Method and apparatus for tiered storage

摘要

A system for storing file data and directory data received over a network includes a network interface in communication with the network which receives NAS requests containing data to be written to files from the network. The system includes a first type of storage. The system includes a second type of storage different from the first type of storage. The system includes a policy specification n which specifies a first portion of one or more files' data which is less than all of the files' data is stored in the first type of storage and a second portion of the data which is less than all of the data of the files is stored in the second type of store. The system comprises a processing unit which executes the policy and causes the first portion to be stored in the first type of storage and a second portion to be stored in the second type of storage. A method for storing file data and directory data received over a network.

主权项

1. A system for storing file data and directory data received over a network comprising:
a network interface in communication with the network which receives Network Attached Storage (NAS) requests containing data to be written to files from the network and a set of server exports, each of which is a root of a file system tree; a first type of storage which is a solid state drive; a second type of storage different from the first type of storage, where the difference includes drives that operate at least at a 10% difference in speed or drives that have at least a 10% difference in bandwidth or a 10% difference in average latency perform random read operations, the second type of storage is a rotating magnetic drive; a policy specification specifies a set of data policy rules associated with each server export such that the policy rules are applied to any object allocated within a file system tree associated with an export, and which specifies a first portion of one or more files' data which is less than alt of the files' data is stored in the first type of storage and a second portion of the data which is less than all of the data of the files and is different from the first portion is stored in the second type of storage, the policy specification either associated with an inode and inherited from its parent directory upon the inode's creation, or alternatively stored in an incoming file handle and inherited from its parent directory by lookup, create or other operations that return new file handles, with a policy ID field stored in each inode and inherited on file or directory creation; and a hardware processing unit which executes the policy and causes the first portion to be stored in the first type of storage and the second portion to be stored in the second type of storage, the processing unit connected to the first type of storage and the second type of storage by internal buses, the first portion of data is smaller than the second portion of data so by the time the processing unit is processing the first portion of data, the rotating magnetic drive of the second type of storage is transferring the second portion of data at the rotating magnetic drive's full rate after having performed the rotating magnetic drive's high latency seek operation concurrent with the transfer of at least a portion of the first portion of data from the solid-state drive of the first type of storage.