A disk drive system and method capable of dynamically allocating data is provided. The disk drive system may include a RAID subsystem having a pool of storage, for example a page pool of storage that maintains a free list of RAIDs, or a matrix of disk storage blocks that maintain a null list of RAIDs, and a disk manager having at least one disk storage system controller. The RAID subsystem and disk manager dynamically allocate data across the pool of storage and a plurality of disk drives based on RAID-to-disk mapping. The RAID subsystem and disk manager determine whether additional disk drives are required, and a notification is sent if the additional disk drives are required. Dynamic data allocation and data progression allow a user to acquire a disk drive later in time when it is needed. Dynamic data allocation also allows efficient data storage of snapshots/point-in-time copies of virtual volume pool of storage, instant data replay and data instant fusion for data backup, recovery etc., remote data storage, and data progression, etc.

Virtual disk drive system and method

As seen in Figure 1, a storage virtualization selection technique “automates” a virtualization selection process to create virtual disk (vdisk) storage objects over a volume (150) & (160) of a file system implemented by a storage operating system (200) of a multi-protocol storage appliance (100). The file system provides a virtualization system that aggregates physical storage of a set of disks (130) or portions (e.g., extents) of disks into a pool of blocks that can be dynamically allocated to form a vdisk. The file system also provides reliability guarantees for the vdisks in accordance with its underlying architecture. That is, the file system organizes its storage within volumes created among the managed disks. The vdisk is thereafter created as a storage object within a volume and inherits the underlying reliability configuration associated with that volume.

Storage virtualization by layering virtual disk objects on a file system

A filesystem-aware storage system locates and analyzes host filesystem data structures in order to determine storage usage of the host filesystem To this end, the storage system might locate an operating system partition, parse the operating system partion to locate its data structures, and parse the operating system data structures to locate the host filesystem data structures The storage system manages data storage based on the storage usage of the host file system The storage system can use the storage usage information to identify storage areas that are no longer being used by the host filesystem and reclaim those areas for additional data storage capacity Also, the storage system can identify the types of data stored by the host filesystem and manage data storage based on the data types, such as selecting a storage layout and/or an encoding scheme for the data based on the data type

Filesystem-Aware Block Storage System, Apparatus, and Method

Systems and methods of event driven recovery management are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method of providing event driven recovery management includes continually copying one or more data blocks that are generated from a computing device, associating at least one event marker with the copies of the one or more data blocks, and allowing access to the copies of the one or more data blocks according to the at least one event marker in order to provide event driven recovery. For purposes of this disclosure, an event marker, a book mark, an application consistency point, and/or a business event are interchangeably used, depending on the context.

Systems and methods of event driven recovery management

The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for RAID Restriping. One method includes selecting an initial RAID device for migration based on at least one score, creating an alternate RAID device, moving data from the initial RAID device to the alternate RAID device, and removing the initial RAID device. The method may be performed automatically by the system or manually. The method may be performed periodically, continuously, after every RAID device migration, upon addition of disk drives, and/or before removal of disk drives, etc. One system includes a RAID subsystem and a disk manager configured to automatically calculate a score for each RAID device, select a RAID device based on the relative scores of the RAID devices, create an alternate RAID device, move data from the selected RAID device to the alternate RAID device, and remove the selected RAID device.

System and method for RAID management, reallocation and restriping

Logical volume managers have long been key components of a storage system. Their key features are creation of logical or virtual views of physical storage devices and support for various software RAID levels. These make it possible to overcome the limits to capacity, availability and performance of a physical storage device. Most logical volume managers are operated in a single system environment. They are not adequate for SAN (storage area network) environments where several hosts share and access a logical volume at the same time. Some recent logical volume managers are run in a multi-host environment. However, they cannot support the enterprise computing environments in which the system must support 24/spl times/7/spl times/365 uptime operations such as online resizing and online backup. We propose a logical volume manager called 'SANtopia Volume Manager' that supports multihost environments and provides various volume management features to support enterprise computing. Also it is a cluster enabled logical volume manager that maximizes the parallelism for high performance, and provides high scalability and high availability.

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Volume management in SAN environment

A method for managing a logical volume for minimizing a size of metadata and supporting dynamic online resizing, computer-readable recoding medium storing a program or data structure for embodying the method are disclosed. The method for managing a logical volume in order to support dynamic online resizing and minimizing a size of metadata, said method comprising steps of: a) creating a logical volume by rounding up disk partitions in response to a request of constructing the logical volume on a physical storage space; b) generating metadata including information of the logical volume and the disk partitions participating to the logical volume and storing it to the disk partitions participating to the logical volume; c) dynamically resizing the logical volume in response to a request of resizing, and modifying the metadata on the disk partitions participating to the logical volume; and d) calculating and returning a physical address corresponding to a logical address of the logical volume by using mapping information of the metadata containing information of the physical address corresponding to the logical address.

Method for managing logical volume in order to support dynamic online resizing and software raid

A method for managing a logical volume for minimizing a size of metadata and supporting dynamic online resizing and software redundant array of independent disks (RAID), and a computer-readable recording medium storing instructions for embodying the method, are disclosed. The method includes the metadata having a disk partition table containing information of a disk partition in which the metadata is stored; a logical volume table for maintaining the information of the logical volume by storing duplicated information of the logical volume onto all disk partitions of the logical volume; an extent allocation table for indicating whether each extent in the disk partitions is used or not; and a mapping table for maintaining a mapping information for a physical address space corresponding to a logical address space which is a continuous address space equal in size of storage space of whole logical volume.

Method for managing logical volume in order to support dynamic online resizing and software raid and to minimize metadata and computer readable medium storing the same

A file level striping method adds an option for indicating whether or not to support file level striping to a file creation interface in a file system, extends an inode structure to include a last disk ID field, initializes the last disk ID when the file is created in the file system, allocates a physical block based on the last disk ID when the physical block allocation is requested at the time of file I/O request in the file system, and modifies the last disk ID value to reflect the physical block allocation made by a volume manager. An apparatus using the file level striping method includes a number of disks for storing information actually, the volume manager for logically grouping a number of disks and a file system for creating files on said logical volume and performing I/O operations.

Apparatus and method for file-level striping

The present invention relates to an efficient snapshot technique based on a mapping for a large logical volume shared in multiple hosts. According to the present invention, problems of time delays in a conventional snapshot technique is solved by employing a FAB and an SSB, which are bits representing whether a COW operation is carried out to a mapping entry. In other words, the present invention solves the problems of delaying a write operation of corresponding volume, which is simultaneously executed when a snapshot is created, until the snapshot creation is completed. Further, in the write operation carried out after the snapshot creation, an operation of determining whether the COW operation is carried out is achieved by reading only an original mapping block by using the FAB and the SSB, without reading out the snapshot mapping block. Therefore, an additional disk access operation is decreased when carrying out a write operation to the volume in which the snapshot exists, thereby improving the performance of operation. Furthermore, in a snapshot destruction operation, the operation of determining whether the COW operation is carried out or not can be achieved without access to the snapshot mapping block, thereby preventing the degradation of performance. In case there is at least one snapshot, the determination operation can be achieved by an access to the original mapping block. Consequently, constant performance is always provided without the number of the snapshots.

Changsoo Kim

Papers

Volume management in SAN environment

Method for managing logical volume in order to support dynamic online resizing and software raid

Method for managing logical volume in order to support dynamic online resizing and software raid and to minimize metadata and computer readable medium storing the same

Apparatus and method for file-level striping

System and method of an efficient snapshot for shared large storage