Enforced transaction system recoverability on media without write-through

US7765361B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Microsoft Corporation · US

Inventors

• Robin Dhananjay Dhamankar · Bellevue, US
• Vishal Kathuria · Woodinville, US
• Sethu M. Kalavakur · Redmond, US
• Gayathri Venkataraman · Redmond, US
• Avraham Levy · Kfar Shmaryahu, IL
• Hanumantha Rao Kodavalla · Sammamish, US
• Chunjia Li · Bellevue, US
• Eric R. Christensen · Bowling Green, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 21, 2006
• Grant date: Jul 27, 2010
• Expiry date: Nov 19, 2028

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F12/0866
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

To ensure that logs representative of data changes are durably written, localized storage media cache is flushed to force a write to stable storage. Log sequence number tracking is leveraged to determine if log data in a localized storage media cache is likely to have not been written to durable storage. When this condition is likely, a FLUSH_CACHE command is issued to a storage media controller to force a durable write. This allows recovery of data changes to a transactional system even when its associated storage media does not provide write-ordering guarantees. Moreover, flushing of the storage media cache can be accomplished at a frequency that provides an upper bound on a maximum time between a transaction commit and data being made durable.