Research Storage Server Based On Multiple Arrays With Channels

With the rapid development of network technology and digital information, storage servers are required more. Storage servers are used to store data and response network requests mainly, whose performance is determined by disks' I/O and network transmission control. The performance of Disks' I/O can be improved by the RAID technology, and network transmission rate may be also enhanced by increasing the number of network channels when transmission medium keeps unchangeable. By the two technologies, we can design the new storage server with multiple array and multiple channels, which can improve system's average transmission rate remarkably.Storage system based on multi-array with multi-channel is realized by hanging multiple arrays on the file server with SCSI bus. Each array owns its network interface, which makes it communicate with users. In order to make full use of the new storage architecture, the method of sharing data must be changed. "Three Communication Protocol" fulfills the shunt of users' commands and data by using the specialty of storage server. This technology of sharing data makes users acquire data from arrays directly, and reduce the limitation of network interface in file server.Storage system's aggregate bandwidth will expand when the number of disk array increases, so we can store files in multiple arrays dispersedly and increase system network bandwidth if we design virtual storage pool based on multiple arrays. When users acquire files' storage address, they may resolve corresponding files' storage address on every array and read/write users' data from multiple network channels. Virtual storage pool makes users acquire data from storage server's network channels synchronously, which shortens server's response time hugely and improves system average transmission rate.Operation system is the most important part in storage server, so we adopt special operation system for file server according to the architecture of storage system and multiple methods of sharing data. This special operation system is composed of a reduced linux system. The network performance of arrays is the one of key factors in storage servers. So we can avoid frequent data copy between user's buffer and kernel's buffer by designing network response based on kernel-level sockets. The new technology can improve the average transmission rate of network array.