Allocating Clusters to Storage Partitions in a Storage System

• US 20090307419A1
• Filed: 07/09/2009
• Published: 12/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Nakamura, Shuji
• Granted Patent: US 7,953,927 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/113
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/201 between storage system components
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2092 Techniques of failing over between control units
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2094 Redundant storage or storage space G06F11/2056 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0658 Controller construction arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

The bandwidth of the inter-connection network between the clusters is quite narrower than that of the inter-connection network in the clusters. When the logical allocation technique is simply applied to a cluster storage system, there is created a logical partition associated with two or more clusters. It is not possible to create logical partitions of performance corresponding to resources allocated thereto. In a storage system including a first cluster and a second cluster, when a resource of the storage system is logically subdivided into logical partitions, a resource of the first cluster is allocated to one logical partition. The system may be configured such that the first and second clusters are connected via switches to disk drives. The system may also be configured such that when failure occurs in the first cluster, the second cluster continuously executes processing of the first cluster.

Claims

1-16. -16. (canceled)

17. A storage system comprising:

a first disk device;

a control device coupled with the first disk for controlling the first disk device so as to store data, the first control device including at least a first cache memory;

a second disk device; and

a second control device coupled with the second disk device for controlling the second disk device so as to store data, the second control device including at least a second cache memory,

wherein the storage system is configured to accept a first request identifying first capacity to be assigned a first logical partition, and to receive a second request identifying second capacity to be assigned to a second logical partition,

wherein if the first capacity identified by the first request is smaller than capacity of the first cache memory, then the storage system assigns the first capacity from the first cache memory to the first logical partition,

wherein the storage system is configured to store remaining capacity of the first cache memory which is capable of being assigned to the first or the second logical partition after the assignment from the first cache memory to the first logical partition,

wherein if the second capacity identified by the second request is larger than said remaining capacity of the first cache memory and is smaller than capacity of the second cache memory, then the storage system assigns the second capacity from the second cache memory to the second logical partition.

18. The storage system according to claim 17, wherein if the second capacity identified by the second request is larger than said remaining capacity of the first cache memory, is larger than the capacity of second cache memory, and is smaller than the sum of said remaining capacity of the first cache memory and the capacity of the second cache memory, then the storage system assigns the second capacity from both the first cache memory and the second cache memory to the second logical partition.

19. The storage system according to claim 17, wherein the first control device and the second control device are physically independent of each other.

20. The storage system according to claim 17, further comprising an administrator unit including a display screen for displaying information on the storage system.

21. The storage system according to claim 17, wherein the first cache memory provided within the first control device and the second cache memory provided within the second control device are used for respectively storing data read or written from or to each of the first and the second disk device, wherein each of the first cache memory and the second cache memory is considered a resource of the storage system.

22. The storage system according to claim 17, wherein each of the first cache memory and the second cache memory includes both a data area for storing data having been stored in the first or second disk device and a control data area for storing information used for control of the storage system.

23. The storage system according to claim 17, further comprising a maintenance processor coupled with both the first control device and the second control device through a management network and adapted to store information on each of resources included in first control device and the second control device.

24. The storage system according to claim 17, further comprising a first channel controller included in the first control device and a second channel controller included in the second control device, wherein each of the first channel controller and the second channel controller includes a processor for preparing a plurality of logical partition in accordance with both a control program and a logical partition information, the control program and the logical partition information stored in each memory of the first channel controller and the second channel controller.

25. The system according to claim 23, wherein the maintenance processor is adapted to collect information on the resources and adapted to prepare a table hierarchically showing the information having been collected in a table manner.

26. The storage system according to claim 20, wherein the administer unit accept inputs number of logical partition.