Apparatus and method for writing data to mirrored storage using multiple tasks working in parallel
US7167969B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 25, 2003 |
| Grant date | Jan 23, 2007 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 21, 2025 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F11/2056
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An apparatus and method provides the capability of mirroring storage from a primary system to a mirrored system in a way that uses parallelism in the mirrored system to maximize the efficiency of writing data to the mirrored storage for operations that do not conflict while serializing operations that do conflict. The mirroring of the present invention is “logical mirroring”, which does not require identical disk drives, and which supports mirroring between geographically remote locations to protect against catastrophic site failure. Parallelism is achieved in the mirrored system by dividing the virtual address space into multiple ranges, and by assigning a group of tasks to each range. When an operation is received on the mirrored system, the virtual address range that the operation affects is determined, and the operation is then delegated to the task group that corresponds to the affected virtual address range. By dividing the virtual address space into ranges, tasks in different ranges (i.e., in different task groups) may execute in parallel without any threat of conflict, and even tasks within the same range may execute in parallel if they operate in different portions of the …
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.