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:
Jun. 25, 2013
Filed:
Jul. 29, 2003
Nitin Muppalaneni, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Edward R. Zayas, Milpitas, CA (US);
Douglas Santry, Cambridge, GB;
Nitin Muppalaneni, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Edward R. Zayas, Milpitas, CA (US);
Douglas Santry, Cambridge, GB;
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides techniques for managing ownership (i.e., control) of one or more memory buffer (mbuf) data structures within a network subsystem and a storage subsystem of a storage operating system implemented in a storage system. When the storage system receives data to be written to a storage medium, the network subsystem stores the received data in one or more variable-length chains of mbufs. Unlike conventional approaches, the received data is not subsequently copied out of the mbufs into fixed-sized data buffers for use by the storage subsystem. Instead, the storage subsystem can directly manipulate the received data stored in the mbufs. By eliminating the steps of copying data out of the mbufs and into fixed-sized data buffers, the invention reduces the amount of time and system resources consumed by the storage system when writing blocks of received data to disk storage.