Use of activity bins to increase the performance of disk arrays
US6567892B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 23, 2001 |
| Grant date | May 20, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Aug 29, 2021 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2211/1009
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A disk array controller reliably improves performance in RAID configurations without the need for a battery backup. Write completion interrupts are queued until a write cache flush has been performed and are then sent to a host system. States of ranges of disk addresses (activity bins) are stored in nonvolatile storage elements associated with the ranges. The states allow rebuild times to be reduced after power failures and drive failures. A range is in a Changing state if at least one of the addresses is the target of a write operation that has been initiated but not completed. The range is in a Stable state if no addresses are the target of an uncompleted write operation. Two additional states are used to identify ranges of disk addresses that have been zeroed or never been written to. The additional states allow substantial reductions in RAID volume creation times.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.