INTEGRATED-CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION OF A STORAGE-SHELF ROUTER AND A PATH CONTROLLER CARD FOR COMBINED USE IN HIGH-AVAILABILITY MASS-STORAGE-DEVICE SHELVES AND THAT SUPPORT VIRTUAL DISK FORMATTING

摘要

An integrated circuit implementing a storage-shelf router (1018) used along, or in combination with other storage-shelf routers (1014), and in combination with path controller cards, to interconnect the disks (1022-1025) within a storage shelf or disk array to a high-bandwidth communications medium through which data is exchanged between the individual disk drives or the storage shelf (1100) and a disk-array controller (1006). In various embodiments, the present invention provides virtual disk formatting by a storage shelf router (1018) and the storage shelf (1100) in which the storage-shelf is included, to external computing entities, such as disk-array controllers (1006) and host computers (1002). By providing virtual disk formatting, a storage-shelf router (1018) can provide to a disk-array controller (1006), and other external computing entities, the disk-formatting convention (4410) expected by the disk-array controller (1006), even though disk drives (1022-1025) and other storage systems that do not conform to the expected formatting conventions may be included in the storage shelf (1100) and interconnected to a disk-array controller (1018) and other external processing entities via an interface provided by a storage-shelf router (1018). Virtual disk formatting, in addition, allows a storage-shelf router to format a disk drive differently from the disk formatting expected by external computing entities, so that the storage-shelf router (1018) can transparently include additional information into disk sectors (4402), such as additional error-correction information.