Enhancing disk array performance via variable parity based load balancing
First Claim
1. A computer storage system, comprising:
- a plurality of disk drives for storing distributed parity groups, each distributed parity group comprising storage blocks, said storage blocks comprising one or more data blocks and a parity block associated with said one or more data blocks, each of said storage blocks stored on a separate disk drive such that no two storage blocks from a given parity group reside on the same disk drive;
file system metadata to describe a location of each of said storage blocks; and
a load-balancing module to dynamically move storage blocks of said distributed parity groups among said plurality of disk drives to balance loading of said plurality of disk drives and thereby improve throughput of said computer storage system, said load-balancing module configured to update said file system metadata when a storage block is moved.
12 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for enhancing disk array performance via variable-parity-based load balancing is described. The system and method operate on a computer storage system that includes a plurality of disk drives for storing distributed parity groups. Each distributed parity group includes storage blocks. The storage blocks include one or more data blocks and a parity block that is associated with the one or more data blocks. Each of the storage blocks is stored on a separate disk drive such that no two storage blocks from a given parity set reside on the same disk drive. The computer storage system further includes file system metadata to describe a location of each of the storage blocks. The computer storage system further includes a load-balancing module to dynamically move storage blocks of the distributed parity groups among the plurality of disk drives to balance transaction loading of the plurality of disk drives and thereby to improve throughput of the computer storage system. The load-balancing module is configured to update the file system metadata when a storage block is moved.
-
Citations
11 Claims
-
1. A computer storage system, comprising:
-
a plurality of disk drives for storing distributed parity groups, each distributed parity group comprising storage blocks, said storage blocks comprising one or more data blocks and a parity block associated with said one or more data blocks, each of said storage blocks stored on a separate disk drive such that no two storage blocks from a given parity group reside on the same disk drive;
file system metadata to describe a location of each of said storage blocks; and
a load-balancing module to dynamically move storage blocks of said distributed parity groups among said plurality of disk drives to balance loading of said plurality of disk drives and thereby improve throughput of said computer storage system, said load-balancing module configured to update said file system metadata when a storage block is moved. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
-
-
9. A method for load balancing in a computer network, comprising:
-
determining a size of a parity group in response to a write request, said size describing a number of data blocks in said parity group;
arranging at least a portion of data from said write request according to said data blocks;
computing a parity block for said parity group;
storing each of said data blocks on a separate disk drive of a plurality of disk drives such that no two data blocks from said parity group reside on the same disk drive;
storing said parity block on a separate disk drive that does not contain any of said data blocks; and
moving said data blocks among said plurality of disk drives to reduce loading on one or more of said plurality of disk drives. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11)
-
Specification