A system is provided comprising: a packet routing network; Flash storage circuitry; a management processor coupled as an endpoint to the network; an input/output (I/O) circuit coupled as an endpoint to the network; a packet processing circuit coupled as an endpoint to the network; a cache storage circuit coupled to send and received packets to and from the packet processing circuit; and a RAID management circuit coupled as an endpoint to the network and configured to send and receive packets to and from the Flash storage circuitry; wherein the management processor is configured to determine routing of packets among the I/O circuit, packet processing circuit and RAID management circuit; and wherein the packet processing circuit is configured to control cache read requests, cache write requests and cache data eviction.

A storage management method includes receiving a degrade signal indicating a degraded state of a virtual disk associated with a host system. Rebuild-flush operations may be performed. The operations may include writing, to the virtual disk and also to a hot spare drive (HSP) associated with the virtual disk, valid-modified data, stored in a host storage cache, associated with the virtual disk. In contrast, valid-unmodified storage cache data associated with the virtual disk, may be written to the HSP only. After the rebuild-flush completes, the virtual disk may be rebuilt. During rebuild, however, any cached-LBA may be skipped where traditional RAID rebuild operations are performed for un-cached LBAs only.

Expandable cache management dynamically manages cache storage for multiple network shares configured in a file server. Once a file is written to a directory or folder on a specially designated network share, such as one that is configured for infinite backup, an intermediary pre-backup copy of the file is created in an expandable cache in the file server that hosts the network share. On write operations, cache storage space can be dynamically expanded or freed up by pruning previously backed up data. This advantageously creates flexible storage caches in the file server for each network share, each cache managed independently of other like caches for other network shares on the same file server. On read operations, intermediary file storage in the expandable cache gives client computing devices speedy access to data targeted for backup, which is generally quicker than restoring files from backed up secondary copies.

Expandable cache management dynamically manages cache storage for multiple network shares configured in a file server. Once a file is written to a directory or folder on a specially designated network share, such as one that is configured for infinite backup, an intermediary pre-backup copy of the file is created in an expandable cache in the file server that hosts the network share. On write operations, cache storage space can be dynamically expanded or freed up by pruning previously backed up data. This advantageously creates flexible storage caches in the file server for each network share, each cache managed independently of other like caches for other network shares on the same file server. On read operations, intermediary file storage in the expandable cache gives client computing devices speedy access to data targeted for backup, which is generally quicker than restoring files from backed up secondary copies.

A computing device writes data across storage devices in an erasure-coded system. The computing device computes data blocks and parity blocks from data and computes a portion of the data to be stored in the system. The computing is performed by one or more controllers included in a redundant array of an independent disks controller. The computing device provides the locations of the data blocks and the parity blocks in storage devices of an erasure-coded system. The location is determined using one or more placement nodes. The placement nodes are configured for managing placement schemes of data blocks and parity blocks on the storage devices.

A semiconductor storage device includes at least one memory from among a primary memory, a mirror memory storing data corresponding to data stored in the primary memory, and a buffer memory; and a controller that controls the at least one memory so as to store data in the at least one memory and read data from the at least one memory.

Techniques for performing data encryption on data to be stored within a storage system are provided. A client application executing on a host machine may generate a data storage write request to write data to a storage system. A host-side module, executing on the host machine receives the write request. The host-side module is configured to generate one or more fingerprints for the data corresponding to the write request, where the one or more fingerprints are unique identifiers used to identify data blocks that make up the data. The host-side module generates encrypted data by encrypting the data blocks using an encryption technique. The encrypted data is then sent to a storage node within the storage system. Deduplication may be performed on the encrypted data using the one or more generated fingerprints.

Data protection with error correction/detection capabilities can be provided on a cache line basis. When provided on a cache line basis to collectively protect the cache line data, the error correction/detection capabilities can be provided with fewer number of bits (e.g., error correction code (ECC) and/or cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bits) as compared to providing the same error correction/detection capabilities individually on a subset of the cache line data.

Methods and systems for storing data at a storage device of a storage system are provided. The data is first temporarily stored at a first write cache and an input/output request for a persistence storage device used as a second write cache is generated, when an I/O request size including the received data has reached a threshold value. The data from the first cache is transferred to the persistence storage device and a recovery control block with a location of the data stored at the persistence storage device is updated. An entry is added to a linked list that is used to track valid data stored at the persistence storage device and then the data is transferred from the persistence storage device to the storage device of the storage system.

A storage controller is provided. The storage controller includes a memory storing an indication of a current owner, a previous owner, and a preferred owner for each of one or more logical volumes. The storage controller is configured to write protect the logical volumes where the current owner and the preferred owner is the storage controller and the previous owner of the logical volumes was a different storage controller. For the logical volumes where the storage controller is the preferred but not the current owner, the storage controller is set as the current and preferred owner of the logical volumes that the different storage controller was the current but not the preferred owner for, storage controller is set as the previous owner of the logical volumes that the storage controller is the current and preferred owner of, and allowing read and write access to the one or more logical volumes.