Operating system management for direct flash over fabric storage devices

• US 10,216,447 B1
• Filed: 12/23/2016
• Issued: 02/26/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/23/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pure Storage, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Pure Storage, Inc.
• Inventors: Colgrove, John, Kirkpatrick, Peter E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Bertram, Ryan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kwong, Edmund H
• Application Number:
  US15/390,123
• Time in Patent Office: 795 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0632 by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0644 Management of space entities, e.g. partitions, extents, pools
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0653 Monitoring storage devices or systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0673 Single storage device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD

Abstract

Exposing a geometry of a storage device, including: sending, by the storage device, information describing the layout of memory in the storage device; receiving, by the storage device, a write request, the write request associated with an amount of data sized in dependence upon the layout of memory in the storage device; and writing, by the storage device, the data to a memory unit, the data written to a location within the memory unit in dependence upon the layout of memory in the storage device.

Claims

1. A method of exposing a geometry of a storage device, the method comprising:

sending, by the storage device, information describing the layout of memory in the storage device to a storage array controller associated with the storage device, wherein the information describing the layout of the memory in the storage device comprises a physical addressing scheme of the storage device;

receiving, by the storage device, a write request from the storage array controller, the write request associated with an amount of data sized in dependence upon the layout of memory in the storage device; and

writing, by the storage device, the data to a memory unit, the data written to a location within the memory unit in dependence upon the physical addressing scheme of the storage device.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the write request includes a physical address of the location in the storage device for storing the data.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of a writeable memory unit in the storage device.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of an erasable memory unit in the storage device.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein writing the data to the memory unit further comprises writing the data to an unused portion of the memory unit.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein writing the data to the memory unit further comprises writing the data to an unused memory unit.

7. A storage device, the storage device configured to:

send information describing the layout of memory in the storage device to a storage array controller associated with the storage device, wherein the information describing the layout of the memory in the storage device comprises a physical addressing scheme of the storage device;

receive a write request from the storage array controller, the write request associated with an amount of data sized in dependence upon the layout of memory in the storage device; and

write the data to a memory unit, the data written to a location within the memory unit in dependence upon the physical addressing scheme of the storage device.

8. The storage device of claim 7 wherein the write request includes the physical address of a location in the storage device for storing the data.

9. The storage device of claim 7 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of a writeable memory unit in the storage device.

10. The storage device of claim 7 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of an erasable memory unit in the storage device.

11. The storage device of claim 7 wherein to write the data to the memory unit the storage device is further to write the data to an unused portion of the memory unit.

12. The storage device of claim 7 wherein to write the data to the memory unit the storage device is further to write the data to an unused memory unit.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by a processing device of a storage device cause the processing device to:

send, by the processing device, information describing the layout of memory in the storage device to an array controller associated with the storage device, wherein the information describing the layout of the memory in the storage device comprises a physical addressing scheme of the storage device;

receive, by the processing device, a write request from the array controller, the write request associated with an amount of data sized in dependence upon the layout of memory in the storage device; and

write, by the processing device, the data to a memory unit, the data written to a location within the memory unit in dependence upon the physical addressing scheme of the storage device.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the write request includes the physical address of a location in the storage device for storing the data.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of a writeable memory unit in the storage device.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the information describing the layout of memory in the storage device includes information describing a size of an erasable memory unit in the storage device.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein writing the data to the memory unit further comprises writing the data to an unused portion of the memory unit.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein writing the data to the memory unit further comprises writing the data to an unused memory unit.