Solid-state disk (SSD) management

• US 9,195,588 B2
• Filed: 11/02/2010
• Issued: 11/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Cepulis, Darren J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Sadler, Nathan
• Application Number:
  US13/822,249
• Publication Number:
  US 20130179631A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,848 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0246 in block erasable memory, e.g. flash memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2206/1012 Load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/7211 Wear leveling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0616 in relation to life time, e.g. increasing Mean Time Between Failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0635 by changing the path, e.g. traffic rerouting, path reconfiguration
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0644 Management of space entities, e.g. partitions, extents, pools
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0653 Monitoring storage devices or systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0679 Non-volatile semiconductor memory device, e.g. flash memory, one time programmable memory [OTP]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0688 Non-volatile semiconductor memory arrays
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G11C 16/3495 Circuits or methods to detect or delay wearout of nonvolatile EPROM or EEPROM memory devices, e.g. by counting numbers of erase or reprogram cycles, by using multiple memory areas serially or cyclically

Abstract

SSD wear-level data (320) is generated on managed nodes (202) having SSDs (206). The wear-level data is collected by a management node (204).

Claims

1. A method comprising:

generating solid-state disk (SSD) wear-level data on managed nodes having SSDs;

collecting said SSD wear-level data on a management node; and

balancing, by at least one of said managed nodes, loads among other ones of said managed nodes as a function of said wear-level data.

2. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein said collecting further includes storing in a database of SSD wear data including said SSD wear-level data in association with data identifying an associated SSD and an associated managed node including the associated SSD.

3. The method as recited in claim 2 further comprising computing wear-rate data and storing it in said database as part of said SSD wear-level data.

4. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising planning a workload redistribution at least in part as a function of said SSD wear-level data.

5. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising making purchase recommendations at least in part as a function of said SSD wear-level data.

6. The process as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

determining a frequency of writes to an SSD of the SSDs; and

determining a recommendation to replace the SSD with a hard disk or a replacement SSD, wherein if performance is determined to be less than maximal according to the frequency of writes, the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the hard drive;

otherwise the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the replacement SSD.

7. A computer system comprising:

a management node having an SSD data manager to collect SSD wear-level data from managed nodes having SSDs, said management node including a processor, communications devices, and storage media,

wherein said management node includes an SSD purchase agent to determine a frequency of writes to an SSD of the SSDs, and make a recommendation to replace the SSD with a hard disk or a replacement SSD, and if performance is determined to be less than maximal according to the frequency of writes, the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the hard drive;

otherwise the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the replacement SSD, and

wherein at least one of said managed nodes is to balance loads among other ones of said managed nodes at least in part as a function of said wear-level data.

8. The computer system as recited in claim 7 wherein the SSD purchase agent determines to replace the SSD based on SSD wear-level rate of the SSD.

9. The computer system as recited in claim 7 wherein said management node includes a workload manager to plan workload redistributions on said managed node at least in part as a function of said SSD wear-level data.

10. A managed node of a plurality of managed nodes, each having an SSD, the managed node comprising a processor to collect SSD wear-level data from other ones of the plurality of managed nodes, and balance loads among the ones of said managed nodes as a function of said SSD wear-level data of the other ones of said managed nodes.

11. The managed node as recited in claim 10 wherein a management node is to collect SSD wear-level data of the plurality of managed nodes, including said SSD wear-level data of the other ones of said managed nodes, and to plan workload redistributions so as to stagger the times at which useful lives of the SSDs of the plurality of managed nodes are projected to end.

12. The managed node as recited in claim 11 wherein the management node is to make recommendations regarding purchase of replacement SSDs for said managed nodes at least in part as a function of said SSD wear-level data of the plurality of managed nodes.

13. The management node as recited in claim 11, wherein the management node is to determine a frequency of writes to an SSD of the SSDs, and make a recommendation to replace the SSD with a hard disk or a replacement SSD,

wherein if performance is determined to be less than maximal according to the frequency of writes, the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the hard drive;

otherwise the recommendation is to replace the SSD with the replacement SSD.