A distributed storage integrity system in a dispersed storage network includes a scanning agent and a control unit. The scanning agent identifies an encoded data slice that requires rebuilding, wherein the encoded data slice is one of a plurality of encoded data slices generated from a data segment using an error encoding dispersal function. The control unit retrieves at least a number T of encoded data slices needed to reconstruct the data segment based on the error encoding dispersal function. The control unit is operable to reconstruct the data segment from at least the number T of the encoded data slices and generate a rebuilt encoded data slice from the reconstructed data segment. The scanning agent is located in a storage unit and the control unit is located in the storage unit or in a storage integrity processing unit, a dispersed storage processing unit or a dispersed storage managing unit.

Techniques described and suggested herein include systems and methods for optimizing performance characteristics by differentiating data storage device types for data archives stored on data storage systems using redundancy coding techniques. For example, redundancy coded shards, which may include identity shards that contain unencoded original data of archives, may be stored on different types of data storage devices to optimize for various retrieval use cases and implemented environments. Implementing systems may monitor various performance characteristics so as to adaptively account for changes to some or all of the monitored parameters.

Systems and techniques for recovering a storage array are disclosed. These systems and techniques include determining a size corresponding to a storage stripe of the storage array. Pieces assigned to the storage stripe are identified. A storage configuration corresponding to the pieces assigned to the storage stripe is detected. Ordinal information and parity information are determined corresponding to the pieces assigned to the storage stripe. The size determined corresponding to the storage stripe, identification of the pieces assigned to the storage stripe, the storage configuration, the ordinal information, and the parity information is stored in a data store to reconstruct lost or corrupted metadata corresponding to the storage array.

A method begins with a processing module selecting one of a plurality of dispersed storage (DS) processing modules for facilitating access to a dispersed storage network (DSN) memory. The method continues with the processing module sending a DSN memory access request to the one of the plurality of DS processing modules. The method continues with the processing module selecting another one of the plurality of DS processing modules when no response is received within a given time frame or when the response to the access request does not include an access indication. The method continues with the processing module sending the DSN memory access request to the another one of the plurality of DS processing modules.

Techniques involve managing a storage system. In accordance with the techniques, a plurality of copies of metadata of the storage system are read from a plurality of storage devices in a resource pool of the storage system. The resource pool includes a first number of storage devices, and the metadata describes configuration information of the storage system. A second number of copies are selected from the plurality of copies based on version information in the plurality of copies, where the second number of copies comprises the metadata in the same version. It is determined whether a relation between the first number and the second number satisfies a predetermined condition. The second number of copies are identified as trusted metadata based on determining the relation satisfies the predetermined condition. With the foregoing example implementation, the metadata in the storage system may be managed with higher reliability.

The system receives a request to write data and associated metadata. The system determines a key associated with the data, wherein the key corresponds to an entry in a data structure maintained by a first storage system. The system writes the metadata to a first non-volatile memory of a first set of storage drives of the first storage system by updating the entry with a logical block address for the data and a physical location in a second set of storage drives of a second storage system. The system writes the key and the data to a second non-volatile memory of the second set of storage drives based on the physical location, wherein the first non-volatile memory is of a lower density than the second non-volatile memory.

The present disclosure includes apparatuses and methods for physical page, logical page, and codeword correspondence. A number of methods include error coding a number of logical pages of data as a number of codewords and writing the number of codewords to a number of physical pages of memory. The number of logical pages of data can be different than the number of physical pages of memory.

Storage blocks are managed. For instance, a set of write parameters and a set of deletion parameters are obtained related to a target storage block. In response to the set of write parameters matching the set of deletion parameters, a first data length is obtained for the target storage block, the first data length being determined in response to receiving a write request for the target storage block. Further, reclaim information is determined related to the target storage block based on the first data length and the set of deletion parameters. It is thus possible to reduce times of scanning the entire object table to determine whether there is an object referring to the storage block, thereby reducing the time consumed by the verification process and improving the reclaiming speed of storage blocks.

A method, computer program product, and computing system for remotely storing first content received on a first processing node of a clustered computing environment onto a storage platform, wherein the clustered computing environment includes a plurality of processing nodes; locally storing metadata that identifies the location of the first content within the storage platform on the first processing node, thus defining first locally-stored differential metadata; and after the occurrence of a storage trigger event, instructing the first processing node write the first locally-stored differential metadata to a cluster metadata pool within the storage platform.

Techniques for supporting large segments when issuing writes to an erasure coded storage object in a distributed storage system are provided. In one set of embodiments, a node of the system can pre-allocate a segment of space in a capacity object of the storage object, receive a write request for updating a logical data block of the storage object, write data/metadata for the block to a record in a data log of a metadata object of the storage object, place the block in an in-memory bank, and determine whether the in-memory bank has become full. If so, the node can compute/fill-in one or more parity blocks for each stripe of the storage object in the in-memory bank and write, based on a next sub-segment pointer pointing to a free sub-segment of the pre-allocated segment, the contents of the in-memory bank via a full stripe write to the free sub-segment.