Patent ID: 11847081

Abstract:
Traditionally, servers are interconnected inside a data center using regular network cards. It is desired that high-available network-attached storage arrays have the feature of non-disruptive upgrade (NDU) for software and firmware, while one or more applications are still running IO. With the emergence of SmartNICs, there are many functions available now to SmartNIC that may enhance server and entire solution capabilities. Since SmartNIC is a new emerging technology, there are no adequate solutions currently for NDU while running I/O. The present patent document discloses embodiments for upgrading the SmartNIC software without disruption to the host applications. A shared namespace may be implemented inside an emulated NVMe/PCIe device, such as a data processing unit (DPU) or infrastructure processing unit (IPU), such that multiple instances may be enabled to run both old and new target emulation SPDK-based software together using multiple paths to achieve SmartNIC storage NDU.