INCREASE IN DEDUPLICATION EFFICIENCY FOR HIERARCHICAL STORAGE SYSTEM

• US 20130054894A1
• Filed: 08/29/2011
• Published: 02/28/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: KAWAGUCHI, Tomohiro
• Granted Patent: US 8,965,856 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/117
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/174 Redundancy elimination performed by the file system management of the data involved in backup or backup restore using de-duplication of the data G06F11/14
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• 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

Exemplary embodiments provide improvement of deduplication efficiency for hierarchical storage systems. In one embodiment, a storage system comprises a storage controller; and a plurality of first volumes and a plurality of external volumes which are configured to be mounted to external devices. The storage controller controls to store related data which are derived from one of the plurality of first volumes in a first external volume of the plurality of external volumes. In another embodiment, the storage controller receives object data from a server and allocates the object data to the plurality of pool volumes. The plurality of pool volumes include a plurality of external volumes which are configured to be mounted to external devices. The storage controller controls to store the object data to the plurality of pool volumes based on object allocation information received from a backup server.

Claims

1. A storage system comprising:

a storage controller including a processor and a memory; and

a plurality of first volumes and a plurality of external volumes which are configured to be mounted to external devices;

wherein the storage controller controls to store related data which are derived from one of the plurality of first volumes in a first external volume of the plurality of external volumes.

2. The storage system according to claim 1,

wherein a plurality of first volumes are allocated from a pool and the pool includes the plurality of external volumes,

wherein the storage controller controls to store the related data in the first external volume that is mounted from a first external storage system so that the related data which are derived from the one first volume of the plurality of first volumes are deduplicated by the first external storage system.

3. The storage system according to claim 2,

wherein the storage controller controls to store related data which are derived from another one of the plurality of first volumes in a second external volume of the plurality of external volumes;

and

wherein the second external volume is mounted from a second external storage system so that the related data which are derived from said another one first volume of the plurality of first volumes are deduplicated by the second external storage system.

4. The storage system according to claim 1,

wherein the related data which are derived from the one first volume of the plurality of first volumes are snapshots of the one first volume.

5. The storage system according to claim 1,

wherein the related data which are derived from the one first volume of the plurality of first volumes include backup of the one first volume.

6. A system comprising:

a plurality of nodes each having a node processor or and a node memory; and

a storage system having a storage controller which includes a processor and a memory;

wherein a first node of the plurality of nodes receives hash values each calculated by other nodes of the plurality of nodes, and determines data alignment based on the calculated hash values from the other nodes;

wherein the storage controller performs deduplication of data received from the other nodes, which are aligned by the first node according to the determined data alignment.

7. The system according to claim 6,

wherein a data size of deduplication performed by the other nodes of the plurality of nodes is smaller than a data size of deduplication performed by the storage controller.

8. The system according to claim 6,

wherein the first node is a meta data server which includes meta data and locations of files stored in the plurality of nodes.

9. The system according to claim 6,

wherein the first node sorts the hash values and, for data having the same hash values, migrates deduplication pool pages in the nodes having the same hash values to a same virtual volume page in the storage system.

10. The system according to claim 6,

wherein the storage system includes a plurality of pool volumes and a plurality of volumes allocated from the plurality of pool volumes;

wherein the plurality of pool volumes in the storage system include a plurality of external volumes which are mounted to volumes in the plurality of nodes; and

wherein the plurality of volumes in the storage system include volumes that are mounted by the nodes.

11. A storage system comprising:

a storage controller including a processor and a memory; and

a plurality of pool volumes;

wherein the storage controller receives object data from a server and allocates the object data to the plurality of pool volumes;

wherein the plurality of pool volumes include a plurality of external volumes which are configured to be mounted to external devices;

wherein the storage controller controls to store the object data to the plurality of pool volumes based on object allocation information received from a backup server.

12. The storage system according to claim 11,

wherein a first pool volume of the plurality of pool volumes is mounted from a first external storage system so that the object data allocated to the first pool volume are deduplicated by the first external storage system.

13. The storage system according to claim 11,

wherein the object allocation information comprises object classification and alignment information derived from location and relation information of each backup data in the storage system.

14. The storage system according to claim 13,

wherein, based on the object classification and alignment information, the storage controller selects same classification objects from the object data, finds same capacity pool pages of the selected same classification objects, selects capacity pool pages in one of the external volumes of the plurality of pool volumes, and migrates the found same capacity pool pages of the selected same classification objects to the selected capacity pool pages in the one external volume.