Fast accessible compressed thin provisioning volume

摘要

A computerized data storage system includes at least one storage device including a nonvolatile writable medium; a cache memory and a data management controller and a storage port. The storage port is operable to receive a request to read data, and, in response to the request to read data, to send the data stored in the data storing area of the cache memory. The storage port is further operable to receive a request to write data, and, in response to the request to write data, to send the write data to the data storing area of the cache memory. The storage system further includes a thin provisioning controller operable to provide a virtual volume, and a capacity pool. The storage system further includes a data compression controller and a data decompression controller.

主权项

1. A storage system comprising:
a plurality of storage devices on which a storage pool having a plurality of storage regions is configured; and a storage controller configured to manage a virtual volume, which has a first attribute indicating that a compression function is not enabled for the virtual volume, the virtual volume having a plurality of virtual storage areas, the virtual storage areas including a first virtual storage area to which one or more first storage regions in the storage pool are allocated, wherein, if the first attribute of the virtual volume is changed to a second attribute indicating that the compression function is enabled for the virtual volume, the storage controller is further configured to: compress data read from the one or more first storage regions which are allocated to the first virtual storage area in the virtual volume; correlate one or more second storage regions to the first virtual storage area to store the compressed data, the number of the one or more second storage regions being less than the number of the one or more first storage regions; and free the one or more first storage regions from allocation to the first virtual storage area.