Patent ID: 9747034
Date: 2017-08-29
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A data storage system, comprising: a group of processor-controlled intelligent storage elements (ISEs), each ISE in the group individually including storage resources and a network interface, the storage resources of all the ISEs in the group collectively defining a field of storage (FoS), a portion of the FoS being addressable by a remote device or by another ISE via the respective ISE's network interface; an ISE FoS structure (ISEFoS) individually stored in nonvolatile memory within each of the ISEs in the group, each ISEFoS containing parametric data pertaining to every ISE in the group, every ISE in the group storing, in the nonvolatile memory of the associated ISE, an identical copy of the ISEFoS; and orchestration logic executed by one of the ISEs of the group (a recipient ISE), in response to the recipient ISE receiving a storage request via the network interface, to query the recipient ISE's ISEFoS in order to optimally determine which ISE in the group to use in executing the storage request, the ISE in the group optimally determined to use in executing the storage request characterized as a best fit ISE, the best fit ISE configured to subsequently execute the storage request to transfer data between a client device and a selected storage resource of the best fit ISE, the storage request addressed to the FoS generally rather than to any particular ISE in the group, the orchestration logic configured to identify a plurality of candidate ISEs in the group each individually satisfying a storage constraint defined by the storage request and to select the best fit ISE from the plurality of candidate ISEs, the storage constraint comprising a data storage class associated with each of the ISEs in the group.