Buffering copy requests in a storage system

• US 10,585,617 B1
• Filed: 01/19/2018
• Issued: 03/10/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 01/10/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pure Storage, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Pure Storage, Inc.
• Inventors: Colgrove, John, Miller, Ethan, Hayes, John, Sandvig, Cary, Golden, Christopher, Cao, Jianting, Inozemtsev, Grigori
• Primary Examiner(s): Sun, Scott C
• Application Number:
  US15/875,189
• Time in Patent Office: 781 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1748 De-duplication implemented within the file system, e.g. based on file segments de-duplication techniques in storage systems for the management of data blocks G06F3/0641
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/23 Updating
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1008 Correctness of operation, e.g. memory ordering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1016 Performance improvement
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1032 Reliability improvement, data loss prevention, degraded operation etc
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1044 Space efficiency improvement
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/154 Networked environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/163 Server or database system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/261 Storage comprising a plurality of storage devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/263 Network storage, e.g. SAN or NAS
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0614 Improving the reliability of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0626 Reducing size or complexity of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0632 by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0644 : Management of space entities, e.g. partitions, extents, pools
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 : Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0652 : Erasing, e.g. deleting, data cleaning, moving of data to a wastebasket
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0655 : Vertical data movement, i.e. input-output transfer; data movement between one or more hosts and one or more storage devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0664 : at device level, e.g. emulation of a storage device or system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 : at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0667 : at data level, e.g. file, record or object virtualisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 : Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0671 : In-line storage system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0673 : Single storage device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0683 : Plurality of storage devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0685 : Hybrid storage combining heterogeneous device types, e.g. hierarchical storage, hybrid arrays
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 : Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD

Abstract

A system and method for performing copy offload operations. When a copy offload operation from a first volume (pointing to a first medium) to a second volume (pointing to a second medium) is requested, the copy offload operation is performed without accessing the data being copied. A third medium is created, and the first medium is recorded as the underlying medium of the third medium. The first volume is re-pointed to the third medium. Also, a fourth medium is created, the second volume is re-pointed to the fourth medium, and the second medium is recorded as the underlying medium of the targeted range of the fourth medium. All other ranges of the fourth medium have the second medium as their underlying medium.

Claims

1. A method for copying data in a storage system that includes a plurality of storage devices and at least one storage controller, the method comprising:

receiving, by a storage controller, a first request to perform a first storage controller operation to copy data stored at a first volume location in the storage system to a second volume in the storage system, wherein the storage controller operation is associated with one or more operations directed to the first volume and one or more operations directed to the second volume;

separately buffering, by the storage controller, the one or more operations directed to the first volume from the one or more operations directed to the second volume;

receiving, by the storage controller, a second request to perform a second storage controller operation directed to only one of the first volume and the second volume; and

responsive to receiving the second request to perform the second storage controller operation, performing, by the storage controller, the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume associated with the second request and continuing to buffer the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume not associated with the second request.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining which copy operations to buffer based on one or more current operating conditions of the storage system.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the current operating conditions include processing load, storage utilization, and number of pending requests of the storage system.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

automatically buffering all copy operations in the storage system;

determining whether the number of buffered copy operations exceeds a threshold; and

in response to determining that the number of buffered operations exceeds the threshold, performing multiple copy operations in a batch mode.

5. A computer system comprising:

one or more storage devices; and

a storage controller coupled to the one or more storage devices;

wherein the storage controller is configured to;

receive a first request to perform a first storage controller operation to copy data stored at a first volume in a storage system to a second volume in the storage system, wherein the storage controller operation is associated with one or more operations directed to the first volume and one or more operations directed to the second volume;

separately buffer the one or more operations directed to the first volume from the one or more operations directed to the second volume;

receive a second request to perform a second storage controller operation directed to only one of the first volume and the second volume; and

responsive to receiving the second request to perform the second storage controller operation, perform the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume associated with the second request and continuing to buffer the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume not associated with the second request.

6. The computer system of claim 5 wherein the storage controller is further configured to determine which copy operations to buffer based on one or more current operating conditions of the storage system;

wherein the current operating conditions include processing load, storage utilization, and number of pending requests of the storage system.

7. The computer system of claim 5 wherein the storage controller is further configured to:

automatically buffer all copy operations in the storage system;

determine whether the number of buffered copy operations exceeds a threshold; and

in response to determining that the number of buffered operations exceeds the threshold, perform multiple copy operations in a batch mode.

8. A computer program product disposed upon a non-transitory computer readable medium, the computer program product comprising computer program instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to carry out the steps of:

receiving, by a storage controller, a first request to perform a first storage controller operation to copy data stored at a first volume in a storage system to a second volume in the storage system, wherein the storage controller operation is associated with one or more operations directed to the first volume and one or more operations directed to the second volume;

separately buffering, by the storage controller, the one or more operations directed to the first volume from the one or more operations directed to the second volume;

receiving, by the storage controller, a second request to perform a second storage controller operation directed to only one of the first volume and the second volume; and

responsive to receiving the second request to perform the second storage controller operation, perform the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume associated with the second request and continuing to buffer the one or more buffered operations directed to the volume not associated with the second request.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 further comprising computer program instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to carry out the steps of:

determining which copy operations to buffer based on one or more current operating conditions of the storage system.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the current operating conditions include processing load, storage utilization, and number of pending requests of the storage system.

11. The computer program product of claim 8 further comprising computer program instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to carry out the steps of:

automatically buffering all copy operations in the storage system;

determining whether the number of buffered copy operations exceeds a threshold; and

in response to determining that the number of buffered operations exceeds the threshold, performing multiple copy operations in a batch mode.