BLOCK LEVEL STORAGE
First Claim
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1. A storage system, comprising:
- a front-end processing subsystem to receive block level storage requests; and
a plurality of back-end storage nodes coupled to said front-end subsystem, each of said back-end storage nodes comprising a storage device and an independent block manager to create, read, update and delete data blocks on said storage device;
wherein said front-end processing subsystem is to maintain a block reference data structure that is usable by the front-end processing subsystem to access the back-end data storage nodes to provide balancing, redundancy, and scalability to the storage system.
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Abstract
A storage system comprises a front-end processing subsystem to receive block level storage requests and a plurality of back-end storage nodes coupled to the front-end subsystem. Each of the back-end storage nodes comprises a storage device and a block manager to create, read, update and delete data blocks on the storage device. The front-end processing subsystem maintains a plurality of block reference data structures that are usable by the front-end processing subsystem to access the back-end data storage nodes to provide balancing, redundancy, and scalability to the storage system.
25 Citations
15 Claims
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1. A storage system, comprising:
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a front-end processing subsystem to receive block level storage requests; and a plurality of back-end storage nodes coupled to said front-end subsystem, each of said back-end storage nodes comprising a storage device and an independent block manager to create, read, update and delete data blocks on said storage device; wherein said front-end processing subsystem is to maintain a block reference data structure that is usable by the front-end processing subsystem to access the back-end data storage nodes to provide balancing, redundancy, and scalability to the storage system. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11)
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- 2. The storage system of claim 2 wherein said block reference data structure includes a primary block reference table that includes a reference for each data block stored on the plurality of back-end storage subsystems.
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12. A storage system, comprising:
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a front-end processing subsystem to receive block level storage requests; and a plurality of back-end storage nodes coupled to said front-end subsystem, each back-end storage subsystem comprising a storage device and an independent block manager to create, read, update and delete data blocks on said storage node; wherein said front-end processing subsystem is to access a block reference data structure to access the back-end data storage systems to determine which back-end storage nodes to access to complete received block level storage requests. - View Dependent Claims (13)
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14. A method, comprising:
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receiving a write block access request for a read-only block of data; determining whether the block of data is to be copied upon writing the block of data; allocating a first new block of data on a first back-end storage node; writing the data to the first new allocated block of data; allocating a second new block of data on another back-end storage node; and copying contents of the first new allocated block of data from the first back-end storage node to the second new allocated block of data on the other back-end storage node. - View Dependent Claims (15)
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Specification