System and method for providing a client device seamless access to a plurality of remote storage devices presented as a virtual device

• US 10,237,347 B2
• Filed: 11/06/2015
• Issued: 03/19/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/08/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NVIDIA Corporation
• Original Assignee: Excelero Storage Ltd. (NVIDIA Corporation)
• Inventors: Romem, Yaniv, Mann, Omri, Oshri, Ofer
• Primary Examiner(s): Chea, Philip J
• Assistant Examiner(s): Khan, Hassan A
• Application Number:
  US14/934,830
• Publication Number:
  US 20170132172A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,229 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/109 for multiple virtual address spaces, e.g. segmentation G06F12/1036 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1024 Latency reduction
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/154 Networked environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/163 Server or database system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/657 Virtual address space management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

A computerized method for enabling a client device seamless access to a plurality of remote storage devices connected to the client device via a communication network. The method comprises receiving a plurality of physical addresses by a controller communicatively coupled to the client device and to a plurality of storage servers, each of the plurality of storage servers communicatively coupled to at least one storage device, the plurality of physical addresses enabling access by the controller to the remote storage devices. A single virtual storage device having a logical address space is generated on the device, wherein each of the plurality of physical addresses is mapped by the controller to a unique logical address of the virtual storage device.

Claims

1. A computerized method for enabling a client device seamless access to a plurality of remote storage devices connected to the client device via a communication network, the method comprising:

receiving a plurality of physical addresses by a network interface controller communicatively coupled to the client device and to a plurality of storage servers, each physical address, when received, not being associated with any logical address of the client device, each of the plurality of storage servers communicatively coupled to at least one storage device, the plurality of physical addresses enabling access by the controller to the remote storage devices; and

generating for the client device by the network interface controller a single virtual storage device having a logical address space by mapping, by the network interface controller, each of the plurality of received physical addresses to at least a unique logical address of the virtual storage device;

presenting, by the network interface controller, the single virtual storage device to the client to be used as a local storage device by the client;

receiving a first access instruction having a first logical address within the logical address space, the first access instruction according to a first communication protocol, wherein the wherein the first communication protocol is Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Access;

converting by the controller the first address to a second access instruction according to a second communication protocol, wherein the first logical address is mapped to a physical address of the plurality of physical addresses; and

sending the second access instruction over the second communication protocol to at least a storage server of the plurality of storage servers corresponding to the physical address, wherein the second communication protocol is an implementation of remote direct memory access (RDMA).

2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the implementation is any of:

iWARP, Infiniband, or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE).

3. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a request for an additional physical address; and

mapping a received additional physical address to a unique logical address of the logical address space.

4. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a request for a plurality of additional physical addresses;

mapping a virtual address of the plurality of virtual addresses to a secondary virtual address of a secondary plurality of virtual addresses; and

mapping each additional physical layer to a unique secondary virtual address.

5. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the single virtual storage is generated using input/output (I/O) virtualization.

6. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the I/O virtualization is Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

7. The computerized method of claim 6, wherein the I/O virtualization generates a plurality of single virtual storages.

8. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a second plurality of physical addresses by the controller, the second plurality of physical addresses enabling access by the controller to a local storage device communicatively coupled to the client device; and

mapping the second plurality of physical addresses to the logical address space.

9. A network interface card (NIC) for providing a client device seamless access to a plurality of remote storage devices connected to the client device via a communication network comprising:

a control logic;

the control logic further comprising;

at least one processor;

a memory and

the memory including instructions to enable the NIC to receive a plurality of physical addresses, each physical address, when received, not being associated with any logical address of the client device, the plurality of physical addresses enabling access by the NIC to the remote storage devices,

and the memory including instructions to further generate by the NIC a single virtual storage device having a logical address space by mapping, by the NIC each of the plurality of received physical addresses to a unique logical address of the virtual storage device;

the memory further including a map for translating each of a plurality of virtual addresses to a unique physical address of a remote storage device;

wherein, when the instructions are executed, the NIC generates the single virtual storage device having the logical address space in which each of the plurality of physical addresses is mapped by the controller to a unique logical address of the virtual storage device and presents the single virtual storage device to the client to be used as a local storage device by the client.

10. The NIC according to claim 9, wherein the memory comprises a primary memory and a secondary memory and the map is stored in the secondary memory.

11. A communication system for providing a client device seamless access to a plurality of remote storage devices connected to the client device via a communication network comprising:

a network interface card (NIC) and

a control logic, the control logic communicating with the NIC;

the control logic further comprising;

at least one processor; and

a memory,

the memory including instructions to enable the NIC to receive a plurality of physical addresses, each physical address, when received, not being associated with any logical address of the client device, the plurality of physical addresses enabling access by the NIC to the remote storage devices,

and the memory including instructions to further generate by the NIC a single virtual storage device having a logical address space by mapping, by the NIC each of received the plurality of physical addresses to a unique logical address of the virtual storage device;

the memory further including a map for translating each of a plurality of virtual addresses to a unique physical address of a remote storage device;

wherein, when the instructions are executed, the NIC generates the single virtual storage device having the logical address space in which each of the plurality of physical addresses is mapped by the controller to a unique logical address of the virtual storage device and presents the single virtual storage device to the client to be used as a local storage device by the client.