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. 18, 2006
Filed:
Mar. 12, 2004
Barry Lynn Bradford, Broomfield, CO (US);
Mark C. Briel, Louisville, CO (US);
Barry Lynn Bradford, Broomfield, CO (US);
Mark C. Briel, Louisville, CO (US);
Storage Technology Corporation, Louisville, CO (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for workload balancing along multiple communication paths to a plurality of devices. The apparatus includes a controller that accumulates path usage information and a path balancing device that makes use of the accumulated path usage information to perform a path balancing operation. The path balancing method involves the path balancing device calculating the total expected connect time for all I/O messages issued to each of a plurality of peripheral devices during a predefined sampling period. These totals are then added for each communication path for the sampling period to obtain path totals. The path totals are then compared to see if a difference between the highest used path and the lowest used path is greater than a threshold amount. If the difference is higher than the threshold amount, the peripheral device having a total expected connect time that is closest to a target value is moved from the highest used path to the lowest used path.