Content Addressable Storage Array for Block-Level Deduplication
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data storage systems face inefficiencies due to the duplication of data during backup operations, leading to wasteful consumption of storage resources, and content addressable storage systems are hindered by slow write operations caused by computationally intensive hash computations at the file level.
Innovation Solution
A content addressable storage array element (CASAE) performs computations on each data block to prevent duplicate storage by using a hashing function to determine if data already exists, allowing it to provide a reference to existing data instead of duplicating it, thereby optimizing storage and improving performance by distributing computations across multiple storage bricks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of substance
If content addressable storage computation is performed at the file level, then duplicate data can be eliminated, but write operations become slow due to computationally intensive hash computations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the storage system into multiple storage bricks, each independently performing content addressable storage computations on data blocks. This segmentation allows parallel processing of hash computations across different storage bricks, eliminating the bottleneck of centralized file-level computation and significantly improving write operation speed while maintaining duplicate data elimination capability.
2Reliability
If data is stored redundantly across RAID groups, then data reliability is enhanced, but storage efficiency decreases due to duplicate data consumption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the content addressable storage deduplication function with the RAID redundancy system. By performing content addressable storage computation on each data block before writing to RAID groups, the system identifies and eliminates duplicate data blocks across the entire storage array. This ensures that redundant storage capacity is used only for necessary RAID parity and replication, not for duplicate user data, thereby improving storage efficiency while maintaining data reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
A content addressable storage array element (CASAE) of a storage system is configured to eliminate duplicate data stored on its storage resources. The CASAE independently determines whether data associated with a write operation has already been written to a location on its storage resources. To that end, the CASAE performs a content addressable storage computation on each data block written to those resources in order to prevent storage of two or more blocks with the same data. If data of a block has been previously stored on the resources, the CASAE cooperates with a file system executing on the system to provide a reference (block pointer) to the same data block rather than duplicate the stored data. Otherwise, the CASAE stores the data block at a new location on the resources and provides a block pointer to that location.