US 7,068,500 B1Granted

Multi-drive hot plug drive carrier

AssigneeEMC Corporation

InventorsAlbert F. Beinor, Jr., Ralph C. Frangioso, Jr., Mickey Steven Felton, Joseph P. King, Jr., Michael J. Kozel, W. Brian Cunningham, Maida Boudreau

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Abstract

Disclosed are ways of providing a highly flexible high availability storage system. Disk drive carriers for insertion into enclosures in a storage system include several disk drives. The enclosures accept carriers that include drives of different sizes, and drives compatible with different storage technologies, for instance Fibre Channel, SATA, or SAS. Drives oriented in their carriers in a manner that allows them to be connected to a common medium via identical flex circuits that are configured based on the orientation of the drives. Redundant controllers include redundant serial buses for transferring management information to the carriers. The carriers include a controller for monitoring the multiple serial buses and producing storage technology specific management commands for the disk drives.

Claims6

Dependent claims

Apparatus for a storage system, the storage system being capable of including multiple enclosures containing disk drives, the apparatus comprising:

a disk drive carrier for containing two disk drives, the disk drive carrier being mountable within an enclosure in the storage system, the disk drives being Fibre Channel compatible, wherein the disk drives are oriented such that the sides of the disk drives on which fibre channel connectors are disposed face each other,
wherein the disk drives are connected to a medium via flex circuits, and wherein the flex circuits are identical prior to use, and wherein the flex circuits are pre-configured into different shapes based upon the positions of the fibre channel connectors to connect the drives to a common medium,
wherein the flex circuits contain a signal layer and a ground layer,
wherein a first flex circuit is connected such that its signal layer lies adjacent to an HDA cover plate on a disk drive, and
wherein a second flex circuit is connected such that its signal layer lies adjacent to the ground layer on the first flex circuit so that all signal layers are surrounded by ground layers.

2 more elements

A method for use in a storage system, the storage system being capable of including multiple enclosures containing disk drives, the method comprising the steps of:

providing a disk drive carrier for containing two Fibre Channel compatible disk drives, the disk drive carrier being mountable within an enclosure in the storage system;
orienting the disk drives within the carrier such that the sides of the disk drives on which Fibre Channel connectors are disposed face each other:
providing a plurality of flex circuits that are identical prior to use;
configuring the flex circuits into different shapes based upon the positions of the Fibre Channel connectors;
connecting the drives to a common medium via the flex circuits, wherein the flex circuits contain a signal layer and a ground layer;
connecting a first flex circuit such that its signal layer lies adjacent to an HDA cover plate on a disk drive;
and connecting a second flex circuit such that its signal layer lies adjacent to the ground layer on the first flex circuit, so that all signal layers are surrounded by ground layers.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 10/401,523Filed 29 Mar 2003
Granted: 27 Jun 2006
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification7 codes

G06F 1/184
Internal mounting support structures, e.g. for supporting printed circuit boards: mounting of motherboards
G06F 1/182
Enclosures: with special features, e.g. for use in industrial environments; grounding or shielding against radio frequency interference [RFI] or…
G06F 1/187
Internal mounting support structures, e.g. for supporting printed circuit boards: mounting of fixed or removable disk drives
G06F 1/189
Packaging or power distribution: power distribution