Method and apparatus for concurrent access to a sequential device
AssigneesSony Corporation, Sony Electronics Inc.
InventorsNathan Chan, Paresh J. Desai, Phillip T. Ingram, Shinichiro Ken Torii
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus a communication bridge which receives a portion of data from at least one source terminal, assigns a data identifier to the data, and causes the data and data identifier to be stored to a tape storage device for subsequent access is disclosed.
Claims18
An apparatus comprising:
- a communication bridge to receive portions of data from a plurality of source devices, assign a unique data identifier to each portion of data that identifies the source of the portion, and cause each portion of data and the corresponding data identifier to be contiguously stored to a tape storage device to encode the logical layout of the tape with source device information, wherein the portions of data and corresponding data identifiers are interleaved by source on the tape.
An apparatus comprising:
- a tape storage device for storing data;
- and
- a communication bridge coupled to the tape storage device and to a plurality of source devices which provide data to be stored, said communication bridge receiving portions of data from the source devices, said communication bridge assigning a unique data identifier to each portion of data indicative of the source of the data to be stored, said communication bridge causing each portion of data and the corresponding data identifier to be contiguously stored to the tape storage device, wherein the portions of data and the corresponding data identifiers are interleaved by source on the tape.
In a system comprising a plurality of source devices and a tape device coupled through a network, a method for execution by a communications bridge coupling the tape device to the network for perceived concurrent access of the tape device by the plurality of source devices, the method comprising:
- assigning a unique data identifier to each data portion written to the tape device to identify a source for each portion of data received from a source device;
- generating a data allocation table comprising the data identifiers and corresponding locations of the data portions on the tape;
- and
- responding to a write operation by writing the data identifier corresponding to a data portion contiguously to the data portion to the tape device and writing the data identifier and tape location of the data portion to the data allocation table, wherein the data portions and the corresponding data identifiers are interleaved by source on the tape.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.