Patent ID: 8880814

Claim:
A system for striping a plurality of data containers across a striped volume set, comprising: a network element operatively interconnected with a plurality of data elements, the network element having a processor; the network element configured to receive data access requests directed to a striped volume set having a plurality of volumes, the network element further configured to: execute a locate function to identify a volume of the plurality of volumes that make up the striped volume set using an inode number of an inode associated with a data container and an offset values indicating an offset into the data container striped across the striped volume set, the locate function when executed operable to: calculate a first value by adding the inode number to the offset value divided by a stripe width modulo a size of a striping table, calculate an intermediate value by indexing the first value into an ordered list of volumes, calculate a first hash value of the inode associated with the data container by indexing, using the inode number, into an array having values that are selected to be mutually prime with a size of the ordered list of volumes, calculate a final value by multiplying the intermediate value by the first hash value modulo a number of volumes of the striped volume set, and index into the striping table using the final value to identify and locate the volume that provides a new location to commence striping the data container across the striped volume set; use a volume location database to identify a data element hosting the identified and located volume for the data container; and forward the received data access requests to the identified data element for the data container.