Allocating clusters to storage partitions in a storage system

• US 7,953,927 B2
• Filed: 07/09/2009
• Issued: 05/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Nakamura, Shuji
• Primary Examiner(s): Chery; Mardochee
• Application Number:
  US12/499,909
• Publication Number:
  US 20090307419A1
• Time in Patent Office: 691 Days
• Field of Search: 711/173, 711/113, 711/E12.001, 711/E12.002, 711/E12.019
• 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. A storage system comprising:

a first disk device;

a first 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;

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; and

allocation information including physical resource information of said first disk said first disk device, said second disk device, said first control device, and said second control device,

wherein the storage system, by referring to the allocation information, is configured to;

accept a first request identifying first capacity to be assigned a first logical partition of said storage system,

receive a second request identifying second capacity to be assigned to a second logical partition of said storage system,

if the first capacity identified by the first request is smaller than capacity of the first cache memory, then assign the first capacity from the first cache memory to the first logical partition,

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, and

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 assign the second capacity from the second cache memory to the second logical partition.

2. The storage system according to claim 1, 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.

3. The storage system according to claim 1, wherein the first control device and the second control device are physically independent of each other.

4. The storage system according to claim 1, further comprising an administrator unit including a display screen for displaying information on the storage system.

5. The storage system according to claim 1, 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.

6. The storage system according to claim 1, 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.

7. The storage system according to claim 1, 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.

8. The storage system according to claim 1, 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 partitions 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.

9. The system according to claim 7, 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.

10. The storage system according to claim 4, wherein the administrator unit accepts an input number of logical partition.