Patent ID: 7925846
Filing Date: 2011-04-12
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer system having a disk pool supply device which has a disk pool constituted by a physical disk space of one or more physical disks, a virtual volume management device which dynamically allocates the physical disk space belonging to the disk pool to a storage disk space of a virtual volume, a plurality of host computers which have a file system for managing files by using the storage disk space of the virtual volume, and a management computer for managing the host computers and the virtual volume management device, wherein the management computer comprises: a threshold value storage unit which stores a predetermined threshold value which is used in a comparison with a free disk space amount of the disk pool; a free disk space amount acquisition unit which acquires the free disk space amount of the disk pool from the virtual volume management device; an invalid disk space amount acquisition unit which acquires from the plurality of host computers, an amount of an invalid disk space in the virtual volume, which is a disk space to which the physical disk space has been allocated but in which the files are not stored; a host determination unit which determines a host computer which instructs collection of the physical disk space allocated to the invalid disk space on the basis of the amount of the invalid disk space; a free disk space amount judgment unit which judges whether the free disk space amount of the disk pool is smaller than the threshold value; and a collection request unit which transmits a collection request for the physical disk space allocated to the invalid disk space to the determined host computer after judging that the free disk space amount of the disk pool is smaller than the threshold value, the host computers each comprises: an invalid disk space amount detection/transmission unit which detects the amount of the invalid disk space in the virtual volume and transmits the amount of the invalid disk space to the management computer; and an invalid disk space position information transmission unit which, in cases where the collection request is received from the management computer, generates invalid disk space position information which indicates a position of invalid disk space in the virtual volume, and transmits the invalid disk space position information to the virtual volume management device, and the virtual volume management device comprises: a physical free disk space amount transmission unit which transmits the free disk space amount of the disk pool to the management computer; and a collection unit which receives the invalid disk space position information from the host computer and collects the physical disk space of the physical disk allocated to the storage disk space of the virtual volume on the basis of the invalid disk space position information.