A method comprising: receiving a request to write data at a virtual location; writing the data to a physical location on a persistent storage device; and recording a mapping from the virtual location to the physical location; wherein the physical location corresponds to a next free block in a sequence of blocks on the persistent storage device.

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for determining sectors of a track to stage into cache using a machine learning module. Performance attributes of system components affected by staging tracks from the storage to the cache are provided to a machine learning module. An output is received, from the machine learning module having processed the provided performance attributes, indicating a staging strategy indicating sectors of a track to stage into the cache comprising one of a plurality of staging strategies. Sectors of an accessed track that is not in the cache are staged into the cache according to the staging strategy indicated in the output.

Techniques perform data storage. Such techniques may involve writing metadata to a first cache of a first processor, the metadata indicating allocation of a storage resource to user data. Such techniques may further involve determining an address range of the metadata in the first cache. Such techniques may further involve copying only data stored in the address range in the first cache to a second cache of a second processor. Accordingly, the data transmission volume between two processors is reduced, which helps to improve the overall performance of a storage system.

Techniques for caching may include: determining an update to a first data page of a first cache on a first node, wherein a second node includes a second cache and wherein the second cache includes a copy of the first data page; determining, in accordance with one or more criteria, whether to send the update from the first node to the second node; responsive to determining, in accordance with the one or more criteria, to send the update, sending the update from the first node to the second node; and responsive to determining not to send the update, sending an invalidate request from the first node to the second node, wherein the invalidate request instructs the second node to invalidate the copy of the first data page stored in the second cache of the second node.

A server computer is configured to write a first copy of a block of data to a first namespace on a first non-volatile memory-based cache drive and a second copy of the block of data to a RAID controller for de-staging of the data to hard disk drives of a RAID array. Acknowledgment of hardening of the data on the hard disk drives initiates purging of the first copy of the block of data from the cache drive. High availability is enabled by writing a third copy of the block of data to a second server to store the block of data in a second namespace on a second non-volatile memory-based cache drive. Restoring of data after power loss accesses the data on the first non-volatile memory-based cache drive.

A method, computer program product, and computing system for receiving, at a node of a multi-node storage system, one or more updates to a reference count associated with a metadata block. One or more reference count deltas associated with the metadata block may be stored in a cache memory system of the node. An existing copy of the metadata block in a cache memory system of each other node of the multi-node storage system may be retained.

A method of replication in a distributed storage system, performed by the distributed storage system is provided. The method includes managing a first index for data or metadata in a first storage system, the first storage system having a first partitioning scheme. The method includes managing a second index for data or metadata in a second storage system, the second storage system having a second partitioning scheme. The method includes replicating the data or metadata from the first storage system to the second storage system, translating an identifier of the data or metadata from the first storage system, and mapping the replicated data or metadata into the second partitioning scheme, via the translating of the identifier of the data or metadata from the first storage system.

A method and system of checkpointing in a computing system having a primary node and a secondary node is disclosed. In one embodiment the method includes the steps of determining by the primary node to initiate a checkpoint process; sending a notification to the secondary node, by the primary node, of an impending checkpoint process; blocking, by the primary node, I/O requests from the Operating System (OS) that arrive at the primary node after the determination to initiate the checkpoint process; completing, by the primary node, active I/O requests for data received from the OS prior to the determination to initiate the checkpoint process, by accessing the primary node data storage; and upon receiving, by the primary node, a notice of checkpoint readiness from the secondary node, initiating a checkpoint process to move state and data from the primary node to the secondary node.

A compound storage system including: a storage box having a plurality of storage devices; and a plurality of servers capable of executing one or more virtual machines. The storage box stores a logical volume. The virtual machines executable by the server include an application VM and a controller VM. When a predetermined situation occurs in which an application VM of a migration source server is migrated to a predetermined migration destination server, at least one processor of the one or more servers in the compound storage system migrates the application VM to the migration destination server, and migrates a control right of a logical volume used by the application VM to a controller VM of the migration destination server.

A method comprising: receiving, at a block device interface, an instruction to write data, the instruction comprising a memory location of the data; copying the data to pinned memory; performing, by a vector processor, one or more invertible transforms on the data; and writing the data from the pinned memory to one or more storage devices asynchronously; wherein the pinned memory of the data corresponds to a location in pinned memory, the pinned memory being accessible by the vector processor and one or more other processors.