VIRTUAL DISK DRIVE SYSTEM AND METHOD
14 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A disk drive system and method capable of dynamically allocating data is provided. The disk drive system may include a RAID subsystem having a pool of storage, for example a page pool of storage that maintains a free list of RAIDs, or a matrix of disk storage blocks that maintain a null list of RAIDs, and a disk manager having at least one disk storage system controller. The RAID subsystem and disk manager dynamically allocate data across the pool of storage and a plurality of disk drives based on RAID-to-disk mapping. The RAID subsystem and disk manager determine whether additional disk drives are required, and a notification is sent if the additional disk drives are required. Dynamic data allocation and data progression allow a user to acquire a disk drive later in time when it is needed. Dynamic data allocation also allows efficient data storage of snapshots/point-in-time copies of virtual volume pool of storage, instant data replay and data instant fusion for data backup, recovery etc., remote data storage, and data progression, etc.
164 Citations
40 Claims
-
1-13. -13. (canceled)
-
14. A disk drive system, capable of dynamically allocating data in a pool of storage, comprising:
-
a data storage subsystem; a plurality of virtual volumes comprising disk space blocks from the data storage subsystem, wherein at least a portion of the plurality of virtual volumes each comprise disk space blocks from a plurality of data storage devices; and a disk manager having at least one disk storage system controller; wherein the disk manager is configured to; maintain a pool of storage comprising a list of free disk space blocks of the data storage subsystem; dynamically allocate the free disk space blocks to the plurality of virtual volumes; and write data to the allocated disk space blocks. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 33)
-
-
20. A method of dynamically allocating data of a data storage system, comprising the steps of:
-
generating a plurality of virtual volumes of disk space blocks from a plurality of data storage devices, wherein at least a portion of the plurality of virtual volumes each comprise disk space blocks from more than one of the plurality of data storage devices; managing a page pool of storage that maintains a list of free disk space blocks of the plurality of data storage devices; dynamically allocating the disk space blocks of the plurality of data storage devices to the plurality of virtual volumes using the page pool of storage; and writing data to the allocated disk space blocks. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
-
Specification