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. 31, 2013
Filed:
Nov. 04, 2011
Steve C. Miller, Livermore, CA (US);
Jeffrey S. Kimmel, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Steve C. Miller, Livermore, CA (US);
Jeffrey S. Kimmel, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A network storage system includes 'raw' flash memory, and storage of data in that flash memory is controlled by an external, log structured, write out-of-place data layout engine of a storage server. By avoiding a separate, onboard data layout engine on the flash devices, the latency associated with operation of such a data layout engine is also avoided. The flash memory can be used as the main persistent storage of a storage server and/or as buffer cache of a storage server, or both. The flash memory can be accessible to multiple storage servers in a storage cluster. To reduce variability in read latency, each flash device provides its status ('busy' or not) to the data layout engine. The data layout engine uses RAID data reconstruction to avoid having to read from a busy flash device.