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AssigneeHitachi, Ltd.
InventorsNaoki Hino, Toshiya Nakano, Tetsuya Kishimoto, Hidehiko Iwasaki, Kenji Muraoka, Kenichi Takamoto
Estimating the term…
For providing a storage control unit to be connected to a fiber channel, in which a new storage control unit is added onto the fiber channel network during on-line operation and succeeds control information of a logical unit from the storage control unit which has been existing before, so as to be in charge of a process request issued to that logical unit from a host computer thereafter, wherein a control memory being able to memorize the control information is provided in each of the storage control units 30 and 40, which information is necessary when succeeding or taking over the logical unit and is represented by such as construction information of a magnetic disk drive within a disk drive unit 20 and construction information of the logical unit, so on. The contents of the control memory within the storage control unit 30 is copied into the control memory of the storage control unit 40 when the new storage control unit 40 is added onto the fiber channel network.
A disk control unit, the disk control unit being connectable over a network during an on-line operation to a disk drive unit that includes at least one memory device, a host computer, and a second disk control unit, the disk control unit capable of being added into the network logically standing between said host computer and said disk drive unit and comprising:
A disk control unit, the disk control unit connected over a network to a disk drive unit that includes at least one memory device, and a host computer, the disk control unit standing logically between said host computer and said disk drive unit and comprising:
A disk control unit, the disk control unit connected to a first network containing a host computer and to a second network containing a disk drive unit that includes at least one memory device, the disk control unit standing logically between said host computer and said disk drive unit and comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Configuration or reconfiguration of storage systems: by changing the path, e.g. traffic rerouting, path reconfiguration
Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management: by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
Improving the reliability of storage systems: in relation to availability
Making use of a particular technique: configuration or reconfiguration of storage systems
Term ended 2 Oct 2020 (estimated)
The present invention relates to a storage control unit for controlling storage devices, such as magnetic disk devices, magnetic tape devices, optical disk devices, opt-magnetic disk devices, library devices and so on, so as to manage input/output (accesses) thereof to a host apparatus or device(s) of higher level, and in particular to a controller and a data storage system using thereof, in which fiber channels are used as routes or channels for accessing to such the storage devices.
In more detail, the present invention relates to a computer system, in which fiber channels standardized by ANSI X3T11 are applied as interfaces among the host computer(s), the storage devices such as the magnetic disk devices, and the storage control unit(s), and relates to a data storage system, in which a new storage control unit(s) is added to during an online operation of the computer system, thereby enabling to disperse or decentralize loads between or among the storage control units or to centralize functions which are conducted by plural controllers.
Conventionally, relating to install of an additional storage control unit(s), for example in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. Hei 7-20994 (1995), there is described an enlargement in scale, especially, in a memory system of a large-scaled computer, by means of additional installations of a connecting adopter to the host computer in the memory system, a connecting adopter to the disk drive device and a shared cache memory, as well as function of inserting and extracting of live wires. And, there is proposed a manner wherein, the connecting adopter to the host computer, the connecting adopter to the disk drive unit and the shared cache memory mentioned above are installed one by one on an interior bus in the memory system.
FIG. 1 is a view of the hardware structure for showing an embodiment according to the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a view of internal hardware structure of a disk control unit according to the embodiment;
FIG. 3 is a view of the hardware structure where Fabric topology is applied into a fiber channel network;
Hereinafter, embodiments according to the present invention will be fully explained by referring to the attached drawings. Here will be given explanation only on an embodiment in which a magnetic disk device (hereinafter, described by a disk drive unit) is applied, however into it also an optical disk device and a tape memory device, etc., can be applied, in place thereof. And, since the disk drive unit is used in the present embodiment, therefore the storage control unit comes to be the disk control unit hereinafter.
FIG. 1 shows the hardware structure of an embodiment according to the present invention, in particular, in a case where a connection mode (topology) of FC-AL (Fiber Channel Arbitrated Loop) is applied into a fiber channel network.
In FIG. 1, a reference numeral 10 is a host computer having a central processing unit (CPU) for data processing. A reference numeral 60 is a fiber channel network, being connected to various devices through FC-AL hubs and operating according to the FC-AL topology.