COALESCING CONFIGURATION ENGINE, COALESCING CONFIGURATION TOOL AND FILE SYSTEM FOR STORAGE SYSTEM

• US 20170024325A1
• Filed: 04/12/2016
• Published: 01/26/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/16/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Gu, Cory Zhongyan, Zou, Colin Yong, Liu, Ried Ruifang
• Granted Patent: US 10,209,923 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0659 Command handling arrangements, e.g. command buffers, queues, command scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method, a coalescing configuration engine, a coalescing configuration tool and a file system for a storage system, and comprises at least one initiator, each initiator accessing a corresponding storage space in the storage system via at least one virtual logic unit number LUN by executing in parallel a plurality of configuration operations, wherein each configuration operation is used to configure a mapping relationship between the at least one virtual LUN and the at least one initiator.

Claims

1. A method for a storage system, the storage system comprising at least one initiator, each initiator accessing a corresponding storage space in the storage system via at least one virtual logic unit number LUN, the method comprising:

executing in parallel a plurality of configuration operations, wherein each configuration operation of the plurality of configuration operations is used to configure a mapping between at least one virtual LUN and at least one initiator.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein executing in parallel a plurality of configuration operations comprises:

executing in parallel the plurality of configuration operations based on a coalesced configuration request, wherein the coalesced configuration request is generated by coalescing a plurality of configuration requests, and the plurality of configuration requests correspond to the plurality of configuration operations.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein executing in parallel the plurality of configuration operations based on a coalesced configuration request comprises:

receiving a message indicating that the coalesced configuration request may be used; and

in response to receiving the message, retrieving the coalesced configuration request from a shared memory, and executing in parallel the plurality of configuration operations based on the coalesced configuration request.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein executing in parallel the plurality of configuration operations based on a coalesced configuration request comprises:

in response to retrieving the coalesced configuration request from the shared memory, performing a coalescing lock to input/output operations;

in response to the coalescing lock to the input/output operations, executing in parallel the plurality of configuration operations; and

releasing the coalescing lock to the input/output operations.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein each configuration operation comprises at least one from the group consisting of:

creating an access group, removing an access group, creating a virtual LUN, removing a virtual LUN, adding an initiator into an access group, removing an initiator from an access group, adding a virtual LUN into an access group, or removing a virtual LUN from an access group.

6. A method for a storage system, the storage system comprising at least one initiator, each initiator accessing a corresponding storage space in the storage system via at least one virtual logic unit number LUN, the method comprising:

buffering a plurality of configuration requests, wherein each configuration request from the plurality of configuration requests corresponds to one configuration operation, and each configuration operation is used to configure a mapping between at least one virtual LUN and at least one initiator; and

coalescing the plurality of configuration requests to generate a coalesced configuration request.

7. The method according to claim 6, further comprising:

loading the coalesced configuration request into a shared memory, and

transmitting a message indicating that the coalesced configuration request may be used.

8. The method according to claim 6, wherein each configuration operation comprises at least one from the group consisting of:

creating an access group, removing an access group, creating a virtual LUN, removing a virtual LUN, adding an initiator into an access group, removing an initiator from an access group, adding a virtual LUN into an access group, or removing a virtual LUN from an access group.

9. A method for a storage system, the storage system comprising at least one initiator, each initiator accessing a corresponding storage space in the storage system via at least one virtual logical unit number LUN, the method comprises:

providing a tree directory structure, wherein the tree directory structure comprises at least one initiator directory and at least one virtual LUN directory, each initiator directory corresponds to one initiator, and each virtual LUN directory corresponds to one virtual LUN; and

providing at least one file system interface for configuring the tree directory structure.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the at least one file system interface comprises a file system interface for executing in parallel a plurality of configuration operations, and each configuration operation being used to configure a mapping between the at least one virtual LUN and the at least one initiator.

11. The method according to claim 9, wherein the tree directory structure further comprises at least one client directory, each client directory corresponding to one client.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein the client directory is a sub-directory of a root directory, the initiator directory is a sub-directory of the client directory, and the virtual LUN directory is a sub-directory of the initiator directory.

13. The method according to claim 11, wherein the at least one file system interface comprises a file system interface for at least one from the group consisting of:

adding or removing a client under the root directory, setting or querying the type or ID of an initiator or a target port ID under an initiator directory, adding or removing a virtual LUN under an initiator directory, setting or querying the type and size of a virtual LUN under a virtual LUN directory, querying a state of a virtual LUN under a virtual LUN directory, or setting or querying a thin provision attribute and redundant attribute of a virtual LUN under a virtual LUN directory.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein the state of the virtual LUN comprises at least one from the group consisting of:

an operation state, a pause state, and an error state.

15-19. -19. (canceled)