SANique CVM File System

Volume Snapshot
SANique CVM provides volume snapshot capability. When snapshot is taken, SANique CVM creates a snapshot volume and performs copy-on-write policy on the original volume. Based on such a snapshot volume, on-line incremental volume backup can be easily implemented.

Centralized storage management

Since SANique cluster is built on top of SAN sharing all storage devices, SANique CVM provides centralized storage management capability. All storages devices can be managed by a single node and any change made by such a node is effective to all other nodes in the SANique cluster immediately.

On-line cluster and storage reconfiguration

SANique CVM supports on-line membership and storage management. A set of new or old member nodes can be added to or removed from the SANique cluster on-line without interrupting the current service. Storage devices can be newly added to or removed from the SANique cluster on-line as well. In addition, virtual volumes can be resized while they are actively in use.

Automatic failover

SANique CVM provides its own heartbeat checking service. In case of node failures, SANique CVM detects failures, isolates failed nodes, and fails over automatically so that other active nodes in the SANique cluster can enjoy uninterrupted I/O service. SANique CVM supports single, multiple, and cascading node failures.

Symmetric architecture of concurrency control mechanism

SANique CVM employs distributed metadata management and SANique cluster architecture is symmetric. Therefore, there is no single point of failure or performance hot spot.

Full 64-bit address space support

SANique CVM operates on a full 64-bit address space so that a single volume can grow as large as 264 bytes.

Multiple servers can concurrently and physically share the same virtual volume created by SANique CVM at block-level and such sharing is transparent to applications on each server.

Concurrent and transparent block-level volume sharing by multiple servers

SANique CVM provides virtual volume service on top of multiple physical storage devices. SANique CVM supports three different types of virtual or logical volumes.

Virtual volume management

SANique CVM is a storage virtualization solution for a cluster environment built on top of SAN. SANique CVM virtualizes physical storage space and provides virtual or logical volumes for the use of location-independent and restriction-free storage space. The granularity of volume sharing provided by SANique CVM is very fine-grained; file-level and block-level data sharing can be implemented on top of SANique CVM. The main features of SANique CVM include storage virtualization and fine-grained logical volume sharing on top of SAN, on-line storage reconfiguration, on-line service reconfiguration, and centralized storage management. SANique CVM also provides high aggregate/per-application I/O bandwidth via parallel disk I/O (software RAID 0) and high availability via storage mirroring (software RAID 1). SANique CVM also supports volume snapshot for on-line data backup.

The current demand for storage virtualization and logical volume management is necessitated by a number of practical needs. The size of a single physical volume is limited by current storage technology and a meaningful information-base can hardly be built with such a limited physical volume; virtually unlimited and highly scalable volume space is required to satisfy the current demand. The I/O bandwidth of a single physical storage device is limited and too low to meet the requirement of the current computation horsepower; support for simultaneous or parallel disk accesses is inevitable in order to increase both aggregate and per-application I/O bandwidth. Hardware devices, especially storage devices, are subject to physical damage, which in turn may result in disastrous system failures. A mechanism for backing up possible system failures or avoiding unnecessary service interruptions should be embedded into the solution in order to accomplish the goal of 24 7 uninterrupted service. SANique CVM is designed to meet the current market demands for High Availability (HA), High Performance (HP), and High Manageability (HM). The main features of SANique CVM include

Specification

HS CODE 8525202000