1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a storage system and a method of controlling the same. More particularly, the invention relates to a RAID storage system loaded with a NAS function and a SAN function and a method of controlling the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the Internet technology has progressed in recent years, the Web application, the streaming application, the E business application and the like have abruptly come into wide use, an amount of data which those applications require has been rapidly increased, and also the storage capacity which the dialy life and the businesses require has been explosively increased. Then, according to an article of “Storage Networking Virtualization (1.1 The need for virtualization)”, IBM Redbooks, though the storage cost has been surely reduced, there arises the problem that the management cost for the data has been increased.
As for the technique for solving the above-mentioned problem, there are known the technique called a Storage Area Network (SAN) and the technique called a Network Attached Storage (NAS). According to the above-mentioned article of “Storage Networking Virtualization (3.2.2 Fibre Channel and SAN)”, the SAN is such that the high speed network dedicated to the storage is constructed using a Fibre Channel and the dispersed data is consolidated, thereby being adapted to reduce the management cost. Since this technique can eliminate the influence of the network traffic in a Local Area Network (LAN) by using the network dedicated to the storage, it is possible to realize the advanced I/O performance. But, since the function which the SAN provides is the I/O function at the disk block level, it has the side in which it is difficult to hold the data in common between the different hosts or between OSs.
On the other hand, according to an article of “Printer Friendly View White Paper: Network-Attached Storage (2. What is a NAS Device?)”, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Monday, Jan. 7, 2002 in http://www.sun.com/ Storage/white-papers/NAS.html, the NAS is the file server which provides the means for holding the platform-independent storage in common through the Network Protocol such as an NFS or a CIFS. The NAS, similarly to the SAN, can consolidate the dispersed data to reduce the management cost. In addition, the NAS is optimized as the file server, and is directly connected to the LAN to provide the access means at the file level.
While as described above, each of the SAN and the NAS is the technique for consolidating the data to reduce the management cost, since the access means provided by the SAN and the NAS is different between them, proper use in accordance with the use is required therefor. In addition, when the data is consolidated to be held in common between a large number of hosts as described above, the high reliability and the high availability become the important elements.
As described above, the SAN is the network dedicated to the storage, the reliability thereof depends on individual storages connected thereto, and it is possible to provide the high reliability by employing a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) as the storage. In addition, the RAID provides a plurality of interfaces, whereby even when a trouble occurs in a certain interface, it is possible to continue the service using another interface, and hence it is possible to provide the high availability.
On the other hand, the NAS is a file server having a file system and hence the reliability of the NAS becomes the reliability itself of the file server. However, the file server can not provide the high reliability by only employing the RAID. According to an article of “UNIX INTERNALS: THE NEW FRONTIERS” by Uresh Vahalia, 9.12.5 (pp. 287 and 288), in the file system of UNIX, a buffer cache is provided on a memory in order to enhance the performance, and a plurality of writing processings are got together to carry out the collective disk writing. For this reason, with this technique, the data which is not yet written to the disk is lost in the system crash. The lost data can be classified into two data, i.e., the file data itself and the metadata in which the structure of the file system is described. When the change of the metadata is lost, there arises the problem that the contradiction occurs in the file system so that the file system becomes unable to be used.
As for the method of solving such a problem, there are known the technique of the metadata logging described in the above-mentioned article of “UNIX INTERNALS: THE NEW FRONTIERS (Prentice Hall; ISBN: 013 101 9082, Oct. 23, 1995)” by Uresh Vahalia, 11.7 (pp. 350 and 351), and the technique of the log-structured file system described the article of “UNIX INTERNALS: THE NEW FRONTIERS” by Uresh Vahalia, 11.5 (pp. 345 and 346).
The metadata logging is a method wherein the change log of the metadata is always written to the area which is fixedly provided on the disk, this metadata change log is referred in the system crash, and the change of the metadata which is not yet reflected on the disk is reflected thereon, thereby solving the contradiction of the file system. While the metadata logging can eliminate the occurrence of the contradiction in the file system by utilizing such a method, the possibility that the file data may be lost remains as before.
The log-structured file system is such that the change which is made for the file system is accumulated in the big log entry on the memory to be always written to the last of the log on the disk in the state of holding the consistentness of the file system, whereby it becomes possible to ensure both of the metadata and the user data. But, this file system has the problem that when the system crash occurs before the data is written to the log on the disk, the data which has been preserved in the log entry on the memory is lost.
As for the technique for solving such a problem, there is known the technique described in an article of “Using NUMA Interconnects to Implement Highly Available File Server Appliances (WAFL Over View”, Jan. 7, 2002, Network Appliance Co. Ltd. described in http://www.netapp.com/tech library/ 10004.html. This technique is optimized in such a way as to be dedicated to the NAS, and has a nonvolatile memory (NVRAM) and a RAID disk to construct the log-structured file system on the RAID disk. Then, all of the NFS commands which have been received via the network are logged in the NVRAM, and the log in the state of holding the consistentness is stored in the RAID disk.
With in the above-mentioned technique, even when the system is crashed before the log entry is written to the RAID disk, the file system processing can be executed again to restore the file system to its perfect state by using the NFS command log on the NVRAM after the restoration of the system, and also it is possible to ensure perfectly the data.
In addition, with the above-mentioned technique, it is possible to provide the fail-over function in which two nodes each of which is loaded with the file server are connected through an independent network, and the PAID disk is connected to both of the nodes, whereby even when a trouble occurs in one of the nodes, the other takes over the processing to provide continuously the service. Further, with that technique, the areas in which the copies of the NFS command logs of the other party nodes are ensured in the NVRAMs of the nodes, and when receiving the NFS command, the log is stored on the NVRAM of the node of interest and at the same time, that log is copied in the NVRAM as well of the other party node via the network. Therefore, when the system failure occurs, the NFS command log of the other party node which is preserved on the node of interest and the file system of the PAID disk which was used by the other party node is restored to its former state to be able to continue the service and hence it is possible to provide the high availability.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds