Autonomic Parity Exchange for Storage Failure Tolerance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data storage systems in cloud environments face challenges in maintaining high failure tolerance, especially when dealing with the loss of entire sets of storage elements, as existing solutions have reduced recovery capabilities for combined set and element losses, leading to deviations in logical and physical failure boundaries.
Innovation Solution
Configuring a storage array with multiple sets of storage elements using an erasure-correcting code that stores row and column parity information, allowing for parity exchange operations to rebuild data and maintain failure tolerance upon element failures, thereby extending maintenance intervals and minimizing data loss.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional RAID architecture with spares is used, then individual disk failures can be tolerated, but the system requires service calls when spares become small and cannot handle set loss effectively
Solution Approach 1:
The storage array is segmented into multiple sets of storage elements, where each set can be independently managed and protected. This segmentation allows the system to handle failures at the set level rather than requiring individual disk management, reducing maintenance complexity while improving overall reliability through hierarchical protection structures.
2Reliability
If parity exchange is used to convert parity disks to data disks, then failure tolerance increases, but the logical configuration deviates from physical configuration causing mismatched failure boundaries
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a two-dimensional array structure with row and column parity, adding a spatial dimension to traditional single-dimensional RAID. This dimensional expansion allows parity information to be distributed across multiple sets, maintaining the ability to tolerate failures while preserving a clearer mapping between physical and logical configurations through structured row-column organization.
3Reliability
If sets form failure boundaries to protect against set loss, then set-level protection is achieved, but recovery capability for combined set loss and element loss is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The erasure-correcting code structure provides universal protection that functions effectively for multiple failure scenarios simultaneously. The same row-column parity mechanism handles both individual element failures and entire set losses, as well as combinations thereof, without requiring different protection strategies. This multi-functional approach maintains high recovery capability across diverse failure modes while preserving set-level boundaries.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-implemented method is provided for increasing the failure tolerance of an array of storage elements in a storage system. The computer-implemented method includes configuring an array to include a plurality of storage elements in n>1 sets of storage elements. The computer-implemented method also includes configuring an erasure-correcting code such that at least one column of the storage elements of the array stores row parity information, and at least one row of the storage elements of the array stores column parity information. Still yet, the computer-implemented method includes, subsequent to a failure of one of the storage elements storing data, selecting a recipient storage element from the array, and rebuilding at least a portion of the data onto the recipient storage element by performing a parity exchange operation that retains a failure tolerance of the set of storage elements containing the failed storage element.