San-based Network Storage Management System Study

In the research areas of storage technologies, the widely accepted mainstream technology is Fibre-Channel (FC) based Storage Area Network (SAN). SAN has provided a convenient way to connect storage sub-system with present LAN, so storage capacity can be appended independently and network performance will not be affected by data transference.Storage Area Networks enable many computers to access a set of storage devices over a high speed network, and exploit the capability of client computers to obtain data directly from storage devices rather than accessing data through a server that performs reads and writes on their behalf. SAN File System is designed to support heterogeneous systems. The various SAN File System clients on the SAN could be running different operating systems. The design goal of SAN File System is to manage the storage for multiple operating systems such as various flavors of UNIX, Windows, etc.The author made a research of the cross-platform file sharing based on SAN and realized the cross-platform file sharing between mainframe system and open system. In addition, it provides a group of APIs which can be called by application programs for accessing files. This system has many outstanding characteristics: huge storage capacity, high-speed data access, high availability and high reliability, etc. In the design of cross-platform network storage sharing system, the author has brought forward several optimizing solutions to improve availability, reliability with co-workers in an international project.1. We have designed several optimizing technologies, such as asynchronous I/O mode, I/O buffering and double buffers. They make the system more efficient to share the SAN storage sub-system.2. We also have designed some methods, such as multi-path switching and server failure recovery, to realize the high availability.All technological achievements above have been applied to the project and its product is on sale.