731 results about "Block number" patented technology

At least certain embodiments disclose a method, system and apparatus for relocating data between tiers of storage media in a hybrid storage aggregate encompassing multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media including a file system to automatically relocate the data between tiers. The hybrid storage aggregate includes one or more volumes, each volume including a volume block number space spanning at least a first-tier of storage media and a second tier of storage media of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media and the hybrid storage aggregate further includes a control module to cooperatively manage the tiers of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media and a file system coupled with the control module, the file system including a policy module configured to make policy decisions based on a set of one or more policies and configured to automatically relocate data between different tiers of the multiple tiers of heterogeneous physical storage media based on the set of policies.

A system and method for creating computer system backups, particularly well-suited for performing backups of virtual machines. The method starts by reading the current state of the machine, in blocks of a constant size, and creates a “FULL” index of block numbers and a hash value associated with the data within that block, while at the same time creating a FULL backup of the machine (the FULL backup then stored at an off-site target location). Once the FULL index map is defined, subsequent DELTA backups are created by reading the current state of the device in the same block fashion and generating updated hash values for each data block. The newly-generated hash values are compared against the values stored in the FULL index map. If the hash numbers for a particular block do not match, this is an indication that the data within that block has changed since the last FULL backup was created. Once all of the “changed” data blocks have been identified to form a DELTA backup, a communication connection is opened in the network and the DELTA backup is sent to the off-site target location.

A flash memory controller on a PCIE bus controls flash-memory modules on a flash bus. The flash-memory modules are plane-interleaved using interleaved bits extracted from the lowest bits of the logical block index. These plane-interleave bits are split into a LSB and a MSB, with middle physical block bits between the LSB and MSB. A physical sequential address counter generates a physical block number by incrementing the plane-interleave bits before the middle physical block bits, and then relocating the MSB to above the middle physical block bits. This causes blocks to be accessed in a low-high sequence of 0, 1, 4096, 4097, 2, 3, 4098, 4099, etc. in the four planes of flash memory. A RAM physical page valid table tracks valid pages in the four planes, while a RAM mapping table stores the plane, block, and page addresses for logical sectors generated by the physical sequential address counter.

A file system layout apportions an underlying physical volume into one or more virtual volumes (vvols) of a storage system. The underlying physical volume is an aggregate comprising one or more groups of disks, such as RAID groups, of the storage system. The aggregate has its own physical volume block number (pvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that pvbn space. Each vvol has its own virtual volume block number (vvbn) space and maintains metadata, such as block allocation structures, within that vvbn space. Notably, the block allocation structures of a vvol are sized to the vvol, and not to the underlying aggregate, to thereby allow operations that manage data served by the storage system (e.g., snapshot operations) to efficiently work over the vvols. The file system layout extends the file system layout of a conventional write anywhere file layout system implementation, yet maintains performance properties of the conventional implementation.

A RAM mapping table is restored from flash memory using plane, block, and page addresses generated by a physical sequential address counter. The RAM mapping table is restored following a plane-interleaved sequence generated by the physical sequential address counter using interleaved bits extracted from the lowest bits of the logical block index. These plane-interleave bits are split into a LSB and a MSB, with middle physical block bits between the LSB and MSB. The physical sequential address counter generates a physical block number by incrementing the plane-interleave bits before the middle physical block bits, and then relocating the MSB to above the middle physical block bits. This causes blocks to be accessed in a low-high sequence of 0, 1, 4096, 4097, 2, 3, 4098, 4099, etc. in the four planes of flash memory. Background recycling and ECC writes are also performed.

This invention discloses a flash file system management method, which comprises the following steps: to divide the flash memory into FAT area and data memory area; to establish the space mapping form and to write the data block of each file into the block; to write the new file ID, block number, file researching number into the record; then to orderly write each data block into the spare block and to write each data block number into relative positions of the space mapping form; only to operate the file data memory area when updating file data; to identify the place of the data to be read when reading the data for searching the data block.

A system integrates an intelligent storage switch with a flexible virtualization system to enable efficient service of file and block protocol data access requests for information stored on the system. A storage operating system executing on a storage system coupled to the switch implements the virtualization system to provide a unified view of storage to clients by logically organizing the information as named files, directories and logical unit numbers. The virtualization system is illustratively embodied as a file system having a write allocator configured to provide a flexible block numbering policy that addresses volume management capabilities, such as storage virtualization, at a finer granularity (e.g., a single block) than that of previous non-flexible storage virtualization schemes. The flexible block numbering policy also yields substantial benefits in terms of increased write efficiency and elimination of storage “hot spots”, as well as a compelling point-in-time read-only data image (snapshot) mechanism.

A technique maps the capacity of storage devices, such as disks, into any RAID group of a volume of a storage system regardless of the location of the RAID group within a volume block number (VBN) space of the volume. The technique separates disks and mapped VBN ranges, allowing for flexibility in the description and extension of RAID group capacities, while providing disk addition policies that support location-independent disk insertion into RAID groups. The technique also provides a disk label structure that supports the provision of multiple VBN ranges within a RAID group and within individual disks. Moreover, the technique provides file system support for allocation and topology management of the multiple mapped VBN ranges within disks and RAID groups, as well as noncontiguous VBN ranges across the RAID groups in the volume.

A smart flash drive has one or more levels of smart storage switches and a lower level of single-chip flash devices (SCFD's). A SCFD contains flash memory and controllers that perform low-level bad-block mapping and wear-leveling and logical-to-physical block mapping. The SCFD report their capacity, arrangement, and maximum wear-level count (WLC) and bad block number (BBN) to the upstream smart storage switch, which stores this information in a structure register. The smart storage switch selects the SCFD with the maximum BBN as the target and the SCFD with the lowest maximum WLC as the source of a swap for wear leveling when a WLC exceeds a threshold that rises over time. A top-level smart storage switch receives consolidated capacity, arrangement, WLC, and BBN information from lower-level smart storage switch. Data is striped and optionally scrambled by Redundant Array of Individual Disks (RAID) controllers in all levels of smart storage switches.

Roughly described, a tiered storage system has a filesystem that promotes and demotes data among tiers at block granularity. It maintains a logical-to-physical mapping which indicates for each block in a file both the assigned tier and the physical block number within the tier. Methods for performing file- and block-level manipulations are described. In an embodiment, a nominal tier is managed by a native filesystem, and higher tiers are managed by a super filesystem. The super filesystem manages promotion and demotion among the tiers, interfacing with higher tiers directly but interfacing with the nominal tier only through the native filesystem. The native filesystem defines the file namespace in the system, and the logical-to-physical block mapping for blocks in the nominal tier. The super filesystem defines the logical-to-physical mapping for blocks in the higher tiers, but retains the file identification information as defined by the native filesystem.

A method and system are configured for synchronous broadcast communications by applying signature keys using hashing functions. Each subsequent transmission in a sequence includes a signature key that can be verified by hashing to a preceding signature key from a previous portion of the sequence. The first transmission in the sequence is signed using a signature key that is known by the client device, typically verified using some other mechanism such as asymmetric key signatures. Each client device can utilize an internal counter for the current time or the block number in the transmission sequence to maintain synchronized transmissions in the even that a particular portion of the sequence is missed, and to validate signature keys. Since the signature keys can be validated when they are received but not predicted before they are received, the transmission is difficult to attack while synchronization is maintained.

The invention discloses a data access method, a data access device and a data access system. The method comprises the following steps that: an access request containing a block number identifier is received; a pre-established local block unit searches the corresponding relation between the block number of the local block unit and storage node resource information providing storage services according to the block number to obtain a storage node position corresponding to the block number identifier and a block data identifier; and the local block unit sends the data access request to the storage node according to the storage node position corresponding to the block number identifier and the block data identifier, wherein the storage node resource information comprises the storage node position information and the block number identifier of a storage node. By the method, the device and the system, the problem that a metadata server becomes a bottleneck of the system because the current distributed file system is required to address through the metadata server at every access is solved, and the access efficiency is low is overcome.

A CIR measuring section 307 measures CIRs of all blocks received and a block selection section 308 makes a threshold decision based on the CIR measurement result and threshold information according to an amount of traffic in the own cell and neighboring cells. As a result of the threshold decision, blocks whose CIRs exceed the threshold are regarded as usable blocks. A CIR averaging section 309 averages the CIRs of the usable blocks and a CQI generation section 310 generates a CQI based on the CIR average value. The CQI generated and selected block numbers are reported to a base station apparatus. This allows the throughput of the own cell and neighboring cells to be improved.

A program product and method of compiling a computer program to optimize performance of a computer program. First, after initialization, a profiling run is done on computer code which may include program code blocks and program data. Execution of each computer program step is monitored and each occurrence of each individual code unit is logged, e.g. each instruction block or block of data. Frequently occurring code units are identified periodically as hot blocks. An initial snapshot of hot blocks is logged, e.g., when identified hot blocks exceed an initial block number. Profiling continues until the profiling run is complete, updating identified hot blocks and logging a new current snapshot whenever a current set of identified hot blocks contains a selected percentage of different hot blocks. Snapshots are selected as representative to different program modes. The program is optimized according to program modes.

The subkey data generating unit 101 has two different subkey key generation processes. When encrypting a (T*n)^th plaintex block (where T denotes a predetermined cycle and n is a positive integer), sixteen sets of subkey data are generated. In all other cases, two sets of subkey data are generated. The encrypting unit 100 encrypts the plaintex using the generated sixteen or two sets of subkey data.

A method for dependency broadcasting through a block organized source view data structure. The method includes receiving an incoming instruction sequence using a global front end; grouping the instructions to form instruction blocks; using a plurality of register templates to track instruction destinations and instruction sources by populating the register template with block numbers corresponding to the instruction blocks, wherein the block numbers corresponding to the instruction blocks indicate interdependencies among the blocks of instructions; populating a block organized source view data structure, wherein the source view data structure stores sources corresponding to the instruction blocks as recorded by the plurality of register templates; upon dispatch of one block of the instruction blocks, broadcasting a number belonging to the one block to a column of the source view data structure that relates that block and marking the column accordingly; and updating the dependency information of remaining instruction blocks in accordance with the broadcast.

The invention relates to a method for file delivery in a system capable of one-to-many transmission, the method comprising transferring one or more data blocks from a sender to at least one receiver, identifying a data block expected to be received but not received at all or incorrectly received at the receiver, and taking action to re-transmit said data block. In the method, said identification is performed on the basis of a block number, an encoding identifier and certain other identification information.

A method for executing blocks of instructions using a microprocessor architecture having a register view, source view, instruction view, and a plurality of register templates. The method includes receiving an incoming instruction sequence using a global front end; grouping the instructions to form instruction blocks; using a plurality of register templates to track instruction destinations and instruction sources by populating the register template with block numbers corresponding to the instruction blocks, wherein the block numbers corresponding to the instruction blocks indicate interdependencies among the blocks of instructions; using a register view data structure, wherein the register view data structure stores destinations corresponding to the instruction blocks; using a source view data structure, wherein the source view data structure stores sources corresponding to the instruction blocks; and using an instruction view data structure, wherein the instruction view data structure stores instructions corresponding to the instruction blocks.