Host interface adaptive hub storage system

Abstract

A host interface dual active fibre channel adaptive hub includes two fibre channel arbitrated loops, a loop healing switch coupled to both loops, and four loop resiliency circuits. Each loop has a controller and a host server coupled to it through a respective loop resiliency circuit. The host servers issue I/O requests to the controllers through the dual fibre channel arbitrated loops. Therefore in normal operation, with both loops active and both controllers operational, the system provides twice the bandwidth of a conventional single loop fibre channel arbitrated loop system. The loop resiliency circuits detect failures in the controllers. If a loop resiliency circuit detects a failure in a controller, the loop resiliency circuit outputs a failure signal to the loop healing switch. A failed controller also notifies the loop healing switch that it has failed. The loop healing switch then switches to couple the two fibre channel arbitrated loops into a single loop. Also the loop resiliency circuit switches the failed controller out of the loop. At the same time, the surviving controller starts a failover process to claim ownership of all disk drives in the system, and present the failed controller's logical units (LUNs) on its host port as well as it own LUNs. Using the multiple target ID capability of the controller, the surviving controller host port now responds to requests from both host servers by assuming the arbitrated loop physical address (ALPA) and World Wide Name (WWN) of the failed controller in addition to its own ALPA and WWN. Combining the dual fibre channel arbitrated loops with the loop healing switch thereby provides both servers an access path through the surviving controller to the disk drive array.