INTEGRATED STORAGE APPLIANCE

• US 20070192475A1
• Filed: 04/24/2007
• Published: 08/16/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hulu LLC (The Walt Disney Company)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Flynn, John, Nguyen, Lu, Iyer, Balakrishna, Hacigumus, Vahit, DAS, Sanjoy, Aubert, Dante
• Granted Patent: US 7,624,170 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2023 Failover techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2046 where the redundant components share persistent storage G06F11/2043 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2097 maintaining the standby controller/processing unit updated initialisation or re-synchronisation thereof G06F11/1658 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 370/902 Packet switching

Abstract

A system and method for providing an integrated storage appliance is disclosed. The storage appliance includes a front-end processor cluster, a storage subsystem coupled to the processor cluster, and a customizable software stack executed by the processor cluster, wherein the customizable software stack includes an operating system and storage-intensive application software.

Claims

1. A storage appliance comprising:

a storage subsystem;

a processor cluster coupled to the storage subsystem; and

a customizable software stack that includes storage-access application software executed by the processor cluster, wherein components of the subsystem, processor cluster and software stack are integrated such that the storage appliance exhibits greater combined reliability, higher availability, and higher serviceability characteristics than would be provided by a sum of the characteristics of unintegrated components.

2. The appliance of claim 1 wherein the processor cluster includes a plurality of processors coupled to a data communications network.

3. The appliance of claim 2 wherein the processor cluster and the storage subsystem are interconnected by an internal storage area network.

4. The appliance of claim 3 wherein the storage subsystem includes a housing and an internal power distribution system, the front-end processor cluster being physically located within the storage subsystem housing and integrated with the power distribution system.

5. The appliance of claim 4 wherein the power distribution system is split into two, where a first power supply powers the storage subsystem, and a second power supply powers the processor cluster at a voltage appropriate for the processors.

6. The appliance of claim 5 wherein the first power supply produces 220V 3-phase power and the second power supply produces 110V 2-phase power.

7. The appliance of claim 6 where the multiple powered components are turned on in a correct sequence such that at the end of the power on sequence all the components are correctly initialized and ready to deliver service.

8. The appliance of claim 6 wherein the processor cluster provides network access to data stored in the storage subsystem.

9. The appliance of claim 4 wherein the storage subsystem performs block storage serving, and the processor cluster performs file serving and application serving for remote clients.

10. The appliance of claim 9 wherein the customizable software stack further includes HTTP, data management, and diagnostic and monitoring software.

11. The appliance of claim 9 wherein the processor clusters includes at least three clusters, and wherein the customizable software stack is loaded such that one cluster performs functions of a data access server, one cluster performs functions of HTTP server, and one cluster performs functions of a monitoring and backup server.

12. An integrated storage appliance, comprising:

a storage subsystem for storing data;

embedded processors within the storage subsystem;

a storage area network for interconnecting the processors and the storage subsystem;

a storage-access application executing on the embedded processors for interfacing with the storage subsystem; and

a data communications network coupled to the processors, such that I/O intensive requests from a plurality of clients are received over the local area network by the embedded processors and serviced by the integrated storage appliance.

13. The appliance of claim 12 wherein the I/O requests are sent by the clients using a web-based interface that is supported by the local area network.

14. The appliance of claim 13 wherein the embedded processors are paired to form respective clusters, wherein a first processor in the cluster is a production processor and a second processor in the cluster is a standby processor.

15. The appliance of claim 14 wherein the storage subsystem includes a housing and an internal power distribution system, and the embedded processors are physically located within the storage subsystem housing and integrated with the power distribution system.

16. The appliance of claim 15 wherein the power distribution system is split into two, where a first power supply powers the storage subsystem, and a second power supply powers the embedded processors at a voltage appropriate for the processors.

17. The appliance of claim 16 wherein the first power supply produces 220V 3-phase power and the second power supply produces 110V 2-phase power.

18. The appliance of claim 15 wherein the storage subsystem performs block storage serving, and the clustered processors provide file serving and application serving for remote clients.

19. The appliance of claim 18 wherein the storage intensive application further includes HTTP, data management, and diagnostic and monitoring software.

20. The appliance of claim 19 wherein the storage appliance includes at least three processor clusters, and wherein the storage-access application is loaded such that one cluster performs functions of a data access server, one cluster performs functions of HTTP server, and one cluster performs functions of a monitoring and backup server.

21. The appliance of claim 12 wherein multiple integrated storage appliances are coupled to a network.

22. A method for providing a storage appliance, comprising the steps of:

acquiring a storage subsystem for storing data;

integrating a plurality of processor nodes into the storage subsystem; and

loading a customizable software stack on the processor node that provides clients with a web-based interface to the data in the storage subsystem, wherein the storage appliance are integrated such that the storage appliance exhibits higher reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) characteristics than a sum of the RAS characteristics for the separate components of the storage appliance.

24. The system of claim 22 wherein the network storage system is implemented as a three-tier software architecture, including a presentation layer, an application layer, and a storage layer.

23. A network storage system comprising:

a client connected to a network and running at least one software application; and

an storage server coupled to the network, the storage server for providing storage for the client and for allowing the client to access data stored on the storage server using HTTP protocol as though the data was stored locally on the client, wherein when a file is being uploaded from the client software application to the storage server, the file is encoded prior to transmission and decoded by the storage server to eliminate interference by HTTP protocol.

25. The system of claim 23 wherein the client software application is a presentation tool in the presentation layer.

26. The system of claim 23 further including a web server to handle HTTP requests from the client and to deliver HTTP responses to client from the storage server.

27. The system of claim 25 wherein the application layer is responsible for dynamic HTML generation, user authentication and session management.

28. The system of claim 26 wherein the application layer includes java servlets and a log database.

29. The system of claim 27 wherein transactions between the clients and the storage server are recorded in the log database.

30. The system of claim 28 wherein the storage layer is located in the storage server and communicates with the application layer through SCSI protocol.

31. The system of claim 25 wherein a client'"'"'s HTTP file download request triggers a corresponding servlet request, which in turn, issues a storage request to the storage layer, such that the storage layer reads the corresponding file and sends the file back to the application layer, which transforms it into servlet output stream and sends the steam to the client.

32. The system of claim 30 wherein the storage server has a user interface that includes links that allows a user of the client to upload/download files, compress the files, encrypt/decrypt files, delete files, and view information.

33. The system of claim 31 wherein a file upload function reads a file from the client, transforms the file into an encoded ServletInputStream file, transfers the ServeletInputStream across the network to a file server, which then accepts, decodes the ServerletInputStream, and stores the ServerletInputStream'"'"'s file contents in the storage server.

34. The system of claim 32 wherein the file is encoded, compressed and encrypted prior to transmission.