The present invention provides systems and methods for data storage. A hierarchical storage management architecture is presented to facilitate data management. The disclosed system provides methods for evaluating the state of stored data relative to enterprise needs by using weighted parameters that may be user defined. Also disclosed are systems and methods evaluating costing and risk management associated with stored data.

Embodiments of the invention describe a system main memory comprising two levels of memory that include cached subsets of system disk level storage. This main memory includes “near memory” comprising memory made of volatile memory, and “far memory” comprising volatile or nonvolatile memory storage that is larger and slower than the near memory.

The far memory is presented as “main memory” to the host OS while the near memory is a cache for the far memory that is transparent to the OS, thus appearing to the OS the same as prior art main memory solutions. The management of the two-level memory may be done by a combination of logic and modules executed via the host CPU. Near memory may be coupled to the host system CPU via high bandwidth, low latency means for efficient processing. Far memory may be coupled to the CPU via low bandwidth, high latency means.

Systems, methods, apparatuses, and software for data storage systems are provided herein. In one example, a data storage system is provided that includes storage drives each comprising a PCIe interface, and configured to store data and retrieve the data stored on associated storage media responsive to data transactions received over a switched PCIe fabric. The data storage system includes processors configured to each manage only an associated subset of the storage drives over the switched PCIe fabric. A first processor is configured to identify first data packets received over a network interface associated with the first processor within a network buffer of the first processor as comprising a storage operation associated with at least one of the plurality of storage drives managed by a second processor, and responsively transfer the first data packets into a network buffer of the second processor.

A method for moving files in a hierarchical storage system having a primary storage and a secondary storage including a sequential storage device from the primary storage to the secondary storage includes obtaining a predetermined file size to be written to the secondary storage, extracting, from a plurality of files in the primary storage, a file not stored in the secondary storage and having the oldest last access time, estimating a file size of the file having the oldest last access time on the secondary storage if the file having the oldest last access time is written to the secondary storage, and selecting the file having the oldest last access time as a file to be moved to the secondary storage as long as the estimated file size does not exceed the predetermined file size to be written to the secondary storage.

The storage system is capable of creating one or more virtual storage subsystems to which virtual resources having logically divided a processing capacity of the physical resources are allocated, and upon creating a virtual volume for receiving I/O requests from the host within the virtual storage subsystem, the virtual storage subsystem allocates the virtual resource to the virtual volume, and when an I/O request to the virtual volume is received from the host, performs processing related to the I/O request using the virtual resource having been allocated. According further to the storage system, after allocating the virtual resource to the virtual volume, the storage system raises a utilization rate of the virtual resource allocated to the virtual volume in a stepwise manner.

An embodiment for operation of an emulated electrically erasable (EEE) memory system includes a memory controller configured to identify a first quick record of a stack of quick records as a present record, wherein the stack of quick records are stored in a non-volatile portion of memory, the first quick record has a quick record status identifier (ID) that indicates the stack of quick records has not been qualified, determine a record status of a next record after the present record in the non-volatile portion of memory, and in response to a determination that the next record has a blank record status ID: update the next record from the blank record status ID to the quick record status ID, wherein the blank record status ID indicates that the next record is part of the stack of quick records, and qualify the present record using the plurality of program steps.

To identify objects shared by entities and to, in turn, identify free space in nonvolatile storage, a computer system uses a probabilistic data structure which tests whether an element is a member of a set. Such probabilistic data structures are created for entities in the storage system that share objects. The probabilistic data structure for an entity represents the objects that are used by that entity. When an entity is deleted, each object used by that entity is compared to the probabilistic data structures of other entities to determine if there is a likelihood that the object is used by one or more of the other entities. If the likelihood determined for an object is above an acceptable threshold, then the object is not deleted. If the likelihood determined for an object is below the set threshold, then the object can be deleted and the corresponding storage locations can be marked as free.

In a hierarchical storage memory (HSM), a file recalled by a specific application is migrated as soon as possible after completion of the application process. Specifically, the effective UID of a specific process is preregistered on an HSM client. After a recall operation is performed on a certain file from the user ID, when there is no access from the UID to the file for a given length of time, the file is migrated. This prevents files premigrated by access from any application other than the specific one from being handled in the same way, resolving a disadvantageous problem caused when these (premigrated) files are not desired to be migrated preferentially.

Apparatuses and methods for performing data migration operations are disclosed. An apparatus may include at least two interfaces, a first interface supporting data migration operations and a second interface supporting access operations associated with a host device. In some cases, the access operations may be a signal or protocol according to an industry standard or specification (e.g., a DRAM interface specification). The second interface may facilitate supporting industry standard applications, while the first interface supporting data migration operations may provide improved bandwidth for migrating data within the apparatus. The apparatus may include a buffer coupled with the interface and a bank cluster including two or more banks of memory cells. When a host device addresses a bank of the bank cluster, the apparatus may perform one or more data migration operations using the buffer and a different bank of the bank cluster.

A graceful shutdown of a computer system is initiated by sending a command to an asynchronous dynamic random access memory refresh (ADR) trigger device to assert an ADR trigger. Responsive to the command, the ADR trigger device asserts the ADR trigger to initiate an ADR of a non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM) of the computer system. In response to the ADR trigger being asserted by the ADR trigger device, an ADR of the NVDIMM is performed before completing the graceful shutdown of the computer.