PROCESSOR PARTNERING IN A STORAGE SYSTEM

• US 20090037608A1
• Filed: 07/30/2007
• Published: 02/05/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Original Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Inventors: Bean, Robert George, Roberson, Randy L., Lubbers, Clark Edward
• Granted Patent: US 7,882,271 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 710/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0626 Reducing size or complexity of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0658 Controller construction arrangements
• 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

An apparatus and associated method are provided for performing a storage transaction associated with a network I/O command by employing an ASIC having an interconnect selectively coupling a plurality of dedicated purpose function controllers in the ASIC to a policy processor via a list manager in the ASIC communicating on a peripheral device bus to which the policy processor is connected.

Claims

1. A storage system performing a storage transaction associated with a network input/output (I/O) command comprising an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) having an interconnect selectively coupling a plurality of dedicated purpose function controllers in the ASIC to a policy processor via a list manager in the ASIC communicating on a peripheral device bus to which the policy processor is connected.

2. The storage system of claim 1 wherein the list manager provides the policy processor with access via the peripheral device bus to a memory in which data structures are stored, some data structures being aligned with virtual stripe boundaries of a data storage capacity in the storage system describing corresponding data buffers of a cache memory in the storage system.

3. The storage system of claim 1 comprising programming instructions stored in a computer readable medium and executed by the policy processor to compute a data structure associated with the storage transaction.

4. The storage system of claim 3 wherein the computed data structure indicates a buffer address in the cache memory associated with the storage transaction.

5. The storage system of claim 3 wherein the computed data structure associates the storage transaction with a stripe in the storage capacity.

6. The storage system of claim 3 wherein the computed data structure identifies valid data in the buffers of cache memory.

7. The storage system of claim 3 wherein the computed data structure identifies dirty data in the buffers of the cache memory.

8. The storage system of claim 1 further comprising programming instructions executed by the policy processor to format a context data structure for the storage transaction in a computer readable medium via the interconnect and the list manager.

9. The storage system of claim 8 wherein the context data structure is formatted for the storage transaction being a front end storage transaction between one or more of the function controllers and a network device.

10. The storage system of claim 8 wherein the context data structure is formatted for the storage transaction being a back end storage transaction between one or more of the function controllers and the storage capacity.

11. A method for processing storage transactions in a storage system comprising:

receiving an access command from a network device by a dedicated purpose host exchange function controller within an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC);

posting a command associated with the access command by the host exchange function controller to a policy processor via a list manager in the ASIC and a peripheral device bus to which the policy processor is connected; and

decoding the command with the policy processor.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising the policy processor accessing metadata describing data buffers in a cache memory associated with the storage transaction.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising the policy processor computing metadata in relation to a virtual block address specified in a command associated with the storage transaction.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the computing step derives metadata indicating a buffer address in the cache memory associated with the storage transaction.

15. The method of claim 13 wherein the computing step derives metadata associating the storage transaction with a stripe in the storage capacity.

16. The method of claim 13 wherein the computing step derives metadata identifying valid data in the buffers of cache memory.

17. The method of claim 13 wherein the computing step identifies dirty data in the buffers of the cache memory.

18. The method of claim 11 further comprising the policy processor formatting a context data structure for the storage transaction in a computer readable medium via the interconnect.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the formatting a context step is characterized by the context data structure being formatted for one of a front end data transaction, between one or more of the function controllers and a network device, and a back end data transaction, between one or more of the function controllers and the storage capacity.

20. A storage system comprising:

an intelligent storage processor (ISP) ASIC having a plurality of dedicated purpose function controllers selectively coupled to a plurality of list managers; and

means for processing input/output (I/O) transactions with the ISP by maintaining top level control for all I/O transactions by a policy processor peripheral device to the ASIC.