System and method for emulating operating system metadata to provide cross-platform access to storage volumes

a storage volume and metadata technology, applied in the field of storage management, can solve the problems of not implementing simple logical partitioning in the driver of the disk, the application and file system may not cooperate with the underlying virtualization in advanced ways, and the problem of affecting the performance of the storage volume may be encountered

Inactive Publication Date: 2005-05-26
SYMANTEC OPERATING CORP
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  • Abstract
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  • Application Information

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Problems solved by technology

The disk driver also forms an abstraction barrier that makes it more difficult for applications and file systems to cooperate with the underlying virtualization in advanced ways.
Some UNIX-based operating systems from HP and IBM, however, do not implement simple logical partitioning in their disk drivers; instead, these operating systems include a virtualization layer that defines logical volumes that can subdivide or span disks in more flexible ways.
In the process of presenting the blocks of the block-virtual volumes directly to file systems or block-consuming applications, several problems may be encountered.
First, wit

Method used

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  • System and method for emulating operating system metadata to provide cross-platform access to storage volumes
  • System and method for emulating operating system metadata to provide cross-platform access to storage volumes
  • System and method for emulating operating system metadata to provide cross-platform access to storage volumes

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Embodiment Construction

[0028] Various embodiments of the system and method disclosed herein provide cross-platform accessibility of logical storage volumes that are encapsulated within and exported by various storage devices or systems. Typically, the storage devices or systems will export block devices using basic SCSI or other appropriate protocols in a way that is picked up by regular system disk drivers. Using the system and method disclosed herein, a logical volume which is defined externally to one or more hosts may be made available as that logical volume to the one or more hosts, even if those hosts use different operating systems and different kinds of disk drivers for accessing external storage. The system and method may be used with various kinds of storage networks and intelligent disk arrays that are locally attached to systems using various kinds of I / O buses. The system and method described herein may be referred to as “volume tunneling.”

[0029]FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary Storage Area Ne...

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Abstract

A method and system are provided for emulating operating system metadata to provide cross-platform access to storage volumes. The method may include generating operating system metadata for a storage device, wherein the operating system metadata emulates a storage volume hosted under a first operating system. The method may further include making the operating system metadata available to a host computer system, wherein the host computer system runs the first operating system. The operating system metadata enables the host computer system to recognize the storage device as the storage volume hosted under the first operating system.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] This invention is related to the field of storage management and, more particularly, to the integration of off-host storage virtualization with hosts in a heterogeneous computing environment. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] Modern enterprise computing environments are characterized by pressures for continuous availability and growth. These factors are driving the adoption of new approaches to computing and storage. Enterprise computing environments are increasingly using computer clusters, Storage Area Networks (SANs), and other centralized storage mechanisms to simplify storage, improve availability, and handle escalating demands for data and applications. [0005] Clustering may be defined as the use of multiple computers (e.g., PCs or UNIX workstations), multiple storage devices, and redundant interconnections to form what appears to external users as a single and highly available system. Clustering...

Claims

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Application Information

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IPC IPC(8): G06F3/06
CPCG06F3/0607G06F3/067G06F3/0664
Inventor KARR, RONALD S.KISELEV, OLEGMIROSCHNICHENKO, ALEX
Owner SYMANTEC OPERATING CORP
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