Method of managing virtual volumes in a utility storage server system
US6823442B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | May 7, 2004 |
| Grant date | Nov 23, 2004 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 7, 2024 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F3/0689
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method is provided to allow a system administrator of a utility storage server to provision virtual volumes several times larger than the amount of physical storage within the storage server. A virtual volume is a virtual representation of multiple disks as a single large volume to a host or an application. In one embodiment, a virtual volume comprises an exception list containing the set of differences from dummy base volume consisting of all zeros. This exception list can be made up of address tables that map virtual volume pages to logical disk pages. As storage demand grows, additional storage is allocated for the address tables and the data pages from separate pools of storage. If any of the pools runs low, more logical disk regions are allocated to that pool.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.