| Patent Number |
Title Of Patent |
Date Issued |
| 7627780 |
Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant server |
December 1, 2009 |
| An apparatus for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant server blades hot-pluggable into a backplane of a network storage appliance chassis is disclosed. Each server monitors the other's heartbeat on a respective path in the backplane. Other paths between the |
| 7565566 |
Network storage appliance with an integrated switch |
July 21, 2009 |
| A network storage appliance including one or more integrated switching devices is disclosed. The appliance includes redundant storage controllers that transfer frames of data between storage devices and host computers. The integrated switching devices include a plurality of I/O ports |
| 7558897 |
Method for adopting an orphan I/O port in a redundant storage controller |
July 7, 2009 |
| A method for adopting an orphaned I/O port of a storage controller is disclosed. The storage controller has first and second redundant field-replaceable units (FRU) for processing I/O requests and a third FRU having at least one I/O port for receiving the I/O requests from host compu |
| 7543096 |
Safe message transfers on PCI-Express link from RAID controller to receiver-programmable window |
June 2, 2009 |
| A fault-tolerant mass storage system includes two RAID controllers that communicate via a PCI-Express link. Each controller has a bus bridge coupled to the link, a cache memory that caches user data for storage on disk drives controlled by the controllers, and a CPU. The CPU fetches and |
| 7539799 |
Method and apparatus for identifying enclosures and devices |
May 26, 2009 |
| A method, device, and system are provided for the automatically assigning identification numbers or enclosure IDs to enclosures in a data storage system. Each enclosure is assigned a unique enclosure ID that can be used to reference the enclosure in the data storage system. The enclosure |
| 7536584 |
Fault-isolating SAS expander |
May 19, 2009 |
| A SAS expander includes SAS PHYs for transceiving signals with SAS devices on corresponding SAS links coupled to the SAS PHYs. The SAS expander includes status registers that provide fault detection parameters concerning communications on the SAS links. A microprocessor of the SAS ex |
| 7536508 |
System and method for sharing SATA drives in active-active RAID controller system |
May 19, 2009 |
| An active-active RAID system includes first and second active-active RAID controllers which efficiently share access to SATA drives. SAS expanders connect the RAID controllers to the drives. The controllers establish an affiliation within the SAS expanders with respectively-owned first a |
| 7536495 |
Certified memory-to-memory data transfer between active-active raid controllers |
May 19, 2009 |
| A system for performing an efficient mirrored posted-write operation having first and second RAID controllers in communication via a PCI-Express link is disclosed. The first bus bridge transmits a PCI-Express memory write request TLP to the second bus bridge. The TLP header includes |
| 7464214 |
Application server blade for embedded storage appliance |
December 9, 2008 |
| A server blade includes a printed circuit board (PCB), including a connector for connecting the blade to a backplane comprising a local bus, and a removal mechanism for use by a person to disconnect the connector from the backplane for removal of the blade from a chassis while the ch |
| 7464205 |
Application server blade for embedded storage appliance |
December 9, 2008 |
| A method for transferring data within a network storage appliance is disclosed. The method includes transmitting a packet on an I/O link from a server to a first portion of a storage controller. Transmitting the packet on the I/O link is performed within a single blade module in a ch |
| 7437604 |
Network storage appliance with integrated redundant servers and storage controllers |
October 14, 2008 |
| A network storage appliance includes a chassis, enclosing a storage controller and first and second servers. The storage controller has first and second I/O ports for coupling to first and second I/O links. The storage controller controls a plurality of physical disk drives and prese |
| 7401254 |
Apparatus and method for a server deterministically killing a redundant server integrated within |
July 15, 2008 |
| An apparatus for deterministically killing one of redundant servers integrated into a network storage appliance chassis along with at least one storage controller is disclosed. Each server can generate a kill signal on a backplane of the chassis to the other server in response to a s |
| 7380163 |
Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant server |
May 27, 2008 |
| An apparatus is disclosed for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a failure of a link on which each server provides a heartbeat to the other server. Each of the servers is configured to take over the identity of the other server on a co |
| 7340555 |
RAID system for performing efficient mirrored posted-write operations |
March 4, 2008 |
| A bus bridge on a primary RAID controller receives user write data from a host and writes the data to its write cache and also broadcasts the data over a high speed link (e.g., PCI-Express) to a secondary RAID controller's bus bridge, which writes the data to its mirroring write cach |
| 7334064 |
Application server blade for embedded storage appliance |
February 19, 2008 |
| An application server blade for an embedded storage appliance is disclosed. The blade includes a printed circuit board (PCB) with a connector for connecting to a chassis backplane including a local bus. Affixed on the PCB is a server, a portion of a storage controller, and an I/O lin |
| 7330999 |
Network storage appliance with integrated redundant servers and storage controllers |
February 12, 2008 |
| A network storage appliance integrates a plurality of servers and a plurality of storage controllers into a single chassis. The storage controllers control transfers of data between the servers and storage devices controlled by the storage controllers. The servers and storage control |
| 7320083 |
Apparatus and method for storage controller to deterministically kill one of redundant servers i |
January 15, 2008 |
| An apparatus and method for deterministically killing one of redundant servers on a common network is disclosed. The apparatus includes a chassis that encloses the servers and a storage controller, status indicators generated by the servers to the storage controller, and kill control |
| 7315911 |
Method for efficient inter-processor communication in an active-active RAID system using PCI-exp |
January 1, 2008 |
| A fault-tolerant RAID system is disclosed. The system includes redundant RAID controllers coupled by a PCI-Express link. When a PCI-Express controller of one of the RAID controllers receives a PCI-Express memory write request transaction layer packet (TLP), it interprets a predetermi |
| 7278054 |
Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant server |
October 2, 2007 |
| An apparatus is disclosed for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a failure of a link on which each server provides a heartbeat to the other server. Each of the servers is configured to take over the identity of the other server on a co |
| 7146448 |
Apparatus and method for adopting an orphan I/O port in a redundant storage controller |
December 5, 2006 |
| A storage controller configured to adopt orphaned I/O ports is disclosed. The controller includes multiple field-replaceable units (FRUs) that plug into a backplane having local buses. At least two of the FRUs have microprocessors and memory for processing I/O requests received from host |
