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Storage virtualization computer system and external controller therefor

  • US 10,452,270 B2
  • Filed: 09/14/2012
  • Issued: 10/22/2019
  • Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2003
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A storage virtualization computer system comprising:

  • a host entity for issuing host IO requests;

    an external storage virtualization controller (SVC) comprising at least one I/O controller and being coupled to said host entity for executing IO operations in response to said host IO requests; and

    a group of physical storage devices (PSDs), each coupled to the external storage virtualization controller through a point-to-point serial-signal interconnect, for providing storage to the storage virtualization computer system through the external storage virtualization controller;

    wherein said external storage virtualization controller is configured to define at least one logical media unit (LMU) consisting of sections of said group of PSDs;

    wherein the host IO requests are parsed to determine what operation is to be performed and on which section(s) of the LMU the operation is to be performed; and

    wherein when the operation comprises internally-emulated, asynchronous device sub-operations, then the external SVC executes the associated sub-operations including transferring any associated data to/from the host entity and then, when there is a failed operation, the external SVC generates a status report and responds to the host entity with the status report indicating the failed operation;

    wherein the asynchronous device sub-operations comprise device-side IO requests to be sent to the PSDs, and when one of the device-side IO requests does not complete successfully, the SVC engages a backup operation that allows successful completion of the sub-operations, where when one of the PSDs is inaccessible, the backup operation includes generating at least one other device-side IO request to at least one media section that is different from a media section to be accessed by the one device-side IO request which does not complete successfully; and

    wherein when one of the host IO requests from the host entity is received by the SVC, an IO complete report that the one of the host I/O requests is successfully complete is first issued to the host entity by the SVC before the SVC completes the operation performed on the section(s) of the LMU associated with said one host IO request.

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