Patent ID: 7873600
Filing Date: 2011-01-18
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A storage control device provided for a virtualization system, the storage control device comprising: one or more first storage devices upon which a plurality of segments that form one or more virtual first storage devices are based such that each segment of the plurality of segments corresponds to a respective physical area of a plurality of physical areas of the one or more first storage devices; a second storage device; a write execution portion that writes data to the one or more first storage devices according to a second write request received from a write control portion of a virtualization apparatus to which the storage control device is connected, the second write request being based on a first write request received by the write control portion from a higher-level device and specifying the data for writing to a virtual volume, the second write request specifying one or more of the physical areas of the one or more first storage devices and the data for writing to the one or more physical areas, and a backup control portion that uses write management information from a write management information transmission portion of the virtualization apparatus to identify a set of one or more of the physical areas of the one or more first storage devices in which writing has occurred and backs up one or more data elements stored in said identified set of one or more physical areas in-which writing has occurred to said second storage device, wherein the write management information is stored in a storage resource of the virtualization apparatus and includes allocation management information that indicates which segments from the plurality of segments are allocated to the virtual volume and correspondence management information that indicates the respective physical area to which each segment of the plurality of segments corresponds, wherein the backup control portion uses the write management information to identify the set of one or more physical areas in which writing has occurred as each of the respective physical areas to which one of the segments that are allocated to the virtual volume corresponds, and wherein the write control portion of the virtualization apparatus, upon receiving the first write request from the higher-level device, selects one or more segments from the plurality of segments that are not allocated to the virtual volume based on the allocation management information, allocates the selected one or more segments to the virtual volume, updates the allocation management information to indicate the selected one or more segments as being allocated to the virtual volume, determines the one or more physical areas to which the selected one or more segments respectively correspond using the correspondence management information, and transmits the second write request to the storage control device with the determined one or more physical areas to which the selected one or more segments respectively correspond as the specified one or more of the physical areas.