A virtual disk is provided to a computing environment. The virtual disk includes identity information to enable identification of a virtual machine within the computing environment. A size of the virtual disk is increased within the computing environment to enable the virtual disk to act as a storage for the identity information and as a cache of other system data to operate the virtual machine. The virtual machine is booted within the computing environment. The virtual machine is configured to at least access the virtual disk that includes both identity information and caches other system data to operate the virtual machine. Related apparatus, systems, techniques and articles are also described.

A system includes a read/write module and a caching module. The read/write module is configured to access a first portion of a recording surface of a rotating storage device. Data is stored on the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a first density. The caching module is configured to cache data on a second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a second density. The second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device is separate from the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device. The second density is less than the first density.

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.

Various implementations described herein relate to systems and methods for dynamically managing buffers of a storage device, including receiving, by a controller of the storage device from a host, information indicative of a frequency by which data stored in the storage device is accessed, and in response to receiving the information determining, by the controller, the order by which read buffers of the storage device are allocated for a next read command. The NAND read count of virtual Word-Lines (WLs) are also used to cache more frequently accessed WLs, thus proactively reducing read disturb and consequently increasing NAND reliability and NAND life.

A computing device may include at least one memory and a processor cooperating therewith to receive a streaming base disk image from a base disk on a provisioning server over a network upon booting up the computing device, and operate a machine session on the computing device from the streaming base disk image. Furthermore, while the machine session operates on the computing device from the streaming base disk image, the processor may further cooperate with the at least one memory to download and store the base disk image over the network from the provisioning server to a persistent read cache in the at least one memory that persists on the client device after rebooting, and store modifications to the streaming base disk image in a non-persistent write cache in the at least one memory that does not persist on the client device after rebooting.

In accordance with one implementation, a method for mitigating cache transfer time entails reading data into memory from at least two consecutive elliptical data tracks in a main store region of data storage and writing the data read from the at least two consecutive elliptical data tracks to a spiral data track within a cache storage region.

A system includes a read/write module and a caching module. The read/write module is configured to access a first portion of a recording surface of a rotating storage device. Data is stored on the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a first density. The caching module is configured to cache data on a second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a second density. The second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device is separate from the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device. The second density is less than the first density.

The systems and methods disclosed herein transparently provide an improved scalable cloud-based dynamically adjustable or configurable storage volume. In one aspect, a gateway provides a dynamically or configurably adjustable storage volume, including a local cache. The storage volume may be transparently adjusted for the amount of data that needs to be stored using available local or cloud-based storage. The gateway may use caching techniques and block clustering to provide gains in access latency compared to existing gateway systems, while providing scalable off-premises storage.

An emulation mitigation module is configured to mitigate emulation of legacy write requests on advanced disk devices using cached data stored in a cache memory of a storage system. A legacy write request may comprise write data blocks formatted in a legacy sector size while an advanced disk device may be formatted in an advanced sector size. The emulation mitigation module may execute a first method for modifying write requests using cached data, a second method for enforcing a minimum requested data size sent to the advanced disk device, and/or a third method for conditionally retrieving data from the advanced disk device and storing to cache. In some embodiments, the second and/or third method may be used with the first method to increase the effectiveness of the first method. The emulation mitigation module may improve performance and/or data integrity for of processing legacy write requests.

Technologies are generally described for methods and systems effective to access data in a cache. In an example, a method to access data in a cache may include processing a first request for data at a first memory address related to first data in a memory. The method may further include retrieving the first data from the memory. The method may further include storing the first data in a first cache line in the cache. The method may further include processing a second request for data at a second memory address related to second data in the memory. The method may further include retrieving the second data from the memory. The method may further include selecting a second cache line in the cache to store the second data based on the storage of the first data. The method may further include storing the second data in the second cache line.