STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION BY LAYERING VIRTUAL DISK OBJECTS ON A FILE SYSTEM

摘要

As seen in Figure 1, a storage virtualization selection technique "automates" a virtualization selection process to create virtual disk (vdisk) storage objects over a volume (150) & (160) of a file system implemented by a storage operating system (200) of a multi-protocol storage appliance (100). The file system provides a virtualization system that aggregates physical storage of a set of disks (130) or portions (e.g., extents) of disks into a pool of blocks that can be dynamically allocated to form a vdisk. The file system also provides reliability guarantees for the vdisks in accordance with its underlying architecture. That is, the file system organizes its storage within volumes created among the managed disks. The vdisk is thereafter created as a storage object within a volume and inherits the underlying reliability configuration associated with that volume.