According to various aspects of the present disclosure, an apparatus is provided. In an aspect, the apparatus includes an optical transceiver having a first port, a second port and an optical switch coupled to the first port and the second port. The optical switch is switchable between a unidirectional port operation mode and a bidirectional port operation mode. When the optical switch is in the unidirectional port operation mode, the first port is configured to send a first optical signal, and the second port configured to receive a second optical signal. When the optical switch is in the bidirectional port operation mode, the first port configured to send the first optical signal and receive the second optical signal, and the second port configured to receive a third optical signal and not send the first signal. Furthermore, a second bidirectional port operation mode is supported with the second port configured to send the first optical signal and receive the second optical signal, and the first port configured to receive a third optical signal and not send the first signal.

A Data Storage Device (DSD) includes a plurality of solid-state memories for storing data and a controller configured to receive a packet from a host including a command to read or write data in a solid-state memory of the plurality of solid-state memories and a header to communicate between the host and the DSD. The header in the packet is changed into an internal header to communicate between the controller and the solid-state memory. An internal command and the internal header are sent to the solid-state memory to perform the command.

A Data Storage Device (DSD) includes a plurality of solid-state memories for storing data and a controller configured to receive a packet from a host including a command to read or write data in a solid-state memory of the plurality of solid-state memories and a header to communicate between the host and the DSD. The header in the packet is changed into an internal header to communicate between the controller and the solid-state memory. An internal command and the internal header are sent to the solid-state memory to perform the command.

Embodiments are generally directed apparatuses, methods, techniques and so forth to select two or more processing units of the plurality of processing units to process a workload, and configure a circuit switch to link the two or more processing units to process the workload, the two or more processing units each linked to each other via paths of communication and the circuit switch.

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a switch core that has a multi-stage switch fabric. A first set of peripheral processing devices coupled to the multi-stage switch fabric by a set of connections that have a protocol. Each peripheral processing device from the first set of peripheral processing devices is a storage node that has virtualized resources. The virtualized resources of the first set of peripheral processing devices collectively define a virtual storage resource interconnected by the switch core. A second set of peripheral processing devices coupled to the multi-stage switch fabric by a set of connections that have the protocol. Each peripheral processing device from the first set of peripheral processing devices is a compute node that has virtualized resources. The virtualized resources of the second set of peripheral processing devices collectively define a virtual compute resource interconnected by the switch core.

Techniques for a virtualized fabric management server for a storage area network are described herein. An aspect includes operating a storage area network, the storage area network including a hybrid control plane. Another aspect includes managing, using a virtualized fabric management server and the hybrid control plane, the storage area network, wherein the virtualized fabric management server is disposed in a container that is hosted on an element of the storage area network.

A system and method for supporting load balancing in a multi-tenant cluster environment, in accordance with an embodiment. One or more tenants can be supported and each associated with a partition, which are each in turn associated with one or more end nodes. The method can provide a plurality of switches, the plurality of switches comprising a plurality of leaf switches and at least one switch at another level, wherein each of the plurality of switches comprise at least one port. The method can assign each node a weight parameter, and based upon this parameter, the method can route the plurality of end nodes within the multi-tenant cluster environment, wherein the routing attempts to preserve partition isolation.

A storage system switching between mediation models within a storage system, where the switching between mediation models includes: determining, among one or more of the plurality of storage systems, a change in availability of a mediator service, wherein one or more of the plurality of storage systems are configured to request mediation from the mediator service in response to a fault; and communicating, among the plurality of storage systems and responsive to determining the change in availability of the mediator service, a fault response model to be used as an alternate to the mediator service among one or more of the plurality of storage systems.

A storage system is provided. The storage system includes a first storage cluster, the first storage cluster having a first plurality of storage nodes coupled together and a second storage cluster, the second storage cluster having a second plurality of storage nodes coupled together. The system includes an interconnect coupling the first storage cluster and the second storage cluster and a first pathway coupling the interconnect to each storage cluster. The system includes a second pathway, the second pathway coupling at least one fabric module within a chassis to each blade within the chassis.

Disclosed is an improved approach to implement I/O and storage device management in a virtualization environment. According to some approaches, a Service VM is employed to control and manage any type of storage device, including directly attached storage in addition to networked and cloud storage. The Service VM implements the Storage Controller logic in the user space, and can be migrated as needed from one node to another. IP-based requests are used to send I/O request to the Service VMs. The Service VM can directly implement storage and I/O optimizations within the direct data access path, without the need for add-on products.