STORAGE CONTROL SYSTEM INCLUDING VIRTUALIZATION AND CONTROL METHOD FOR SAME

• US 20110138119A1
• Filed: 01/28/2011
• Published: 06/09/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/18/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Yamagami, Kenji
• Granted Patent: US 8,131,956 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/112
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1458 Management of the backup or restore process
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0866 for peripheral storage systems, e.g. disk cache
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0631 by allocating resources to storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0632 by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD

Abstract

The storage system includes a plurality of storage devices and a controller that manages a virtual volume including a plurality of virtual storage areas, and manages a storage pool including a plurality of storage areas prepared on the storage devices in order to allocate a storage area in the storage pool to the virtual volume in response to receiving a write command to the virtual volume for writing data corresponding to the write command. In response to receiving a specific write command to write a specific data to a first virtual storage area to which a first storage area is allocated, the controller releases the first storage area from the first virtual storage area.

Claims

1. A storage system comprising:

a plurality of storage devices;

a controller that manages a virtual volume including a plurality of virtual storage areas, and manages a storage pool including a plurality of storage areas prepared on said storage devices in order to allocate a storage area in said storage pool to said virtual volume in response to receiving a write command to said virtual volume for writing data corresponding to said write command;

wherein in response to receiving a specific write command to write a specific data to a first virtual storage area to which a first storage area is allocated, said controller releases said first storage area from said first virtual storage area.