US 7,539,798 B2 · Mitigating performance degradation caused by a sata drive attached to a sas domain

Abstract

The present invention provides a device and method for mitigating performance degradation caused by SATA drives attached to a SAS domain. In one of the embodiments of the present invention, a SATA degradation mitigation device (“SDMD”) is installed between a SAS domain and one or more SATA drives. The SDMD effectively reduces congestion on intermediate links by buffering SATA data and transmitting the data at a rate which is higher than the rate at which the SATA data is received from a drive. Conversely, write data from the SAS domain may be buffered at the SDMD at a higher rate and subsequently sent to the SATA drive at a lower rate. This SATA data buffering and subsequent increase in data rate improves the overall efficiency of a SAS domain storage system by reducing data congestion arising out of low-performance SATA drives clogging the intermediate links.

Claims34

Dependent claims

A device for mitigating performance degradation within a storage system, the device comprising:

a first interface on which data is received at a first rate from a first disk drive;
a data buffer coupled to receive the data from the first interface and store the data;
control logic, coupled to the data buffer, that controls the transmission of the stored data from the data buffer at a second rate that is faster than the first rate;
a first multiplexer, coupled to the data buffer and the control logic, that selects the stored data and removes at least a portion of the control information;
and
a second interface on which the stored data is sent to a controller domain within the storage system.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Mitigating performance degradation caused by a sata drive attached to a sas domain

Life of this patent

Mitigating performance degradation caused by a sata drive attached to a sas domain

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims34