The SAN-based Storage Virtualization System In Windows System

Storage virtualization technology can serve the storage area network better in usability and expansibility. In storage virtualization system based on out-of-band storage area network, the metadata server in charge of the integration of heterogeneous storage resources and organization the metadata information. The application servers in charge of maintain the metadata information of virtual storage devices in driver module through the operation system kernel mode. The virtualization agent software using the metadata information to complete the I/O addresses mapping between the logical devices and the physical devices. The storage virtualization system adopt the out-of-band architecture to split the control stream and the data stream, which can reduce the system response time, management and configuration can be more convenient and flexible.The storage virtualization technology is more popular than ever in enterprise customers, so they require the products of storage virtualization can be more outstanding in certain aspects such as energy conservation, efficient utilization, practical application and reliable quality. The enterprise customers required the storage virtualization system can support premier operation system when they are deploying the storage system. In this paper proposes a software as a agent in the storage virtualization system which can be used on the Windows platform, this software is a part of the storage virtualization system based on storage area network, in operation system's kernel mode, this software can supply the base service of virtual storage. The customers can get high capacity and bandwidth virtual storage devices by deploying the software in the application servers, which also support the local file system such as FAT32 and NTFS.Otherwise, we develop some new features for this software, including thin-provision technology and online-extension technology for striped logical volume. The thin-provision technology for saving energy consumption by using storage resources effectively, the online-extension technology for striped logical volume can complete the large-scale data migration without interrupt storage services, enhance virtual storage devices scalability, high reliability, and the service quality of storage virtualization system based on storage area network. This software not only realize the base services of virtual storage on Windows platform, but also improve some new functional performance form the customer's perspective, enhance the performance of virtual storage without maintain and update the manager server.The experimental result shows that, compare with the traditional virtual storage volume, the thin-provision storage volume can save the energy consumption effectively by losing miner performance; using the online-extension for striped volume not only extend the capacity and the performance, but also can keep the virtual storage service sustainable during the large-scale data migration.