Method and apparatus for synchronizing storage volumes

摘要

A disk array redundancy controller ensures integrity of a mirrored or RAID storage array supporting a host system and minimizes recovery time responsive to a storage volume failure by traversing caches of recently written blocks to identify partially flushed stripes of data and recovering the inconsistent stripes on each of the storage volumes based on a master copy derived from the scan of all pre-failure caches of the storage array. The storage array employs nonvolatile caches in conjunction with solid state drive (SSD) storage volumes, allowing post-failure recovery of recently written blocks. A cache depth at least sufficient to store the largest stripe, or set of blocks, from the host ensures recovery of the entire stripe from a collective scan of the caches of all storage volumes of the storage array.

主权项

1. A method of ensuring integrity of redundant storage comprising:
scanning a plurality of caches corresponding to storage volumes of a storage array for identifying recently written blocks; identifying, from the scanned caches, blocks belonging to a stripe that is suspect of being partially written to the storage array; accumulating from the identified blocks, each of the blocks belonging to the suspect stripe; and writing a recreated stripe of blocks based on the accumulated blocks to each of the storage volumes, the recreated stripe having consistency repaired.