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Method and apparatus for efficient management of non-aligned I/O write request in high bandwidth raid applications
| Details |
Inventors: DeKoning, Rodney A.; Fredin, Gerald J.;
Assignee: Symbios, Inc. (Fort Collins, CO)
Primary Examiner: Swann; Tod R.
Assistant Examiner: King, Jr.; Conley B.
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Fishman; Daniel N., Bailey; Wayne P.
Methods and associated apparatus in a RAID storage subsystem to enhance the performance of write operations for sequences of large buffers generally non-aligned with stripe boundaries in the RAID storage subsystem. In particular, the methods identify a starting non-aligned portion of each large buffer to be written to the RAID storage subsystem, an ending non-aligned portion of each large buffer to be written to the RAID subsystem, and a larger middle portion of the large buffer to be written to the RAID subsystem which is aligned with stripe boundaries of the RAID storage subsystem. The stripe-aligned middle portion is written to the RAID storage devices in a cache write through mode using stripe write operations to maximize data throughput. The starting and ending portions identified by the methods of the present invention are written to the cache memory in a write back mode such that they will eventually be posted to the RAID storage devices in due course through normal RAID processing. Special case processing of the methods of the present invention note the absence of a starting or ending non-aligned portions (e.g., a buffer having no non-aligned starting portion, or no non-aligned ending portion, or neither starting nor ending non-aligned portions). |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, a specific embodiment thereof has been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail.
It should be understood, however, that it is not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the invention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Raid Overview FIG.
1 is a block diagram of a typical RAID storage subsystem 100 in which the methods and associated apparatus of the present invention may be applied.
RAID storage subsystem 100 includes RAID controller 102 which is in turn connected to disk array 108 via bus (or busses) 150 and to host computer 120 via bus 154.
Disk array 108 is comprised of a plurality of disk drives 110.
One of ordinary skill in the art will readily recognize that interface bus 150 between RAID controller 102 and disk array 108 (including disk drives 110) may be any of several industry standard interface busses including SCSI, IDE, EIDE, IPI, Fiber Channel, SSA, PCI, etc.
Circuits (not shown) within RAID controller 102 appropriate to controlling bus 150 are well known to those of ordinary skill in the art.
Interface bus 154 between RAID controller 102 and host computer 120 may be any of several standard industry interface busses including SCSI, Ethernet (LAN), Token Ring (LAN), etc.
The methods of the present invention are most beneficially applied to SCSI interface connections between one or more host computer systems and the RAID storage subsystem 100.
The concept of logical units (as utilized in the methods of the present invention and discussed in detail below) is native to the SCSI interfacing specifications.
Other connectivity standards such as LAN may utilize the methods of the present invention if appropriately translated to corresponding structures and protocols associated therewith
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I/O Systems 
