Appeal No. 2004-1190
Application No. 09/286,160
The Invention
The invention relates to a system for a redundant array of independent disks
(RAID). See page 1 of appellants’ specification. The system makes use of
several back-end controllers each of which organizes and presents a group of
disks as a RAID. The system also uses a front-end controller which stripes the
RAID and presents the RAID as a large storage volume. The front-end controller
uses one of the back-end controllers as a primary storage location and another
back-end controller as a mirror to create a redundant storage location. See page
2 of appellants’ specification.
Claim 1 is representative of the invention.
1. An apparatus for providing a virtual volume, the apparatus
comprising:
a first plurality of disks;
a second plurality of back-end controllers coupled to the first
plurality of disks for organizing and presenting the first plurality of disks as
a third plurality of redundant arrays of disks; and
a front-end controller coupled to the second plurality of back-end
controllers for generating mirror sets from at least one of the disks in a
third plurality of redundant arrays of disks received from the second
plurality of back-end controllers, striping at least one of the disks in the
third plurality of redundant arrays of disks and presenting the striped
arrays as a virtual volume.
2
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