METHOD FOR PERFORMING DISK ARRAY OPERATIONS USING A NONUNIFORM STRIPE SIZE MAPPING SCHEME

摘要

METHOD FOR PERFORMING DISK ARRAY OPERATIONS USING A NONUNIFORM STRIPE SIZE MAPPING DEVICE A method and apparatus for improving disk performance in a disk array subsystem. A nonuniform mapping scheme is used wherein the disk array includes regions having varying sizes of data stripes. The disk array includes a region comprised of data stripes having a stripe size that corresponds to the size of the internal data structures frequently used by the file system, in addition to a region comprised of a number of data stripes having a larger stripe size which are used for general data storage. When a write operation occurs involving one of the data structures, the data structure is preferably mapped to the small stripe region in the disk array having a size which matches the size of the data structure. In this manner, whenever a file system data structure is updated, the operation is a full stripe write. This removes the performance penalty associated with partial stripe write operations.