Cluster solid state drives

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9619164-B2
Application number	US-201514639937-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 5, 2015
Priority date	May 6, 2014
Publication date	Apr 11, 2017
Grant date	Apr 11, 2017

Abstract

Described herein are techniques for arranging a plurality of M.2 solid state drive (SSD) modules and flash storage elements into a compact form factor. On a first side of an SSD sled, a plurality of M.2 SSD modules may be communicatively coupled to a port expander. On a second side of the SSD sled, a plurality of flash storage elements (not packaged into M.2 SSD modules) may be present. A plurality of SSD sleds (with the above-described characteristics) may be sized so as to collectively fit into a single hard disk drive (HDD) compatible compartment of a chassis.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A storage system, comprising:
a plurality of solid state drive (SSD) sleds, wherein each of the SSD sleds includes:
(i) a plurality of M.2-compliant SSDs, each of the M.2-compliant SSDs comprising a serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) SSD controller and a plurality of NAND flash chips,
(ii) a port expander of the SSD sled, each of the M.2-compliant SSDs being communicatively coupled to the port expander of the SSD sled, and
(iii) a plurality of flash storage elements, each of the flash storage elements comprising a NAND flash chip,
wherein the plurality of SSD sleds is sized so as to collectively fit into a single hard disk drive (HDD) compatible compartment of a chassis,
wherein the M.2-compliant SSDs are arranged on a first surface of the SSD sleds and the flash storage elements are arranged on a second surface of the SSD sleds, and
wherein the first surface faces a first direction and the second surface faces a second direction opposite to the first direction.

2. The storage system of claim 1 , further comprising a port expander of a controller device, each respective port expander of each of the SSD sleds being communicatively coupled to the port expander of the controller device.

3. The storage system of claim 1 , wherein the HDD compatible compartment of the chassis comprises a 3.5-inch drive bay.

4. The storage system of claim 2 , wherein the port expander of the controller device is communicatively coupled to a central processing unit (CPU) of the controller device via a host bus adaptor (HBA) of the controller device.

5. The storage system of claim 2 , further comprising a plurality of HDDs, wherein the plurality of HDDs are communicatively coupled to the controller device via the port expander of the controller device.

6. The storage system of claim 1 , wherein the port expander of the SSD sled is a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) port expander.

7. The storage system of claim 1 , wherein each of the SSD sleds further includes a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) connector, and wherein the SAS connectors connects the SSD sleds to an SAS bus.

8. The storage system of claim 1 , wherein each of the SSD sleds further includes a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) SSD controller.

9. The storage system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of SSD sleds replaces a 3.5-inch HDD.

Assignees

• Nimble Storage Inc

Inventors

• Mehta Varun
• Mcknight Tom

Classifications

• G06F3/0658

  Controller construction arrangements · CPC title

• G06F3/0626 Primary

  Reducing size or complexity of storage systems · CPC title

• G06F3/0688

  Non-volatile semiconductor memory arrays · CPC title

• G06F3/061

  Improving I/O performance · CPC title

• G06F3/0655

  Vertical data movement, i.e. input-output transfer; data movement between one or more hosts and one or more storage devices · CPC title