Gary T Ross

US Patent:

7747836, Jun 29, 2010

Filed:

Apr 29, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/119085

Inventors:

Vijayan Rajan - Mountain View CA, US
Brian Pawlowski - Palo Alto CA, US
Jeffrey S. Kimmel - Chapel Hill NC, US
Gary Ross - Pleasanton CA, US

Assignee:

NetApp, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA

International Classification:

G06F 13/14

US Classification:

711203, 711206, 711E12059

Abstract:

A system integrates an intelligent storage switch with a flexible virtualization system to enable efficient service of file and block protocol data access requests for information stored on the system. A storage operating system executing on a storage system coupled to the switch implements the virtualization system to provide a unified view of storage to clients by logically organizing the information as named files, directories and logical unit numbers. The virtualization system is illustratively embodied as a file system having a write allocator configured to provide a flexible block numbering policy that addresses volume management capabilities, such as storage virtualization, at a finer granularity (e. g. , a single block) than that of previous non-flexible storage virtualization schemes. The flexible block numbering policy also yields substantial benefits in terms of increased write efficiency and elimination of storage “hot spots”, as well as a compelling point-in-time read-only data image (snapshot) mechanism.

US Patent:

8549253, Oct 1, 2013

Filed:

Apr 30, 2010

Appl. No.:

12/771572

Inventors:

Vijayan Rajan - Mountain View CA, US
Brian Pawlowski - Palo Alto CA, US
Jeffrey S. Kimmel - Chapel Hill NC, US
Gary Ross - Pleasanton CA, US

Assignee:

NetApp, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA

International Classification:

G06F 12/08

US Classification:

711203, 711114, 711E12001

Abstract:

A system integrates an intelligent storage switch with a flexible virtualization system to enable the intelligent storage switch to provide efficient service of file and block protocol data access requests for information stored on the system. A storage operating system executing on a storage system coupled to the switch implements the virtualization system to provide a unified view of storage to clients by logically organizing the information as named files, directories and logical unit numbers. The virtualization system may be embodied as a file system having a write allocator configured to provide a flexible block numbering policy to the storage switch that addresses volume management capabilities, such as storage virtualization.