Abstract:
In accordance with one embodiment a disk drive device comprising: a disk drive; at least one Ethernet port; at least one powerful low power processor capable of running storage protocols; and one or more Ethernet circuits, wherein one or more of the Ethernet ports provide a power transmission medium which powers the disk drive.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
       [0001]    This application claims the benefit of the provisional application Ser. No. 61/679,799, filed 2012 Aug. 6 by the present inventor EFS ID: 13420878. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND 
     Prior Art 
       [0002]    The following is prior art that presently appears relevant: 
         [0000]    
       
         
               
             
               
               
               
               
               
             
               
             
               
               
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
               
             
             
               
                 U.S. Patent 
               
             
          
           
               
                   
                 Pat. No. 
                 Kind code 
                 Issue Date 
                 Patentee 
               
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 7,792,923 
                 B2 
                 Sep. 7 2010 
                 Han-Gyoo Kim 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
          
           
               
                 U.S. Patent Application Publications 
               
             
          
           
               
                   
                 Publication Nr. 
                 Kind code 
                 Publ. Date 
                 Applicant 
               
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 20060010287 
                 A1 
                 Jan. 12 2006 
                 Han-Gyoo Kim 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
          
         
       
     
       BACK GROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0003]    1. Technical Field 
         [0004]    The computer data storage technology revolves around the disk drive. While the dominant disk drives technology remains to be the mechanical disk drive technology. Advances in flash memory are making the solid-state disk drive known as SSD the future technology to replace the mechanical disk drive. Disk drives have no intelligence. They rely on SAN or NAS controllers or directly attached to server that controls them. Once it&#39;s controlled it&#39;s presented as a data storage device in a form of NAS “network attached file system storage” or a SAN “storage array network” or a directly attached local disk drive. 
         [0005]    2. Related Art 
         [0006]    Disk drives are the backbone of today&#39;s storage systems, most storage systems consist of a rack populated by disk drives. The rack will either have a controller or will be attached to a separate controller. 
         [0007]    The controller performs numerous functions such as reading and writing data to the disk drives, exporting files systems from the disk drives in a NAS “network attached storage” configuration, allowing access to the disk drive as a block storage device in a SAN configuration. 
         [0008]    The controller usually run software that supports protocols and file systems such as ISCSI, NFS, CIFS to allow users access to storage devices over the networks. The controller also provides additional functions to increase reliability of the disk drive such as:
       Striping of data across the disk drives in the rack, avoids having all the data on one disk drive.   Mirroring of the data on different disk drives where the mirror disk is to recover data from a disk failure.       
 
         [0011]    These functions are called RAID levels stands for redundant array of independent disks. Direct attached storage disk drive attached to a server or a computer is another way of using a server or computer as the controller to make the disk drive appear as a storage medium. Prior art cited in this application above shows another way of making networked disks appear as local disk drives by extending the control function over Ethernet network and issuing local commands to the disk drive over Ethernet links. This prior art of SAN and NAS controllers are very high performance but very expensive. The other prior art of direct attached, whether directly connected or over Ethernet is limited, not flexible as it does not have higher level SAN/NAS protocols or routing protocols. It also leaves all the work for the server controlling the direct attached disks. The invention described herein takes advantage of powerful processors developed for tablets and powerful smartphones and embeds them as controllers inside disk drives to serve SAN and NAS protocol&#39;s right out the disk drive. 
       SUMMARY 
       [0012]    In accordance with one embodiment a disk drive device comprising of: 
         [0013]    a disk drive, a minimum of one Ethernet port, powerful low power processor capable of running storage protocols and power over Ethernet circuits to derive its power from the power over Ethernet standard. 
       Advantages 
       [0014]    Accordingly several advantages in a number of aspects are as follows: having a dedicated powerful processor in the disk drive serving only one disk drive boosts the performance to that of high end SANS and NAS controllers while serving NAS and SAN protocols out of the disk drive. 
         [0015]    Given that the processor is low power intended for tablet and smart phones allows the use of power over Ethernet standard which is higher efficiency and result in an overall low power consumption storage solution. 
         [0016]    Given that the processors are meant for low cost tablet and smartphones market we end up with a low cost disk drive storage solution. 
         [0017]    In conclusion, by changing the disk drive architecture to include a powerful processor inside it, we get high performance ability to serve SAN and NAS protocols at lower cost and lower power. 
     
    
     
       LIST OF FIGURES 
         [0018]      FIG. 1  Shows prior art technology and the present invention 
           [0019]      FIG. 2  Shows the present invention composition 
           [0020]      FIG. 3  Shows the architecture of the present invention usage 
           [0021]      FIG. 4  Shows the building blocks of the controller SOC 
           [0022]      FIG. 5  Cludio cloud disk IO 
           [0023]      FIG. 6  Cloud application 
           [0024]      FIG. 7  Host bus adapter 
           [0025]      FIG. 8  Host bus adapter internals 
           [0026]      FIG. 9  Broadcast or multicast packet Data Packet 
           [0027]      FIG. 10  Ethernet disk drive 
           [0028]      FIG. 11  Ethernet disk drive with bracket for rack mounting 
           [0029]      FIG. 12  Ethernet disk drive with power management module 
           [0030]      FIG. 13  Multicore processor controller 
           [0031]      FIG. 14  Mechanical hole pattern 
       
    
    
       [0032]    Omit  FIG. 15   
       DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0033]      FIG. 1  shows existing technology composition of storage devices and usage. In  101  the basic building block is the disk drive SSD or mechanical. In  102 , we have a rack of disk that will normally be connected to a controller such as a RAID controller then directly connect to a server,  103 ,  104  shows a SAN or NAS storage system where the controller  105  is built in. The SAN/NAS storage systems will also include the power supply for the disks and the controller, cooling fans which makes it a very expensive system, in today&#39;s IT infrastructure the storage systems are the most expensive. 
         [0034]    The invention described here describes a way of a new architecture of SAN/NAS that decrease the cost significantly. 
         [0035]    The proposed invention combines the disk drive shown in  106  with a built in controller  107  silicon system on a chip with a block diagram shown in  FIG. 4 . 
         [0036]    By doing so the disk drive by itself becomes a SAN/NAS shown in  FIG. 2   306 . The SOC  505  in  FIG. 4  will perform the function of the NAS/SAN controller and support the RAID, IPSCSI, FCOIP, file system serving such as NFS, CIFS and so on. The combined disk and controller will make up the new disk SAN/NAS system shown in  FIG. 1   108 . 
         [0037]    The new disk SAN/NAS system invention is shown in  FIG. 2   306 . The invention will have a minimum of two Ethernet ports shown in  FIG. 2   305 , 
         [0038]    It will also have a controller  505  and a disk drive mechanical or SSD “solid state disk”. 
         [0039]    The controller will provide ISCSI target functionality as well as NAS NFS CIFS functions and RAID. When the end users require more storage capacity additional disk will be added on the network on the network switch. 
         [0040]      FIG. 2  shows 2 network interfaces  305 , one of them is the primary Ethernet port that serves the users the 2 nd  will be dedicated to the redundancy functions such as RAID, replication, management and backup. 
         [0041]    The present invention will also use the Ethernet ports in  305  to power itself up from the network switch using the power over Ethernet standard and power over Ethernet capable network equipment. 
         [0042]      FIG. 3  shows the proposed connection and usage topology.  FIG. 3   406  is the main network switch where the users  407  and the servers  408  are connected with the present invention storage array  405 . The present invention  405  array can be powered from the switch using POE “stands for power over Ethernet” or they could have their power adapters. 
         [0043]    The network switch  402  is a standard network switch that could have POE “power over Ethernet” feature, It serves as the network switch that will carry all the RAID redundancy such as mirroring stripping and all other RAID levels available today in the market to alleviate the redundancy overhead on the user network switch shown in  406 . 
         [0044]    The secondary switch will serve also additional functions such as replication and backup to also further reduce the overhead on the user switch  406 . 
         [0045]    The present invention can also mirror itself on one to one basis or one to many bases. 
         [0046]    The present invention can also stripe itself on one to one basis or stripe itself on one to many bases, which helps SSD, drives by increasing their endurance.  FIG. 5  shows an extension of the present invention to cloud environment by embedding a virtual machine running under a hyper visor into the controller shown in  702 .  703  shows the present invention integrated with a virtual machine miming on the controller  702  and showing up as an ISCSI target. 
         [0047]    The advantage of using the virtual machine architecture is for the fact it allows the entire virtual machine to be moved. For example the disk present invention in  703  as a virtual machine can be moved/copied to another disk as the one shown in  703  that have bigger capacity. If a disk drive  701  is added to  703  the hypervisor can add it to the virtual machine to increase the capacity of  703 . The present invention described and shown in  703  will be referenced from now as Cludio, which stands for cloud disk IO. 
         [0048]      FIG. 6  shows that a group of Cludios shown in  803  on a network switch  804  each is an ISCSI target virtual machine, the server  806  whether virtual or physical server can mount all the Cludios and make a combined bigger file system containing all the Cludios. 
         [0049]    The advantage of  806  being virtual server under a hypervisor makes it movable copy-able and accessible to other virtual servers. 
         [0050]    To further improve performance prior art of using host bus adapter “HBA” off load engines are commonly used. These off load engines improve performance by offloading the host CPU from having to deal with the overhead of the ISCSI protocol, they are also used as TOE “TCP off load engines” to offload the TCP/IP encapsulation as well. 
         [0051]      FIG. 7  shows an offload engine host bus adapter  905  that goes inside a server  906  which could be a physical server or a virtual server with hypervisor and multiple virtual servers running on it. 
         [0052]    In that scenario shown in  FIG. 7  the HBA acts as the off load engine also with advances in technology, it can run its own operating system or a hyper visor and multiple operating systems where its acts as the ISCSI initiator. 
         [0053]    In that case with a full operating system in addition to the ISCSI initiator and TCP/IP offload it can perform the loading of all the Cludios into a larger LUN, file system or even Raid configurations. 
         [0054]      FIG. 8  shows the composition of the HBA card  1001  we will use with the present invention. It has a CPU  1003  that runs either a standalone OS or a Hyper visor that runs a virtual machine. It has a host bus interface such as PCIe or PCI  1005  that allows it to connect internally to the hosting server  1007 . 
         [0055]    In order to communicate to the host server  1007  a need for a bridge chip  1004  to facilitate communications between the CPU  1003  and the host  1007 . 
         [0056]    The CPU  1003  will connect to the Cludios  1006  using Ethernet via the Ethernet switch  1002  and aggregate them as ISCSI targets while the CPU  1003  becomes the ISCSI initiator. Using the bridge chip  1004  the CPU  1003  will appear to the host  1007  as storage device to the OS residing on the host  1007  whether it is a stand alone OS or a hyper visor with multiple OS&#39;s on it. 
       Tuning Algorithm: 
       [0057]    The CPU  1003  can run a tuning algorithm by creating different storage sector sizes x time 512 byte and so on for a total length of n time 128 k bytes, then the CPU  1003  will run a regressive loop of writing these sector of n times in this order:
       Start with x time 512 byte sectors where x ranges from 1 to 8000 or more as needed and for N times 128 Kbytes where N ranges from 1 to 10000 or more as needed.   So for every x(512) run n times 128 k bytes to be stored on a disk drive shown in  FIG. 9   1006 .   Calculate the transfer speed and the latency, the disk performance will vary because of disk speed, sector sizes buffers and so on so the idea is to find the limits of these disk drives to determine how to transfer data to them in real life situation below these boundaries for the first disk drive then continue the transfer to the next disk drive in the group  1006 . This basically avoids the limits of the disk drives by chunking up the data into optimal chunks that maximize the performance by avoiding bottlenecks such as buffer sizes, switching from a track to track and disk latencies.       
 
       Power Management: 
       [0061]    The disk drives often require a high startup current and then the current requirements are reduced as the disk reaches operational state as shown in the table below. 
         [0062]    This can cause a problem with a power over Ethernet powered device such as the device described in this invention shown in  FIG. 2   306 . The reason for that is the power over Ethernet has a limited amount of current to resolve this issue a power management module is added to the device as shown in  FIG. 12   2004 . 
         [0000]    
       
         
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
                   
               
             
             
               
                   
                 Power 
                 +5 VDC (+/−5%) 
               
               
                   
                 Requirement 
                 +12 VDC (+10%/−8%) 
               
               
                   
                 Startup current (A, max) 
                 1.2 (+5 V), 2.0 (+12 V) 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
          
         
       
     
         [0063]    This power management unit servers multiple purposes, one purpose is to keep the controller  303  in  FIG. 2  powered down until the startup current of the disk drive subsides and becomes low enough to safely power up the controller without tripping or blowing a fuse on the power over Ethernet port. 
         [0064]    The other purpose is to use the two Ethernet ports to combine their power over Ethernet to feed different loads with power, as shown in the diagram below the power management module employs a switching matrix that routes the loads to the different loads to the two power sources coming from the Ethernet ports. The switch matrix uses a make before break mechanism to insure no glitches to the power during switching. 
         [0065]    The power management unit will work with the controller  303  in  FIG. 2  to implement a full wake over LAN protocol. The advantage of this feature allows the drives shown in  FIG. 3   405  to be able to have additional spares like the ones shown in  401   FIG. 3  where they could be powered down then when needed in case of a failure they could be powered up and brought on online using wake on LAN protocol. 
       Multicore Controller: 
       [0066]    The controller in  FIG. 2   303  has a multicore CPU in it and can run a hypervisor. The multiple cores shown in  FIG. 13   2006  have a bidirectional communications channel between them to allow the cores to talk to each other and exchange data with or without the use of DMA. The bidirectional communication channel can also be used to communicate with other controllers in other drives or outside devices. The ability to have bidirectional communication to outside devices is particularly important in low latency trading where the need to access the date with minimum overhead is quite important. This communication channel will resemble a SERDES interface commonly found in high speed interfaces. This interface will also have the ability to do a pass through driver bypassing the hypervisor if needed. 
         [0067]    The cores will have some of the following features below:
       Support for KVM, Xen are mandatory VMware optional.   Linux OS support.   JO inclusive virtualization support.   Support for ECC and non-ECC memory.   Up to 1.5 GHz or more clock speed with a power budget not to exceed 9 watts Max is desirable.   Memory support up to 128 Giga-bytes.       
 
         [0074]    The peripherals of the cores will be similar to features below: 
         [0075]    1. Dual 10 Gig Ethernet at minimum three is desirable per core if possible. 
         [0076]    2. Dual 1 Gig Ethernet per core at minimum. 
         [0077]    3. SATA 3.0 support dual interface. 
         [0078]    4. 3 PCIe gen2 or better that can handle 2 PCIe X 4 and 1 PCIe X1, 1 PCIE x 8 and 1 PCIe X1, or 9 PCIE X 1. 
         [0079]    5. Full DMA support from peripherals from and to peripheral to peripheral, memory to peripheral and vice versa per core. 
         [0080]    6. Serial rapid IO or equivalent. 
         [0081]    7. Full 10 virtualization support including PASS through. 
         [0082]    8. Ability to turn off or standby unused cores. 
         [0083]    9. Security crypto engine. 
         [0084]    10. Raid accelerator 5/6. 
         [0085]    11. Pattern match engine. 
         [0086]    12. SATA storage related features described separately. 
         [0087]    13.2 DUARTS. 
         [0088]    14. 1 I2C. 
         [0089]    15. 1 SPI. 
         [0090]    16. GPIOs. 
         [0091]    The controller could also boot from a separate flash storage or from the disk drive shown in  FIG. 2   304  whether mechanical or SSD. 
       Form Factor: 
       [0092]    The current invention shown in  FIG. 11   2002  where the it needs to fit in a rack like the one shown below, will utilize a bracket and a heat sink  2003  shown in  FIG. 11  in such a way that the heat sink will not protrude into the next slot of another disk drive meaning that the heat sink will not exceed the depth of a standard 3.5 disk drive. 
         [0093]    The bracket and the assembly shown in  FIG. 112002  will have the hole patterns on the 2 sides and the top those of which match the dimensions of a 3.5 inch disk drive shown in  FIG. 14 .