Virtual Block Alignment to Physical Storage Boundaries
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Solution Overview
Problem
Inefficient data access in virtual disk systems due to misalignment of virtual blocks with physical blocks, leading to unnecessary data reading and discarding, which slows down storage subsystem access.
Innovation Solution
Automatically aligning virtual blocks with physical blocks by determining misalignment correction amounts and translating read/write requests to aligned offsets, ensuring most accesses become aligned with physical block boundaries.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If virtual blocks are accessed without alignment correction, then the system maintains simple block access mechanics, but data access efficiency deteriorates due to reading more data than needed and discarding unneeded data
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculation of misalignment correction amounts during virtual disk creation or initialization. The misalignment correction amount is pre-determined based on the relationship between virtual block offsets and physical block boundaries, and stored for later use during data access operations, avoiding the need for complex real-time alignment calculations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a misalignment correction mechanism as an intermediary layer between the virtual block addressing system and the physical storage subsystem. This intermediary calculates and applies correction amounts to translate virtual block offsets into aligned physical block offsets, enabling efficient data access without requiring the storage subsystem to handle misalignment directly.
2Productivity
If misalignment correction is applied to all partitions, then data access efficiency improves, but system complexity increases due to tracking and managing correction amounts for multiple partitions
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies misalignment correction locally to each partition based on its specific starting offset and size. Each partition receives a customized misalignment correction amount calculated from its individual characteristics, rather than applying a uniform correction to the entire virtual disk. This allows optimized performance for each partition while maintaining manageable complexity through localized processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the virtual disk into multiple partitions, each with its own misalignment correction amount. The correction mechanism processes partitions independently, calculating and applying corrections specific to each partition's alignment requirements. This segmentation approach enables efficient alignment handling for each partition without requiring complex coordination across all partitions.
Data Source
AI summary
Automatically aligning virtual blocks of partitions to blocks of underlying physical storage is disclosed. In some embodiments, a starting offset of a partition included in a logical container is detected. In some embodiments, a misalignment correction amount for a partition included in a logical container is detected. In some embodiments, a misalignment associated with a partition included in a logical container is corrected.