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US 2004/0024951 A1Published application
Disk subsystem
AssigneeHitachi, Ltd.
InventorKazuhisa Aruga
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A protocol controller disposed between switches in a fiber channel fabric switch circuit and disk drive units for converting a protocol to enable one-to-one connectivity established between controllers and disk drive units.
Claims90
A storage system comprising:
- a disk controller for performing control so as to transfer data sent from a host device;
- a plurality of disk drives for storing data sent from said disk controller;
- and
- a switch connected with said disk controller and said plurality of disk drives, for selecting a disk drive from said plurality of disk drives, and causing data sent from said disk controller to be transferred to said selected disk drive;
- wherein said switch comprises:
- a protocol controller for controlling protocol,
- a detector for detecting the ID number of the transfer destination disk drive for the data sent from said disk controller,
- an ID number allocator for allocating ID numbers to said plurality of disk drives and reporting said allocated ID numbers, and
- a controller for storing the ID numbers reported from said ID number allotter, and for performing control so as to transfer data sent from said disk controller to said transfer destination disk drive having the ID number detected by said detector.
6 more elements
A storage device comprising:
- a disk controller which comprises:
- a host interface controller for controlling the input/output of data from/to host devices,
- cache memory for temporarily storing data received by said host interface controller, and
- a plurality of disk drive interface controllers for transferring data received by said host interface controller;
- a plurality of disk drives for storing data sent from said disk controller;
- and
- a switch for connecting said disk controller and said plurality of disk drives, selecting a disk drive from said plurality of disk drives, and transferring data sent from said disk controller to said selected destination disk drive;
- wherein said switch comprises:
- a detector for detecting the ID number of the transfer destination disk drive for the data sent from said disk controller,
- an ID number allocator for allocating ID numbers to said plurality of disk drives and reporting said allocated ID numbers, and
- a controller for transferring data sent from said disk controller to said transfer destination disk drive based on the ID number reported from said ID number allocator and the ID number detected by said detector.
8 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.