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:
Apr. 24, 2018
Filed:
Apr. 29, 2016
Netapp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Ling Zheng, Saratoga, CA (US);
Ning Zhao, San Jose, CA (US);
Radek Aster, Campbell, CA (US);
Jeffrey S. Kimmel, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A consistency group is used as a basic unit of data management of storage containers served by a storage input/output (I/O) stack executing on one or more nodes of a cluster. The storage container may be a LUN embodied as parent volume (active volume), a snapshot (represented as an independent volume embodied as read-only copy of the active volume), and a clone (represented as another independent volume embodied as a read-write copy (clone) of the active volume). A consistency group (CG) is a set (i.e., collection) of objects, e.g., LUNs or other CGs (nested CG), which may be managed and operated upon collectively by an administrative command via a Storage Area Network administration layer (SAL) of the storage I/O stack. The SAL may interact with one or more layers of the storage I/O stack to (i) create a clone of a set of object members of the CG; (ii) create one or more snapshots of the set of object members of the CG; (iii) restore the set of object members of the CG from a group of CG snapshots; (iv) replicate the set of object members of the CG as a single entity; and (v) delete a CG and a nested CG according to specific semantics.