STORAGE CONTROLLER, AND METHOD OF CONTROLLING STORAGE CONTROLLER TO IMPROVE THE RELIABILITY OF THE STORAGE CONTROLLER

• US 20090292871A1
• Filed: 11/19/2008
• Published: 11/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/16/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Eguchi, Yoshiaki, Watanabe, Yasuo
• Granted Patent: US 7,836,251 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/114
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3268 Power saving in hard disk drive
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0616 in relation to life time, e.g. increasing Mean Time Between Failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0625 Power saving in storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0634 by changing the state or mode of one or more devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0647 Migration mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

The present invention controls supply of power to a storage device on the basis of an access status, moves a logical storage device between physical storage devices having different power supply modes, reduces energization time, and improves the reliability. A relocation plan creation portion creates a relocation plan by disposing a logical volume with high access frequency in a RAID group which is in a long-time energization mode, disposing a logical volume with moderate access frequency in a RAID group which is in a first short-time energization mode, and disposing a logical volume with low access frequency in a RAID group which is in a second short-time energization mode. An execution time determination portion determines an execution time for executing the relocation plan, on the basis of the access frequency to the RAID groups. The volumes with higher access frequency are disposed in the RAID group in which the power supply time is long, and the volumes with lower access frequency are disposed in the RAID group in which the power is supplied in an on-demand fashion.

Claims

1. A storage controller which is connected to at least one host device and a plurality of storage devices, the storage controller comprising:

a plurality of physical storage devices, each of which is configured from storage regions of a predetermined number of storage devices among the plurality of storage devices;

at least one logical storage device which can be set in the storage region of each of the physical storage devices;

an access information collection portion which collects access information about each of the physical storage devices and each of the logical storage devices on the basis of the status of access from the host device to each of the logical storage devices;

a power supply mode setting portion which sets a power supply mode for supplying power for each of the physical storage devices on the basis of the access information about each of the physical storage devices;

a power control portion which controls supply of power to each of the storage devices configuring each of the physical storage devices, on the basis of the set power supply mode;

a relocation plan creation portion which creates a relocation plan for moving each of the logical storage devices between the physical storage devices having different power supply modes, on the basis of the access information about each of the logical storage devices;

an execution time determination portion which sets an execution time for executing the created relocation plan; and

a relocation execution portion which moves a logical storage device, which is judged as a target of relocation from among the logical storage devices, from a source physical storage device to a destination physical storage device, on the basis of the created relocation plan, when the determined execution time comes.