System and method for a reserved memory area shared by all redundant storage controllers
First Claim
1. A storage area network comprising:
- a plurality of loosely-coupled storage controllers arranged in a redundant configuration to provide, to a plurality of servers, access to virtualized storage, wherein one of the storage controllers operates as a master storage controller and the other storage controller or controllers operate as slave storage controllers; and
means, accessible by all storage controllers, for storing information relating to a configuration of the storage area network;
wherein the storage area network comprises a plurality of physical disk drives coupled to a respective back-end of each of the storage controllers, said physical disk drives being configured to provide the virtualized storage; and
the means for storing comprises a respective portion on each one of the physical disk drives, wherein the information relating to the configuration is stored in each of the respective portions.
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Abstract
A fibre channel storage area network (SAN) provides virtualized storage space for a number of servers to a number of virtual disks implemented on various virtual redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) devices striped across a plurality of physical disk drives. The SAN includes plural controllers and communication paths to allow for fail-safe and fail-over operation. The plural controllers can be loosely-coupled to provide n-way redundancy and have more than one independent channel for communicating with one another. In the event of a failure involving a controller or controller interface, the virtual disks that are accessed via the affected interfaces are re-mapped to another interface in order to continue to provide high data availability. In particular, a common memory storage device is connected to the back-ends of every controller to provide a storage area. In this manner, the common memory storage device can be accessed via operations similar to those a controller already uses to presently access the physical disks which are connected to the back-end of the controllers.
1561 Citations
9 Claims
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1. A storage area network comprising:
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a plurality of loosely-coupled storage controllers arranged in a redundant configuration to provide, to a plurality of servers, access to virtualized storage, wherein one of the storage controllers operates as a master storage controller and the other storage controller or controllers operate as slave storage controllers; and means, accessible by all storage controllers, for storing information relating to a configuration of the storage area network; wherein the storage area network comprises a plurality of physical disk drives coupled to a respective back-end of each of the storage controllers, said physical disk drives being configured to provide the virtualized storage; and the means for storing comprises a respective portion on each one of the physical disk drives, wherein the information relating to the configuration is stored in each of the respective portions. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A method, in a storage area network comprising plural loosely-coupled redundant controllers, for providing a common information area, the method comprising the steps of:
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arranging the controllers to include a master controller and one or more slave controllers; allocating a respective storage portion on each of a plurality of physical disk drives which are coupled to a respective back-end of each controller; storing in each respective storage portion a respective copy of information relating to a configuration of the controllers; and permitting each controller to have read access to all of the respective storage portions. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9)
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Specification