초록 ▼

Apparatus and systems, as well as methods and articles, may operate to respond to a write request from a disk I/O process with write completion status from a RAID sub-system after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system an

Apparatus and systems, as well as methods and articles, may operate to respond to a write request from a disk I/O process with write completion status from a RAID sub-system after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system and before writing a parity strip update value to a parity strip in the stripe, a Q strip update value to a Q strip in the stripe, or both.

대표청구항 ▼

What is claimed is: 1. A method including the following operations comprising: responding to a write request from a disk input-output (I/O) process with write completion status from a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) sub-system, the responding occurring after writing update data associat

What is claimed is: 1. A method including the following operations comprising: responding to a write request from a disk input-output (I/O) process with write completion status from a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) sub-system, the responding occurring after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system and before writing at least one of a parity strip update value to a parity strip in the stripe and a Q strip update value to a Q strip in the stripe; and reading a pre-update parity strip value associated with a pre-update data value in the data strip and with a data value associated with at least one additional data strip in the stripe. 2. The method of claim 1, the operations further including: receiving the write request from the disk I/O process. 3. The method of claim 2, the operations further including: reading the pre-update data value from the data strip after receiving the write request and before writing the update data to the data strip. 4. The method of claim 3, the operations further including: writing the update data to the data strip after reading the pre-update data value from the data strip and before responding with the write completion status. 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the writing the update data comprises a RAID degraded write-mode operation to adjust at least one of contents of the parity strip and contents of the Q strip if a target disk containing the data strip fails after responding with the write completion status. 6. The method of claim 4, wherein: the reading of the pre-update parity strip value occurs after responding with the write completion status. 7. The method of claim 6, the operations further including: performing an exclusive OR operation on the pre-update data value and on the pre-update parity strip value to calculate an intermediate parity value; and performing an exclusive OR operation on the update data and on the intermediate parity value to calculate a parity strip update value. 8. The method of claim 7, the operations further including: writing the parity strip update value to the parity strip after responding with the write completion status. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises at least one of a RAID-3 sub-system, a RAID-4 sub-system, and a RAID-5 sub-system. 10. The method of claim 8, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises a RAID-6 sub-system. 11. The method of claim 10, the operations further including: reading a pre-update Q strip value associated with the pre-update data value and with a data value associated with at least one additional data strip in the stripe, the reading occurring after responding with the write completion status. 12. The method of claim 11, the operations further including: calculating a Q strip update value using the pre-update Q strip value, the pre-update data value and the update data; and writing the Q strip update value to the Q strip after responding with the write completion status. 13. An article including a machine-accessible storage medium having associated information, wherein the information, when accessed, results in a machine performing operations comprising: responding to a write request from a disk input-output (I/O) process with write completion status from a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) sub-system after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system and before writing at least one of a parity strip update value to a parity strip in the stripe and writing a Q strip update value to a Q strip in the stripe; and reading at least one of a pre-update parity strip value and a pre-update Q strip value associated with a pre-update data value in the data strip and with a data value associated with at least one additional data strip in the stripe. 14. The article of claim 13, wherein the operations comprise: reading the pre-update data value from the data strip after receiving the write request and before writing the update data to the data strip. 15. The article of claim 14, wherein: the reading occurs after writing the update data to the data strip. 16. The article of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining the pre-update data value and the pre-update parity strip value in memory until after writing the update data to the data strip and writing the parity strip update value to the parity strip. 17. The article of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining the update data and the parity strip update value in memory until after writing the update data to the data strip and writing the parity strip update value to the parity strip. 18. The article of claim 17, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises at least one of a RAID-3 sub-system, a RAID-4 sub-system, and a RAID-5 sub-system. 19. The article of claim 17, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises a RAID-6 sub-system. 20. The article of claim 19, wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining the pre-update Q strip value in memory until after writing the update data to the data strip, the parity strip update value to the parity strip, and the Q strip update value to the Q strip. 21. The article of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining the Q strip update value in memory until after writing the update data to the data strip, the parity strip update value to the parity strip, and the Q strip update value to the Q strip. 22. An apparatus comprising: a quick-write response module to respond to a write request from a disk input-output (I/O) process with write completion status from a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) sub-system after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system and before writing at least one of a parity strip update value to a parity strip in the stripe and a Q strip update value to a Q strip in the stripe; and a Q module coupled to the quick-write response module to generate the Q strip update value from a pre-update data value, a pre-update Q strip value, and the update data. 23. The apparatus of claim 22, further including: a parity module coupled to the quick-write response module to generate the parity strip update value from the pre-update data value, a pre-update parity strip value, and the update data. 24. The apparatus of claim 23, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises at least one of a RAID-3 sub-system, a RAID-4 sub-system, and a RAID-5 sub-system. 25. The apparatus of claim 23, wherein the RAID sub-system comprises a RAID-6 sub-system. 26. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising: a disk drive controller module to read from and write to at least one of the data strip, the parity strip, and the Q strip. 27. A system comprising: a quick-write response module to respond to a write request from a disk input-output (I/O) process with write completion status from a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) sub-system after writing update data associated with the write request to a data strip in a stripe associated with the RAID sub-system and before writing at least one of a parity strip update value to a parity strip in the stripe and a Q strip update value to a Q strip in the stripe; a processor coupled to the response module to provide the update data to write to the data strip; a Q module coupled to the quick-write response module to generate the Q strip update value from a pre-update data value, a pre-update Q strip value, and the update data; and a display coupled to the processor to display the update data. 28. The system of claim 27, further comprising: a disk drive controller module to read from and write to at least one of the data strip, the parity strip, and the Q strip. 29. The system of claim 27, wherein the parity strip is located on at least one of a data disk drive and a parity disk drive.