Method, system, and program for managing data updates
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorFrancis R. Corrado
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method, system, and program manages updates of user data and parity data stored in stripes across a plurality of disk storage units arranged in a data organization type such as a RAID array. In one embodiment, a record of stripes potentially containing inconsistent user and parity data is stored on a disk storage unit. In another aspect, before writing a record of stripes to a disk storage unit, stripe entries for a plurality of write processes is permitted to accumulate. In another aspect, a record of stripes may be written to different disk storage units and a generation number is used to identify the latest record of stripes.
Claims36
A method of writing data, comprising:
- storing a first record in a disk storage unit wherein said first record includes an indication that a stripe of user data and parity data stored across a plurality of disk storage units potentially contains a parity inconsistency wherein each indication includes an identification of the stripe being indicated and wherein each identification includes a volume number and stripe number;
- writing user data and parity data in said stripe indicated by said record;
- and
- clearing said indication.
An article of manufacture comprising a device having a storage medium, the storage medium comprising machine readable instructions stored thereon to:
- store a first record in a disk storage unit wherein said first record includes an indication that a stripe of user data and parity data stored across a plurality of disk storage units potentially contains a parity inconsistency, wherein each indication includes an identification of the stripe being indicated and wherein each identification includes a volume number and stripe number;
- write user data and parity data in said stripe indicated by said record;
- and
- clear said indication.
A system, comprising:
- at least one memory which includes an operating system and an application;
- a processor coupled to the memory;
- data storage having a plurality of disk storage units;
- a data storage controller for managing Input/Output (I/O) access to the data storage;
- and
- a device driver executable by the processor in the memory, wherein at least one of the application, operating system, and device driver is adapted to:
- store a first record in a disk storage unit wherein said first record includes an indication that a stripe of user data and parity data stored across said plurality of disk storage units potentially contains a parity inconsistency, wherein each indication includes an identification of the stripe being indicated and wherein each identification includes a volume number and stripe number;
- write user data and parity data in said stripe indicated by said record;
- and
- clear said indication.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.