Appeal No. 2004-1190
Application No. 09/286,160
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.” Thus, we consider the scope of claim 1 to include that there is a
front-end controller, which performs both functions of striping and generating a
mirror, and that there are more than one back-end controller connected to the
front-end controller. Independent claims 8, 13, 14 and 18 contain similar
limitations. Independent claim 6 includes a similar limitation in that it claims a
striping engine for striping and generating mirror sets from the disks associated
with the back-end controllers.
We find that Massiglia teaches a RAID system where an array of disks is
organized such that it is striped and mirrored. See figure 74, page 153.
Massiglia teaches that a “Striping Array Management Function” performs the
striping and a “Mirroring Array Management Function” performs the mirroring. In
figure 74 one Striping Array Management Function receives data from two or
more Mirroring Array Management Functions. Massiglia states on page 10 that
“[a] disk array’s Array Management Function may execute either in the disk
system or in the host computer(s).” Further, on page 156, Massiglia states
“[o]ften, it is possible to use host-based striping to combine virtual disks
presented by controller-based mirrored arrays into an array. Some vendors offer
both striping and mirroring capability within their disk systems. Finally, some
system vendors offer host-based software packages for both striping and
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