Storage Tier Assignment by Application Priority
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional tiered data management methods fail to consider the importance of applications when assigning storage areas, leading to potential shortages in high-performance storage tiers and uneven access performances due to page assignments across different storage tiers for the same file.
Innovation Solution
A storage apparatus and data management method that associate applications with specific storage tiers and priorities, ensuring that write requests from applications are directed to the highest priority storage tier, and pages are assigned uniformly across the same type of storage tier for data within a file.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If storage area is assigned based only on access frequency, then data can be dynamically optimized for performance, but application importance is ignored causing high-performance storage to be allocated to low-importance applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the storage assignment process into multiple dimensions: application-level priority classification and storage-tier-level performance classification. By segmenting assignments based on both application importance and access patterns, the system can simultaneously ensure critical applications receive adequate resources while optimizing performance for all applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating storage tier assignments at the application level. Different applications are assigned different storage tier priorities based on their importance, allowing the system to provide high-performance storage to critical applications while using standard storage for less critical applications, thus resolving the contradiction between performance optimization and application importance consideration.
2Ease of manufacture
If storage area is assigned in units of specified size pages, then storage allocation is standardized and efficient, but data across multiple pages may be assigned from different storage tiers causing uneven access performance
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by determining the storage tier assignment before data is written to individual pages. The system first identifies which storage tier should be used for an application based on its priority and access patterns, then ensures all pages belonging to the same file are assigned to the same predetermined storage tier. This preliminary decision prevents subsequent uneven distribution and ensures consistent access performance.
3Speed
If high-performance storage tier is used for all applications, then access performance is maximized, but storage capacity becomes insufficient for low-importance applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating storage tier assignments at the application level. Critical applications are assigned to high-performance storage tiers with faster access speeds, while non-critical applications are assigned to standard storage tiers with adequate capacity. This localized differentiation allows the system to maximize access performance for critical applications without depleting all storage capacity, thus resolving the contradiction between speed and quantity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the storage resource allocation by classifying applications into different priority levels and assigning different storage tier combinations accordingly. This segmentation enables the system to allocate high-speed storage capacity to only those applications that require it, while ensuring sufficient total storage capacity is available across all applications through hierarchical tier distribution.
Data Source
AI summary
Proposes the realization of the performance stability operation of virtual volumes and the stabilized access performance for the virtual volumes in the storage apparatus. In the storage apparatus which configures a pool of multiple types of storage tiers of different performances, provides virtual volumes to the host computer and, in accordance with a write request from an application to a virtual volume, assigns pages to the relevant virtual volume from the pool, a policy associating an application with the virtual volume with which the relevant application reads/writes data, a storage tier to assign pages to the relevant virtual volume, and the priority of the relevant storage tier is managed and, in accordance with a write request from the application, complying with the corresponding policy, among the storage tiers associated with the corresponding virtual volume, pages are assigned from the storage tier of the higher priority to the relevant virtual volume.