A SHARED STORAGE NETWORK SYSTEM AND A METHOD FOR OPERATING A SHARED STORAGE NETWORK SYSTEM

摘要

A shared storage network system comprises at least one storage client and a pluralityof storage servers, each providing a storage portion of the shared storage networksystem, each storage portion being divided into a plurality of sectors, eachsector being divided into a plurality of blocks, a virtual block identifier beingassociated to each of the blocks such that the entirety of all of the virtual blockidentifiers of the blocks form a global block address space in which each of thevirtual block identifiers is unique. The plurality of storage servers and theat least one storage client are grouped into a plurality of local area networksinterconnected with preferred optical channels to form a global network. Theat least one storage client is adapted to have read and/or write access to at leastone block of at least one of the storage portions associated to one of the localarea networks which differs from the local area network of the storage client.The plurality of local area networks are interconnected such that in case of aread or a write access of one of the at least one storage client to at least one ofthe blocks, the virtual block address of a block to which access is desired is translatedinto a physical block address to identify the physical block associated withthe virtual block. The shared storage network system is further adapted to implementa storage data transmission scheme comprising an optical burst mode flow controland an optical stop-over burst transmission method.