METHOD OF THIN PROVISIONING IN A SOLID STATE DISK ARRAY

摘要

A method of thin provisioning in a storage system is disclosed. The method includes communicating to a user a capacity of a virtual storage, the virtual storage capacity being substantially larger than that of a storage pool. Further, the method includes assigning portions of the storage pool to logical unit number (LUN) logical block address (LBA)-groups only when the LUN LBA-groups are being written to and maintaining a mapping table to track the association of the LUN LBA-groups to the storage pool.

主权项

1. A method of thin provisioning in a storage system comprising:
communicating to a user a capacity of a virtual storage, the virtual storage capacity being substantially larger than that of a storage pool of solid state disks (SSDs) to present to the user an appearance of having more physical resources than are actually available in the storage pool of SSDs, the storage pool of SSDs having physical locations into which data from the user is to be stored, the virtual storage lacking physical locations within the SSDs; creating logical unit numbers (LUNs) based on a granularity, each unit of LUN being defined by the size of the granularity and defining a LUN logical block address (LBA)-groups; a storage processor, residing externally to the storage pool of SSDs, maintaining mapping tables in a memory residing externally to the storage pool of SSDs, each mapping table being for one or more LUNs and configured to store the relationship between storage pool LBA-groups and LUN LBA-groups; the storage processor delaying allocating storage pool to the LUNs; upon the user initiating writing of data ultimately written to the physical locations of the storage pool of SSDs assigning a free portion of the storage pool that is free and identified by a storage pool LBA-groups, to a LUN, identified by a LUN LBA-groups based on the granularity, wherein the assigning a free portion of the storage pool to a LUN is performed for each write operation after an initial write operation.