Did You Know...
...that the Slinky toy was the result of a failed attempt by engineer Richard James to produce an antivibration device for ship instruments? His goal was to develop a spring that would instantaneously counterbalance the wave motion that rocks a ship at sea. Instead, he developed the Slinky.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7558897 | Method for adopting an orphan I/O port in a redundant storage controller A method for adopting an orphaned I/O port of a storage controller is disclosed. The storage controller has first and second redundant field-replaceable units (FRU) for processing I/O requests and a third FRU having at least one I/O port for receiving the I/O reques... | 07/07/2009 |
| 7543096 | Safe message transfers on PCI-Express link from RAID controller to receiver-programmable window of partner RAID controller CPU memory A fault-tolerant mass storage system includes two RAID controllers that communicate via a PCI-Express link. Each controller has a bus bridge coupled to the link, a cache memory that caches user data for storage on disk drives controlled by the controllers, and a CPU... | 06/02/2009 |
| 7536584 | Fault-isolating SAS expander A SAS expander includes SAS PHYs for transceiving signals with SAS devices on corresponding SAS links coupled to the SAS PHYs. The SAS expander includes status registers that provide fault detection parameters concerning communications on the SAS links. A microproce... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7536508 | System and method for sharing SATA drives in active-active RAID controller system An active-active RAID system includes first and second active-active RAID controllers which efficiently share access to SATA drives. SAS expanders connect the RAID controllers to the drives. The controllers establish an affiliation within the SAS expanders with resp... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7536506 | RAID controller using capacitor energy source to flush volatile cache data to non-volatile memory during main power outage A write-caching RAID controller is disclosed. The controller includes a CPU that manages transfers of posted-write data from host computers to a volatile memory and transfers of the posted-write data from the volatile memory to storage devices when a main power sour... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7536495 | Certified memory-to-memory data transfer between active-active raid controllers A system for performing an efficient mirrored posted-write operation having first and second RAID controllers in communication via a PCI-Express link is disclosed. The first bus bridge transmits a PCI-Express memory write request TLP to the second bus bridge. The TL... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7523350 | Timer-based apparatus and method for fault-tolerant booting of a storage controller A fault tolerant storage controller having a processor, redundant copies of a stored program, and a timer that automatically runs when the processor is reset is disclosed. Selection logic selects a first copy of the program to boot on the processor. If the timer exp... | 04/21/2009 |
| 7493441 | Mass storage controller with apparatus and method for extending battery backup time by selectively providing battery power to volatile memory banks not storing critical data A battery-backed write-caching mass storage controller is disclosed. The controller includes a plurality of volatile memory banks for caching write data prior to being written to disk drives. Critical data is stored into a first subset of the memory banks, leaving a... | 02/17/2009 |
| 7487391 | Storage controller super capacitor adaptive life monitor A storage controller has a capacitor pack for storing energy to supply during a main power loss, a temperature sensor that senses the capacitor pack temperature, and a CPU, which repeatedly: receives the temperature during an interval over which the capacitor pack i... | 02/03/2009 |
| 7464214 | Application server blade for embedded storage appliance A server blade includes a printed circuit board (PCB), including a connector for connecting the blade to a backplane comprising a local bus, and a removal mechanism for use by a person to disconnect the connector from the backplane for removal of the blade from a ch... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464205 | Application server blade for embedded storage appliance A method for transferring data within a network storage appliance is disclosed. The method includes transmitting a packet on an I/O link from a server to a first portion of a storage controller. Transmitting the packet on the I/O link is performed within a single bl... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7451348 | Dynamic write cache size adjustment in raid controller with capacitor backup energy source A high data availability write-caching storage controller has a volatile memory with a write cache for caching write cache data, a non-volatile memory, a capacitor pack for supplying power for backing up the write cache to the non-volatile memory in response to a lo... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7437604 | Network storage appliance with integrated redundant servers and storage controllers A network storage appliance includes a chassis, enclosing a storage controller and first and second servers. The storage controller has first and second I/O ports for coupling to first and second I/O links. The storage controller controls a plurality of physical dis... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7401254 | Apparatus and method for a server deterministically killing a redundant server integrated within the same network storage appliance chassis An apparatus for deterministically killing one of redundant servers integrated into a network storage appliance chassis along with at least one storage controller is disclosed. Each server can generate a kill signal on a backplane of the chassis to the other server ... | 07/15/2008 |
| 7380163 | Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a heartbeat link failure An apparatus is disclosed for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a failure of a link on which each server provides a heartbeat to the other server. Each of the servers is configured to take over the identity of th... | 05/27/2008 |
| 7380055 | Apparatus and method in a cached raid controller utilizing a solid state backup device for improving data availability time An apparatus for reducing data unavailability time after a loss of main power in a storage controller is described. The controller backs up its volatile memory containing posted-write data to a non-volatile memory upon detecting a loss of main power. The controller ... | 05/27/2008 |
| 7362565 | Disk drive support system A housing structure is provided for supporting vertically stacked horizontally extending arrays of forwardly removable disk drives in a very compact arrangement. The housing has spaced apart vertical walls with opposite side surface grooves having laterally projecti... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7340555 | RAID system for performing efficient mirrored posted-write operations A bus bridge on a primary RAID controller receives user write data from a host and writes the data to its write cache and also broadcasts the data over a high speed link (e.g., PCI-Express) to a secondary RAID controller's bus bridge, which writes the data to its mi... | 03/04/2008 |
| 7334064 | Application server blade for embedded storage appliance An application server blade for an embedded storage appliance is disclosed. The blade includes a printed circuit board (PCB) with a connector for connecting to a chassis backplane including a local bus. Affixed on the PCB is a server, a portion of a storage controll... | 02/19/2008 |
| 7330999 | Network storage appliance with integrated redundant servers and storage controllers A network storage appliance integrates a plurality of servers and a plurality of storage controllers into a single chassis. The storage controllers control transfers of data between the servers and storage devices controlled by the storage controllers. The servers a... | 02/12/2008 |
| 7320083 | Apparatus and method for storage controller to deterministically kill one of redundant servers integrated within the storage controller chassis An apparatus and method for deterministically killing one of redundant servers on a common network is disclosed. The apparatus includes a chassis that encloses the servers and a storage controller, status indicators generated by the servers to the storage controller... | 01/15/2008 |
| 7315911 | Method for efficient inter-processor communication in an active-active RAID system using PCI-express links A fault-tolerant RAID system is disclosed. The system includes redundant RAID controllers coupled by a PCI-Express link. When a PCI-Express controller of one of the RAID controllers receives a PCI-Express memory write request transaction layer packet (TLP), it inter... | 01/01/2008 |
| 7313721 | Apparatus and method for performing a preemptive reconstruct of a fault-tolerant RAID array A RAID controller performs a preemptive reconstruct of a redundant array of disks while it is still fault-tolerant by determining the errors by a first disk exceeded the error threshold, and reading data from a second disk, and writing the data to a spare disk. The ... | 12/25/2007 |
| 7278054 | Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a heartbeat link failure An apparatus is disclosed for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in response to a failure of a link on which each server provides a heartbeat to the other server. Each of the servers is configured to take over the identity of th... | 10/02/2007 |
| 7277995 | Storage controller and method for performing host access control in the host interface adapter A storage controller that provides controlled access to storage devices by host computers is disclosed. The storage controller includes a host interface adapter that interfaces the storage controller to the hosts, a device interface adapter that interfaces the stora... | 10/02/2007 |
