Logical-to-physical block mapping inside the disk controller: accessing data objects without operating system intervention
AssigneeTechnion Research & Development Foundation Limited
InventorsYoav Etsion, Yonatan Gottesman, Lluis Vilanova
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Data access in a storage device managed by a storage controller is carried out by receiving in the storage controller offsets in objects directly from a plurality of requesting entities of a computer system. The computer controls a mapping mechanism operated by the storage controller, wherein the mapping mechanism relates the offsets in the objects into physical addresses of the data on the storage device, and wherein the data is accessed at the physical addresses.
Claims22
A method of computing, comprising the steps of:
- receiving in a storage controller access requests comprising offsets in objects from a plurality of requesting entities in a computer system for data that is stored on a storage device managed by the storage controller, the computer system being operated under an operating system;
- operating a mapping mechanism in conjunction with the storage controller, wherein the mapping mechanism relates the offsets in objects into physical addresses of the data on the storage device;
- and
- accessing the data at the physical addresses.
A method of computing in a virtualized environment, comprising the steps of:
- receiving in a disk controller disk access requests from a plurality of virtual machines as virtual addresses of data that is stored on a disk;
- with the disk controller translating the virtual addresses into physical addresses of the data on the disk;
- and
- accessing the data on at the physical addresses.
A data processing system, comprising:
- a disk storage unit that stores data;
- a processor;
- a host memory accessible to the processor storing programs and data objects therein, the programs and data objects comprising a plurality of virtual machines, wherein execution of the programs cause the processor to issue disk access requests from the virtual machines for reading or writing the data on the disk storage unit at respective virtual addresses;
- and
- a disk controller linked to the processor, wherein the disk controller is operative for receiving the disk access requests, translating the virtual addresses thereof into physical addresses on the disk storage unit by operating in conjunction with a mapping mechanism, and accessing the data at the physical addresses.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.