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Distributed Storage Cluster Design for Remote Mirroring Based on Storage Area Network

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Abstract

With the explosion of information nowadays, applying data storage safety requirements has become a new challenge, especially in high data available cluster environments. With the emergence of Storage Area Networks (SANs), storage can be network-based and consolidated, and mass data movements via Fiber Channels (FCs) can be of very high speed. Based on these features, this paper introduces a dual-node storage cluster designed for remote mirroring as a concurrent data replication method to protect data during system failures. This design takes full advantage of a SAN system's benefits, and it adopts a synchronous protocol to guarantee a fully up-to-date data copy on the remote site. By developing a Linux kernel module to control the I/O flow and by using the technologies of software Logic Unit Number (LUN) masking, background online resynchronization and a self-management daemon, we have achieved a reliable mirroring system with the characteristics of server-free data replication, fault tolerance, online disaster recovery and high performance. In this study, we implemented the design in a remote mirror subsystem built on a software Fiber Channel Storage Area Network (FC-SAN) system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Jun Yao, Ji-Wu Shu & Wei-Min Zheng

  2. Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Jun Yao

Authors
  1. Jun Yao
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  2. Ji-Wu Shu
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  3. Wei-Min Zheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ji-Wu Shu.

Additional information

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10576018, the National Grand Fundamental Research 973 Program of China under Grant No. 2004CB318205, and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University.

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Yao, J., Shu, JW. & Zheng, WM. Distributed Storage Cluster Design for Remote Mirroring Based on Storage Area Network. J Comput Sci Technol 22, 521–526 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-007-9075-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-007-9075-x

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