Fault-Tolerant Data Storage Partitioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Large-scale data storage systems face challenges in fault tolerance and recovery due to the risk of hardware failures, which can lead to long downtime and potential loss of data, especially when data and metadata are spread across numerous devices.
Innovation Solution
The system partitions a large data collection into multiple independent, fault-contained partitions, allowing for localized failure management and quick recovery of affected partitions using a restore-at-replica process, where each partition includes metadata for the entire file system, enabling self-identification and independent operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If data is stored as a single large collection across many storage devices, then storage capacity and deduplication efficiency are improved, but fault tolerance deteriorates and recovery time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the large storage collection into multiple independent partitions, each capable of operating autonomously. When a failure occurs, only the affected partition needs to be recovered while others remain accessible, thus maintaining fault tolerance without sacrificing storage capacity. This segmentation allows the system to scale storage while preserving reliability through localized failure containment.
2Quantity of substance
If data is stored as a single large collection, then deduplication efficiency is improved, but recovery time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The storage system is divided into partitions that can be independently recovered. When a failure occurs, only the affected partition needs to be restored rather than the entire collection, dramatically reducing recovery time while maintaining deduplication efficiency within each partition.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements restore-at-replica capability where backup copies of partitions are maintained in advance. When a partition fails, the system can quickly restore it from the replica without needing to recover the entire collection, reducing recovery time while preserving deduplication benefits.
3Quantity of substance
If more storage devices are added to increase capacity, then storage scalability is improved, but likelihood of failure increases
Solution Approach 1:
By organizing storage into independent partitions, the patent allows the system to scale by adding more devices while containing failure risk within individual partitions. Each partition operates independently, so failures in one partition do not propagate to others, enabling scalability without proportionally increasing system-wide failure probability.
Data Source
AI summary
According to one embodiment, a large scale data storage system with fault tolerance is described. In one example, a system includes a plurality of storage partitions, each partition including a portion of a large scale data store, and metadata corresponding to the portion of the large scale data store. At least one partition includes namespace metadata for the large scale data store including namespace data for a portion of the large scale data store outside the at least one partition.