Data protection offloads using SSD peering

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10423487-B2
Application number	US-201615351434-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 14, 2016
Priority date	Aug 19, 2016
Publication date	Sep 24, 2019
Grant date	Sep 24, 2019

Abstract

A storage system includes a plurality of solid-state drives (SSDs) in which each SSD is an endpoint of a peer group in which one SSD is a primary SSD of the peer group, or all SSDs are treated as equal peers. Each SSD further includes a host interface port coupled to a host computing device that receives receive input/output (I/O) communications from the host computing device, a peer-interface port coupled to the peer-interface port of each other SSD in the peer group; and a controller coupled to the host interface port and the peer-interface port. The primary SSD controller is responsive to I/O communications received from the host computing device to provide data-protection computations relating to a coordinated data-protection configuration provided by the peer group and to pass the coordinated data-protection configuration information to the controllers of the other end points of the peer group through the peer-interface port.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A storage system, comprising:
a plurality of solid-state drives (SSDs) comprising at least one peer group of SSDs, a first SSD of the at least one peer group of SSD comprising a primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs, the SSDs of the at least one peer group of SSDs further comprising:
a host interface port to be communicatively coupled to at least one host computing device, the host interface port to receive input/output (I/O) communications from the at least one host computing device;
a peer-interface port to be communicatively coupled to the peer-interface port of at least one second SSD in the at least one peer group of SSDs; and
a controller coupled to the host interface port and the peer-interface port, the controller of the primary SSD to be responsive to I/O communications received from the at least one host computing device to provide data-protection computations relating to a coordinated data-protection configuration provided by the at least one peer group of SSDs and to pass coordinated data-protection configuration information to the controllers of the at least one second SSDs of the at least one peer group of SSDs through the peer-interface port.

2. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the at least one second SSD comprises a secondary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs.

3. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the host interface ports of the SSDs of the at least one peer group of SSDs are to be coupled to the at least one host computing device through a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCIe) communication network, an Ethernet communication network, an InfiniBand communication network, a Fibre Channel communication network, or a Serial Attached SCSI communication network.

4. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the peer-interface port of the first SSD is to be coupled to the peer-interface port of at least one second SSD through a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCIe) communication network, an Ethernet communication network, an InfiniBand communication network, a Fibre Channel communication network, or a Serial Attached SCSI communication network.

5. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the coordinated data-protection configuration comprises a replication configuration, an erasure-coding configuration, a replication syndrome, a non-deterministic error recovery scheme, a RAID x+y data protection scheme, striping, a RAID redundancy scheme that includes Hamming-code parity, mirroring, byte-level striping with parity, block-level striping with distributed or distributed parity and/or block-level striping with doubled distributed parity, an erasure coding scheme that includes an error correction code, or a combination thereof.

6. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs is identified by an identifier corresponding to a communication protocol of the host interface port.

7. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs receives information through the host interface port identifying the SSD as a primary SSD or as a secondary SSD.

8. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the I/O communications comprises a write I/O communication received from the at least one host computing device,
wherein at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs to receive data through the host interface port of the SSD directly from a memory of the at least one computing device, the received data being allocated to the SSD based on the coordinated data-protection configuration,
wherein the at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs to receive the data allocated based on the coordinated data-protection configuration further sends a peer write transaction complete communication to the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs through the peer-interface port upon completion of a write operation of the data allocated to the at least one SSD, and
wherein the controller of the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further sends a write transaction complete communication to the at least one host computing device upon receiving a peer write transaction complete from at least one other SSD of the peer group of SSDs.

9. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the I/O communications comprises a write I/O communication received from the at least one host computing device,
wherein the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further receives data from the at least one host computing device through the host interface port, the at least one second SSD of the peer group of SSDs receiving the data from the controller of the primary SSD through the peer-interface port of the at least one SSD based on the coordinated data-protection configuration,
wherein the at least one second SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs to receive the data allocated based on the coordinated data-protection configuration further sends a peer write transaction complete communication to the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs through the peer-interface port upon completion of a write operation of the data allocated to the at least one second SSD, and
wherein the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further sends a write transaction complete communication to the at least one host computing device upon receiving a peer write transaction complete from the at least one second SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs.

10. The storage system according to claim 1 , wherein the I/O communications comprises a read I/O communication received from the at least one host computing device,
wherein at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further sends data through the host interface port of the at least one SSD directly to the at least one host computing device, the data to be sent being allocated to the at least one SSD based on the coordinated data-protection configuration,
wherein at least one SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further sends a peer read transaction complete communication to the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs through the peer-interface port upon completion of a read operation by the SSD, and
wherein the primary SSD of the at least one peer group of SSDs further sends a read transaction complete communication to the at least one host computing device upon receiving a peer read transaction complete from the other SSDs of the at least one peer group of SSDs.

11. A solid-state drive (SSD), comprising:
a host interface port capable of being communicatively coupled to at least one host computing device, the host interface port to receive input/output (I/O) communications from the at least one host computing device;
a peer-interface port capable of being communicatively coupled to a peer-interface port of other SSDs of a peer group of SSDs; and
a controller coupled to the interface port and the peer-interface port, the controller to be responsive to I/O communications received from the at least one host computing device to provide data-protection computations relating to a coordinated data-protection configuration provided by the peer group and to pass coordinated data-protection configuration information to the controllers of the other SSDs of the peer group through the peer-interface port.

12. The SSD according to claim 11 , wherein the host interface port of the SSD is capable of being coupled to the at least one host computing system through a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCIe) communication network, an Ethernet communication network, an Infi

Assignees

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

Inventors

• Marripudi Gunneswara R
• Fischer Stephen G
• PING John
• Joshi Indria
• Rogers Harry R

Classifications

• G06F11/1012 Primary

  using codes or arrangements adapted for a specific type of error (G06F11/1048 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F13/4282

  on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus (on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247) · CPC title

• G11C29/52

  Protection of memory contents; Detection of errors in memory contents · CPC title

• G06F11/108

  Parity data distribution in semiconductor storages, e.g. in SSD · CPC title

• G06F11/1072 Primary

  in multilevel memories · CPC title