Grid Storage System with Redundancy Objects for Failover
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current fault-tolerant data storage systems, such as RAID, face challenges in ensuring data integrity and availability due to the risk of concurrent failures as disk array sizes and densities increase, and may not adequately address damage or failure of components outside the storage subsystem.
Innovation Solution
A storage system with a storage control grid and multiple data servers, where each logical block address is assigned to a primary and secondary server, generating a redundancy object for failover in case of primary server failure, allowing seamless data and metadata handling and storage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If disk array sizes and densities are increased to provide more storage capacity, then storage capacity is improved, but the likelihood of concurrent failures increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-calculating and pre-storing redundancy data (parity information) across multiple disk drives before any failure occurs. This allows the system to have recovery capabilities already in place, enabling quick restoration without needing to react to failures as they happen.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of data distribution by implementing RAID 6 protection schemes that spread data and redundancy information across multiple disk drives in specific patterns. This includes using two different parity calculation methods and distributing parity portions across different drives to optimize both capacity utilization and failure tolerance.
2Reliability
If RAID protection schemes are implemented to protect against drive failures, then data protection is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments data into multiple portions and distributes them across different disk drives. Each drive stores a specific portion of the data or redundancy information, allowing the system to protect against multiple simultaneous failures while maintaining manageable complexity through organized data distribution.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates copies of data and redundancy information across multiple disk drives. By maintaining multiple copies and parity portions distributed across the array, the system ensures data can be recovered even if multiple drives fail, while the copying mechanism provides a straightforward implementation approach.
3Reliability
If multiple copies of data are stored across nodes in the grid, then fault tolerance is improved, but storage efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter of redundancy storage by using RAID 6 protection schemes that require only two redundancy portions per group of data portions, regardless of the total number of drives. This allows efficient use of storage space while maintaining the ability to tolerate multiple simultaneous failures across the grid nodes.
Data Source
AI summary
The is provided a storage system comprising a plurality of disk units adapted to store data at respective ranges of logical block addresses (LBAs), said addresses constituting an entire address space, and a storage control grid operatively connected to the plurality of disk units and comprising a plurality of data servers. The method of operating the storage system comprises: a) configuring a first data server to have a primary responsibility over a certain range of LBAs, b) configuring a second data server to have a secondary responsibility over said certain range of LBAs and to overtake the primary responsibility over said certain range of LBAs if the first server fails; c) responsive to a request to one or more LBAs within said certain range of LBAs, generating a primary cache object in the first data server and generating a redundancy object in the second data server; d) deleting said redundancy object upon successful permanent storing of data and/or metadata corresponding to said request, said storing provided by the first data server, e) if operation d) fails, using said redundancy object by the second server for providing permanent storing said data and/or metadata when overtaking primary responsibility, wherein said redundancy object is derivation of the primary cache object and need to be reconstructed in order to enable overtaking the responsibility.