System and method for absolute path discovery by a storage virtualization system

• US 20090089395A1
• Filed: 09/28/2007
• Published: 04/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Sun, Mingzhou Joe, Fen, Xie
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,806 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/216
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/16 Combinations of two or more digital computers each having at least an arithmetic unit, a program unit and a register, e.g. for a simultaneous processing of several programs coordinating program control therefor G06F9/52; in regulating and control system G05B

Abstract

A system and method provides for enabling a storage virtualization system to dynamically discover shares on a network attached storage file system is disclosed. Certain network attached storage systems represent user shares using abbreviated symbolic path names rather than full absolute path names. These network attached storage systems can correctly map the abbreviated path address to the actual file location; however, when a storage virtualization system is implemented to manage shares or files in these shares, it cannot access these files because it does not have the absolute path address. An embodiment of the present invention provides software instructions to augment the capabilities of the storage virtualization system, enabling it to map files with abbreviated share names, and therefore provide it with the ability to access these types of network attached storage systems.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing a storage virtualization system that communicates with a network attached storage (“

NAS”

) system on a network, wherein the NAS system stores at least one user share using a symbolic path name;

monitoring, by the storage virtualization system, access to the at least one user share on the NAS system;

requesting, by the storage virtualization system, an absolute path name for the at least one user share; and

storing the absolute path name in a database.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising accessing the at least one user share using the absolute path name stored in the database.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the NAS system is a common internet file system protocol NAS system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the NAS system is a network file system protocol NAS system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the symbolic path name is home.

7. A system comprising:

a storage virtualization system that communicates with a NAS system on a network, wherein the NAS system stores at least one user share using a symbolic path name;

a software program module with computer instructions for monitoring access to the at least one user share on the NAS system, and for requesting an absolute path name for the at least one user share;

a database accessible by the storage virtualization system for storing the absolute path name for the at least one user share.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the software program module further comprises computer instructions for accessing the at least one user share using the absolute path name stored in the database.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the NAS system is a common internet file system protocol NAS system.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein the NAS system is a network file system protocol NAS system.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the symbolic path name is home.