Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080307268 | SELF-HEALING CACHE OPERATIONS - A method, apparatus and program storage device for performing a self-healing cache process is described. At least one error affecting a cache is detected. The cache may have a matching address tag for a fetching operation. Based on the type of error, a self-healing cache process is performed based. | 12-11-2008 |
20080313368 | APPARATUS AND PROGRAM STORAGE DEVICE FOR MANAGING DATAFLOW THROUGH A PROCESSING SYSTEM - A method, apparatus and program storage device for managing dataflow through a processing system is disclosed. A buffer monitor maintains and monitors a buffer full threshold to control the write throughput to a data bus. | 12-18-2008 |
20090077414 | APPARATUS AND PROGRAM STORAGE DEVICE FOR PROVIDING TRIAD COPY OF STORAGE DATA - An apparatus and program storage device for maintaining data is provided that includes receiving primary data at a first node, receiving mirrored data from a second and third node at the first node, and mirroring data received at the first node to a second and third node. | 03-19-2009 |
20110010514 | Adjusting Location of Tiered Storage Residence Based on Usage Patterns - Mechanisms for managing data segments in a tiered storage system are provided. The mechanisms maintain at least one counter for each data segment in the tiered storage system. Each counter in the at least one counter counts a number of access operations to a corresponding data segment for a predetermined time interval. The mechanisms further perform one or more analytical operations based on one or more values of the at least one counter for each data segment to make residence determinations for each data segment. The mechanisms also adjust a storage location of one or more data segments in tiers of the tiered storage system to thereby move the one or more data segments to appropriate tiers of the tiered storage system based on results of the one or more analytical operations. | 01-13-2011 |
20110029497 | Apparatus, System, and Method for Enhanced Block-Level Deduplication - An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for enhanced block-level deduplication. A computer program product stores one or more express block signatures in an express directory that meet a reference count requirement. The computer program product also stores one or more primary block signatures and one or more reference counts for the primary block signatures in a primary directory. Each primary block signature has a corresponding reference count. The computer program product determines whether a block signature for a data block matches one of the one or more express block signatures stored in the express directory. | 02-03-2011 |
20110099419 | SOLID STATE DRIVE WITH FLASH SPARING - A method for flash sparing on a solid state drive (SSD) includes detecting a failure from a primary memory device; determining if a failure threshold for the primary memory device has been reached; and, in the event the failure threshold for the primary memory device has been reached: quiescing the SSD; and updating an entry in a sparing map table to replace the primary memory device with a spare memory device. | 04-28-2011 |
20110113279 | Method Apparatus and System for a Redundant and Fault Tolerant Solid State Disk - A redundant and fault tolerant solid state disk (SSDC) includes a determination module configured to identify a first SSDC configured to connect to a flash array and a second SSDC configured to connect to the flash array. A capture module is configured to capture a copy of an I/O request received by the first SSDC from a port of a dual port connector, and/or capture a copy of an I/O request received by the second SSDC from a port of the dual port connector, and identify a write I/O request from the I/O request. A detection module is configured to detect a failure in the first SSDC. A management module is configured to manage access to a flash array by the first SSDC and the second SSDC. An error recovery and failover module is configured to automatically reassign work from the first SSDC to the second SSDC. | 05-12-2011 |
20120215973 | Method Apparatus and System for a Redundant and Fault Tolerant Solid State Disk - A solid state drive includes a first solid state disc controller (SSDC), a second SSDC and a flash array. The flash array includes a first flash port and a second flash port. The first SSDC is configured to connect to the flash array through the first flash port and the second flash array is configured to connect to the flash array through the second flash port. The first SSDC and the second SSDC are both configured to connect to all memory within the flash array and the first SSDC, second SSDC, and flash array are within a common solid state drive. | 08-23-2012 |
20120254508 | Using the Short Stroked Portion of Hard Disk Drives for a Mirrored Copy of Solid State Drives - Mechanisms for storing data to a storage system comprising a set of one or more solid state storage devices and a set of non-solid state storage devices are provided. A request to write data to the storage system is received and the data is written to the set of one or more solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Moreover, a mirror copy of the data is written to the set of non-solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Thus, the non-solid state storage devices serve as a mirror backup copy of the data stored to the solid state storage devices. | 10-04-2012 |
20120254509 | Extending Cache for an External Storage System into Individual Servers - Mechanisms are provided for extending cache for an external storage system into individual servers. Certain servers may have cards with cache in the form of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and non-volatile storage, such as flash memory or solid-state drives (SSDs), which may be viewed as actual extensions of the external storage system. In this way, the storage system is distributed across the storage area network (SAN) into various servers. Several new semantics are used in communication between the cards and the storage system to keep the read caches coherent. | 10-04-2012 |
20130086301 | Direct Memory Address for Solid-State Drives - A storage device is provided for direct memory access. A controller of the storage device performs a mapping of a window of memory addresses to a logical block addressing (LBA) range of the storage device. Responsive to receiving from a host a write request specifying a write address within the window of memory addresses, the controller initializes a first memory butler in the storage device and associates the first memory buffer with a first address range within the window of memory addresses such that the write address of the request is within the first address range. The controller writes to the first memory buffer based on the write address. Responsive to the buffer being full, the controller persists contents of the first memory buffer to the storage device using logical block addressing based on the mapping. | 04-04-2013 |
20130086302 | Enabling Throttling on Average Write Throughput for Solid State Storage Devices - A mechanism is provided for enabling throttling on average write throughput instead of peak write throughput for solid-state storage devices. The mechanism assures an average write throughput within a range but allows excursions of high throughput with periods of low throughput offsetting against those of heavy usage. The mechanism periodically determines average throughput and determines whether average throughput exceeds a high throughput threshold for a certain amount of time without being offset by periods of low throughput. | 04-04-2013 |
20130191594 | Direct Memory Address for Solid-State Drives - A storage device is provided for direct memory access. A controller of the storage device performs a mapping of a window of memory addresses to a logical block addressing (LBA) range of the storage device. Responsive to receiving from a host a write request specifying a write address within the window of memory-addresses, the controller initializes a first memory buffer in the storage device and associates the first memory buffer with a first address range within the window of memory addresses such that the write address of the request is within the first address range. The controller writes to the first memory buffer based on the write address. Responsive to the buffer being full the controller persists contents of the first memory buffer to the storage device using logical block addressing based on the mapping. | 07-25-2013 |
20130191607 | Using the Short Stroked Portion of Hard Disk Drives for a Mirrored Copy of Solid State Drives - Mechanisms for storing data to a storage system comprising a set of one or more solid state storage devices and a set of non-solid state storage devices are provided. A request to write data to the storage system is received and the data is written to the set of one or more solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Moreover, a mirror copy of the data is written to the set of non-solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Thus, the non-solid state storage devices serve as a mirror backup copy of the data stored to the solid state storage devices. | 07-25-2013 |
20130198444 | Enabling Throttling on Average Write Throughput for Solid State Storage Devices - A mechanism is provided for enabling throttling on average write throughput instead of peak write throughput for solid-state storage devices. The mechanism assures an average write throughput within a range but allows excursions of high throughput with periods of low throughput offsetting against those of heavy usage. The mechanism periodically determines average throughput and determines whether average throughput exceeds a high throughput threshold for a certain amount of time without being offset by periods of low throughput. | 08-01-2013 |
20130205078 | Extending Cache for an External Storage System into Individual Servers - Mechanisms are provided for extending cache for an external storage system into individual servers. Certain servers may have cards with cache in the form of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and non-volatile storage, such as flash memory or solid-state drives (SSDs), which may be viewed as actual extensions of the external storage system. In this way, the storage system is distributed across the storage area network (SAN) into various servers. Several new semantics are used in communication between the cards and the storage system to keep the read caches coherent. | 08-08-2013 |
20130238876 | Efficient Inline Data De-Duplication on a Storage System - A mechanism is provided in a storage system for efficient inline data de-duplication. The mechanism receives a write command and a hash key for a portion of data to be written from an application host to a write address. The write command indicates whether the application host is tolerant or intolerant to data loss. Responsive to the write command indicating the application host is tolerant to data loss, the mechanism performs a hash key lookup in a hash index. The mechanism determines whether the portion of data has previously been written to the storage system. Responsive to determining the portion of data has previously been written to the storage system, the mechanism stores a pointer to the previously written data at the write address. | 09-12-2013 |
20130246841 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR A REDUNDANT AND FAULT TOLERANT SOLID STATE DISK - A solid state drive includes a first solid state disc controller (SSDC), a second SSDC and a flash array. The flash array includes a first flash port and a second flash port. The first SSDC is configured to connect to the flash array through the first flash port and the second flash array is configured to connect to the flash array through the second flash port. | 09-19-2013 |
20130290598 | Reducing Power Consumption by Migration of Data within a Tiered Storage System - Mechanisms identify one or more first storage devices in a first tier of the tiered storage system that may be placed in a minimal power consumption state and identify one or more data segments stored on the one or more first storage devices that are most likely to be accessed during a period of time in which the one or more first storage devices are in the minimal power consumption state. The mechanisms migrate the one or more data segments to one or more second storage devices in one of the first tier or a second tier of the storage system and place the one or more first storage devices in the minimal power consumption state. Access requests to the one or more data segments are serviced by the one or more second storage devices while the one or more first storage devices are in the minimal power consumption state. | 10-31-2013 |
20140019707 | Automatically Preventing Large Block Writes from Starving Small Block Writes in a Storage Device - A mechanism is provided in a storage device for performing a write operation. The mechanism configures a write buffer memory with a plurality of write buffer portions. Each write buffer portion is dedicated to a predetermined block size category within a plurality of block size categories. For each write operation from an initiator, the mechanism determines a block size category of the write operation. The mechanism performs each write operation by writing to a write buffer portion within the plurality of write buffer portions corresponding to the block size category of the write operation. | 01-16-2014 |
20140173177 | Write Performance In Solid State Storage by Recognizing Copy Source to Target Operations and Only Storing Updates Instead of Entire Block - A mechanism is provided in a data processing system for accessing a solid state drive. Responsive to receiving request to write an update to a block of data in the solid state drive with an update option set, the mechanism reads the block of data from the solid state drive. The mechanism determines a difference between the update and the block of data. The mechanism compresses the difference to form an update record. The mechanism stores the update record and modifies metadata of the block of data to reference the update record. | 06-19-2014 |
20140325128 | Mirror Copies of Solid State Drives Using Portions of Hard Disk Drives - Mechanisms for storing data to a storage system comprising a set of one or more solid state storage devices and a set of non-solid state storage devices are provided. A request to write data to the storage system is received and the data is written to the set of one or more solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Moreover, a mirror copy of the data is written to the set of non-solid state storage devices in response to receiving the request. Thus, the non-solid state storage devices serve as a mirror backup copy of the data stored to the solid state storage devices. | 10-30-2014 |
20140372684 | Enabling Throttling on Average Write Throughput for Solid State Storage Devices - A mechanism is provided for enabling throttling on average write throughput instead of peak write throughput for solid-state storage devices. The mechanism assures an average write throughput within a range but allows excursions of high throughput with periods of low throughput offsetting against those of heavy usage. The mechanism periodically determines average throughput and determines whether average throughput exceeds a high throughput threshold for a certain amount of time without being offset by periods of low throughput. | 12-18-2014 |
20150026514 | Raid 10 Reads Optimized for Solid State Drives - A mechanism is provided in a data processing system. The mechanism determines a maximum queue depth of a queue for each solid state drive in a plurality of solid state drives. A given data block is mirrored between a group of solid state drives within the plurality of solid state drives. The mechanism tracks outstanding input/output operations in a queue for each of the plurality of solid state drives. For a given read operation to read the given data block, the mechanism identifies a solid state drive within the group of solid state drives based on a number of empty slots in the queue of each solid state drive within the group of solid state drives. | 01-22-2015 |
20150067271 | SELECTIVELY ENABLING WRITE CACHING IN A STORAGE SYSTEM BASED ON PERFORMANCE METRICS - According to a method of cache management in a data storage system including a write cache and bulk storage media, a storage controller of the data storage system caches, in the write cache, write data of write input/output operations (IOPs) received at the storage controller. In response to a first performance-related metric for the data storage system satisfying a first threshold, the storage controller decreases a percentage of write IOPs for which write data is cached in the write cache of the data storage system and increases a percentage of write IOPs for which write data is stored directly in the bulk storage media in lieu of the write cache. In response to a second performance-related metric for the data storage system satisfying a second threshold, the storage controller increases the percentage of write IOPs for which write data is cached in the write cache of the data storage system. | 03-05-2015 |