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Virtual drive mapping

a virtual drive and server technology, applied in the field of mapping virtual drives to servers, can solve the problems of increasing complexity for the original equipment manufacturer, inefficient individual servers in terms of space, power, cooling, other characteristics, etc., and achieve the effect of saving costs, space and power

Inactive Publication Date: 2008-06-12
AVAGO TECH WIRELESS IP SINGAPORE PTE
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010]Embodiments of the present invention are directed to automatically mapping a set of physical drives to a larger number of virtual drives for use by a set of computer servers. Users of this invention will save costs, space and power by using fewer physical drives than the number of physical servers.

Problems solved by technology

Individual servers are therefore inefficient in terms of space, power, cooling, and other characteristics.
However, this increases complexity for the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), who must now make a different server blade for each type of I / O that will be supported.
However, the compact nature of blade servers 100 and the desired small size of the server blades 102 means that the two disk drives 118 normally contained in each server blade take up valuable space.
Heretofore, in both blade server and non-blade server applications, there has been no way to automatically create virtual drives and map servers to the virtual drives.

Method used

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Embodiment Construction

[0027]In the following description of preferred embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof, and in which it is shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the preferred embodiments of the present invention.

[0028]Although embodiments of the present invention are described herein in terms of blade servers and server blades, it should be understood that the present invention is not limited to blade servers and server blades, but is generally applicable to any multiple-server system employing virtual drives. In addition, the present invention is not limited to systems that support FC, but includes InfiniBand, Ethernet, Serial Attached Small Computer System Interconnect (SAS) signaling and the like. Implementation of these protocols requires that the midplane or other c...

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Abstract

The automatic mapping of a set of physical drives to virtual drives is disclosed. Given a maximum set of n physical servers, S1-Sn, and a maximum set of m physical drives, D1-Dm, a mapping of a set of virtual drives, V1-Vn, to the physical drives D1-Dm, is created, assuming n and m are fixed and known, and one virtual drive is created per server. Physical drives of size Dsize are organized into a maximum of p “Stripe Sets” SS1-SSp, each Stripe Set containing an equal number of physical drives. Each virtual drive will have a size, Vsize=(m*Dsize) / n (rounded down to the nearest integer). Virtual drives are mapped sequentially to Stripe Sets, starting with V1 mapped to SS1. Successive virtual drives are mapped to Stripe Sets until all virtual drives have been mapped to a Stripe Set.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]This invention relates to the mapping of virtual drives to servers, and more particularly, to the automated mapping of virtual drives to servers in a system that allows for additional servers and physical drives to be subsequently added to the system in a manner that does not require any change to the original mapping.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]FIG. 1 is an exemplary illustration of a conventional blade server 100 connected to an external switched fabric. Blade servers overcome some of the inefficiencies of individual standalone or rack-mounted one unit (1U) high servers, each of which is self-contained and includes separate power supplies, fans, and the like. Individual servers are therefore inefficient in terms of space, power, cooling, and other characteristics. Blade servers 100 utilize a modular, plug-in approach wherein the housing for each server is eliminated along with self-contained components such as power supplies and fans. Each previous...

Claims

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Application Information

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Patent Type & Authority Applications(United States)
IPC IPC(8): G06F12/00
CPCG06F3/0605G06F3/0664G06F3/0683G06F3/067G06F3/0665G06F3/0607G06F3/0631G06F3/0689
Inventor HOTCHKISS, THOMAS RICHMOND
Owner AVAGO TECH WIRELESS IP SINGAPORE PTE
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