A system and method comprising: receiving a request to write data stored at a first range of a first volume to a second range of a second volume, where first metadata for the first range of the first volume is associated with a range of physical addresses where the data is stored in the storage system; and responsive to receiving the request: creating second metadata for the second range of the second volume, wherein the second metadata is associated with the range of physical addresses where the data is stored in the storage system; and associating the second volume with the second metadata.

The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for managing a distributed cache in a cloud-based distributed computing environment (CBDCE). During operation, an instance of a data processing layer service (DPL) receives a data request from a client that specifies an address and an operation for a target data block. The DPL instance uses these to determine a first cache instance of the distributed cache that is assigned to cache a metadata entry that links the address with a data block fingerprint for the target data block. The DPL instance then uses the data block fingerprint and the cache mapping to determine a second cache instance that is assigned to store the target data block, and then accesses the second cache instance to complete the operation for the target data block.

Unified hardware and software two-level memory mechanisms and associated methods, systems, and software. Data is stored on near and far memory devices, wherein an access latency for a near memory device is less than an access latency for a far memory device. The near memory devices store data in data units having addresses in a near memory virtual address space, while the far memory devices store data in data units having addresses in a far memory address space, with a portion of the data being stored on both near and far memory devices. In response to memory read access requests, a determination is made to where data corresponding to the request is located on a near memory device, and if so the data is read from the near memory device; otherwise, the data is read from a far memory device. Memory access patterns are observed, and portions of far memory that are frequently accessed are copied to near memory to reduce access latency for subsequent accesses.

A method begins by a storage unit of a dispersed storage network (DSN) receiving access requests which include a logical DSN address and a storage function. The method continues with a first processing module of the storage unit performing logical to physical address conversions of logical DSN addresses of the access requests to physical addresses of a plurality of main memories. For a first access request of the access requests, the method continues with the first processing module identifying a first main memory based on the physical address resulting from the physical address conversion. The method continues with the first processing module identifying a first processing thread of a plurality of processing threads based on allocation of the plurality of processing threads to the plurality of main memories. The method continues with the first processing thread executing tasks of the first access request to fulfill the first access request.

A system shares I/O load between controllers in a high availability system. For writes, a controller determines based on one or more factors which controller will flush batches of data from write-back cache to better distribute the I/O burden. The determination occurs after the local storage controller caches the data, mirrors it, and confirms write complete to the host. Once it is determined which storage controller will flush the cache, the flush occurs and the corresponding metadata at a second layer of indirection is updated by that determined storage controller (whether or not it is identified as the owner of the corresponding volume to the host, while the volume owner updates metadata at a first layer of indirection). For a host read, the controller that owns the volume accesses the metadata from whichever controller(s) flushed the data previously and reads the data, regardless of which controller had performed the flush.

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and a system for managing a storage system. Specifically, in one embodiment of the present invention there is provided a method for managing a storage system, the method comprising: in response to receiving a write request for writing target data to the storage system, writing the target data to an intermediate address range in an intermediate storage area of the storage system; parsing, based on an address mapping of the storage system, a target address range associated with the write request so as to obtain an actual address range; and moving the target data from the intermediate address range to the actual address range. In one embodiment of the present invention there is further provided a corresponding system and apparatus.

Methods, computing systems and computer program products implement embodiments of the present invention that include identifying, in a storage system including multiple storage devices having respective sets of storage regions, respective default low storage region thresholds that are used for garbage collection. For each given storage region, a time threshold and an alternative low storage region threshold greater than the default low storage region threshold for the given storage device are defined. While processing input/output operations for each given storage device, a count of unused storage regions in the given storage device is maintained, a timer is initialized, and upon the timer matching the time threshold for the given storage device and upon the count of unused storage regions being less than or equal to the alternative low storage region threshold, a garbage collection operation is initiated. In some embodiments, processing the input/output operations includes using a log-structured array format.

A network device and method for packet processing are provided. A packet processing accelerator is configured to receive packets from a network and define for ones of the packets a data unit corresponding to the packet. The packet processing accelerator is configured to perform a first set of packet processing operations on the data unit. A central processing unit (CPU) is configured to perform a second set of packet processing operations on the data unit. A buffer is configured to pass data units from the packet processing accelerator to the CPU, and vice versa, where the buffer is configured to store data units in one or more lines of the buffer. Dummy data units fill a space in a buffer line that is not occupied by a data unit, and the dummy data units include an indication that the space occupied by the dummy data units is an empty space.

A method, non-transitory computer readable medium and storage server computing device that stores an identifier for a file system block evicted from a buffer cache in an entry in a table. The file system block is inserted into a victim cache hosted by an ephemeral block-level storage device by invoking a function provided by an application programming interface (API). The API exposes the ephemeral block-level storage device to a virtual storage appliance via an operating system of the storage server computing device. The entry in the table is updated to include location(s) on the ephemeral block-level storage device at which one or more portions of the file system block are stored, the location(s) returned in response to the function invocation. By this technology, performance of the virtual storage appliance is significantly improved, resulting in lower latency for client devices requesting data in a cloud storage environment.

Embodiments present a virtual disk image to applications such as virtual machines (VMs) executing on a computing device. The virtual disk image corresponds to one or more subparts of binary large objects (blobs) of data stored by a cloud service, and is implemented in a log structured format. Grains of the virtual disk image are cached by the computing device. The computing device caches only a subset of the grains and performs write operations without blocking the applications to reduce storage latency perceived by the applications. Some embodiments enable the applications that lack enterprise class storage to benefit from enterprise class cloud storage services.