA (US);
Network Appliance, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
An existing disk drive storage enclosure is converted into a standalone network storage system by removing one or more input/output (I/O) modules from the enclosure and installing in place thereof one or more server modules ('heads'), each implemented on a single circuit board. Each head contains the electronics, firmware and software along with built-in I/O connections to allow the disks in the enclosure to be used as a Network-Attached file Server (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN) storage device. An end user can also remove the built-in head and replace it with a standard I/O module to convert the enclosure back into a standard disk drive storage enclosure. Two internal heads can communicate over a passive backplane in the enclosure to provide full cluster failover (CFO) capability.