CN107305474B

CN107305474B - Storage system capable of visually indicating link relation

Info

Publication number: CN107305474B
Application number: CN201610257385.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 颜启原
Original assignee: Shencloud Technology Co Ltd; Shunda Computer Factory Co Ltd
Current assignee: Shencloud Technology Co Ltd; Shunda Computer Factory Co Ltd
Priority date: 2016-04-21
Filing date: 2016-04-21
Publication date: 2020-07-21
Anticipated expiration: 2036-04-21
Also published as: CN107305474A

Abstract

A storage system includes a plurality of hard disk devices connected in series with each other, each hard disk device including an expander electrically connected to a plurality of hard disks, and a light-emitting fiber optic cable electrically connected between the expander of an adjacent preceding hard disk device or a host and the expander, for each hard disk device, the fiber optic cable includes a bundle of optical fibers extending in a transparent outer tube, and an L ED light source mounted to the transparent outer tube and electrically connected to the expander, the L ED light source emitting light in response to a control signal from the host to cause the light to propagate into the entire outer tube via guiding of the bundle of optical fibers, the host causes the L ED light source of a first hard disk device to a target hard disk device to emit light according to a physical connection relationship of the hard disk devices, thereby visually indicating a connection route of the first hard disk device to the target hard disk device.

Description

Storage system capable of visually indicating link relation

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a storage system, and more particularly, to a storage system capable of visually indicating a connection route.

Background

An existing daisy-chaining (daisy-chaining) storage system may comprise a plurality of hard disk units such as jbod (just about of disks) serially connected to each other in daisy-chaining manner, and two adjacent hard disk units are electrically connected to each other by at least one sas (serial attached scsi) cable, for example, and each hard disk unit comprises a plurality of hard disks.

When the daisy chained storage system is used, when any one of the hard disk units adversely affects the data storage performance due to the damage or abnormality of one or more of the hard disks therein, and even causes a serious reduction in the data storage efficiency, the defective hard disk needs to be replaced in order to ensure effective data storage. However, the plurality of hard disk units connected in daisy chain manner have relatively complicated connection relationship, for example, two adjacent hard disk units often have no actual connection relationship in physical location, i.e. the link addresses allocated to two adjacent hard disk units during assembly are not two adjacent link addresses in the actual connection relationship. Therefore, it is not only difficult to find the hard disk unit where the bad hard disk to be replaced is located, but also it is impossible to ensure the correct connection of the multiple related SAS cables during the replacement, which causes inconvenience in use.

From the above, there is still much room for improvement over the existing daisy chained storage systems.

Disclosure of Invention

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a storage system capable of visually indicating a connection route.

Therefore, the storage system of the present invention includes a host and a plurality of hard disk devices.

The hard disk devices are connected in series and electrically connected with the host, and each hard disk device comprises a plurality of hard disks, an expander and a cable unit.

The cable unit comprises a luminous optical fiber cable, the optical fiber cable is electrically connected between one of the expander and the host of an adjacent preceding hard disk device and the expander and comprises a transparent outer tube, a beam of optical fibers extending in the transparent outer tube and used for data transmission and at least one L ED light source installed in the transparent outer tube and electrically connected with the expander, the at least one L ED light source can emit light or not in response to a control signal, and when the at least one L ED light source emits light, the emitted light can be guided by the beam of optical fibers and spread to the whole optical fiber cable.

The expander of each hard disk device can transmit address data including the address allocated by itself and the addresses allocated by the expanders of the preceding hard disk device and the succeeding hard disk device adjacent to each other to the host, so that the host establishes the actual connection relationship of the hard disk devices according to the address data from the expander of each hard disk device.

The host generates and sends the corresponding control signal to each hard disk device according to the actual connection relationship, so that the L ED light source of the optical fiber cable connecting the first hard disk device of the host to each target hard disk device is made to emit light, and the L ED light source of the optical fiber cable of each other hard disk device is made not to emit light, thereby visually indicating the first connection route to the target hard disk device.

[ description of the drawings ]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a storage system of the present invention;

fig. 2 illustrates the composition of a hard disk device of the embodiment; and

fig. 3 is a schematic view of a light-emitting optical fiber cable of the embodiment.

[ detailed description ] embodiments

Before the present invention is described in detail, it should be noted that in the following description, similar components are denoted by the same reference numerals.

Referring to fig. 1 to 3, a host 1 and a plurality of hard disk devices 2 are illustrated according to an embodiment of the storage system 100 of the present invention.

In the embodiment, the host 1 exemplarily includes a first connection port 11 and a second connection port 12, but not limited thereto. In other embodiments, the host 1 may include more than two connection ports. The first and

second connection ports

11, 12 are each, for example, a Wide Port (Wide Port) with sas (serial attached scsi) interface, but not limited thereto.

The hard disk devices 2 are connected in series with each other in a daisy chain manner, for example, and electrically connected to the host 1 (see fig. 1), and each hard disk device 2 includes, for example, 24 hard disks 20, a first expander 22, a second expander 23, a first cable 24, and a second cable 25 (see fig. 2). Each hard disk device 2 is further described below.

The first and

second expanders

22, 23 are each electrically connected to the hard disks 20 and assigned a unique address (e.g., SAS address) and support SAS interfaces. The first cable 24 and the second cable 25 together constitute a cable unit. In terms of the connection relationship of each hard disk device 2, the first cable 24 is used to electrically connect between the first expander 22 and one of the first connection port 11 of the host 1 and the first expander 22 of an adjacent preceding hard disk device 2, and the second cable 25 is used to electrically connect between the second expander 23 and one of the second connection port 12 of the host 1 and the second expander 23 of an adjacent preceding hard disk device 2, as shown in fig. 2. In other words, for the first hard disk device 2, the first and

second expanders

22, 23 are electrically connected to the first and

second connection ports

11, 12 of the host 1 through the first and

second cables

24, 25, respectively; for each of the other hard disk devices 2, the first and

second expanders

22, 23 are electrically connected to the first and

second expanders

22, 23 of an adjacent preceding hard disk device 2 by the first and

second cables

24, 25, respectively.

As shown in FIG. 3, the first cable 24 includes a transparent outer tube 241, a bundle of optical fibers 243 extending within the transparent outer tube 241 for data transmission, two connection interfaces 244 opposite to each other and respectively connecting two ends of the bundle of optical fibers 243, and an L ED light source 242 (see FIG. 2) mounted within the transparent outer tube 241 and electrically connected to the first extender 22 via one of the connection interfaces 244. the L ED light source 242 may emit light or not in response to a control signal, and when the L ED light source 242 emits light, the emitted light may propagate through the bundle of optical fibers 243 into the entire transparent outer tube 241. it is noted that the number of L ED light sources 242 is not limited to one, in other embodiments, the first cable 24 may include two or more ED light sources L electrically connected to the first extender 22 and L may not emit light in response to the same ED light source 242 or not emit light in response to the same ED light source 242.

It is noted that the host 1 first executes, for example, but not limited to, a polling procedure on the first and

second expanders

22, 23 of each hard disk device 2, i.e., requests the first/second expander 22/23 to return its own allocated (SAS) address and the allocated (SAS) addresses of the adjacent preceding and succeeding first/second expanders 22/23. As a result, for each hard disk device 2, the first expander 22 can transmit to the host 1 address data including the address allocated thereto and the addresses allocated to the first expanders 22 of the preceding and following hard disk devices 2 adjacent thereto, and similarly, the second expander 23 can transmit to the host 1 address data including the address allocated thereto and the addresses allocated to the second expanders 23 of the preceding and following hard disk devices 2 adjacent thereto, so that the host 1 establishes the actual connection relationship of the hard disk devices 2 based on the address data from the first and

second expanders

22, 23 of each hard disk device 2. A lookup table 1 established by the host 1 and corresponding to the actual connection relationship is illustrated below, but not limited thereto. In this example, the storage system 100 has ten hard disk devices, and the addresses allocated by the first and

second expanders

22, 23 of each hard disk device are SAS addresses.

Look-up table 1

Hard disk device serial number	SAS address of first expander	SAS address of second expander
			1	5000cca02f00af39	5000cca02f00de2d
2	5000cca02f00bf8d	5000cca02f00af21
			3	5000cca02f00bf59	5000cca02f00e451
4	5000cca02f008e31	5000cca02f0092b9
			5	5000cca02f008dc9	5000cca02f008e4d
6	5000cca02f008e41	5000cca02f0092a1
			7	5000cca02f0092bd	5000cca02f00bf95
8	5000cca02f008e01	5000cca02f00e511
			9	5000cca02f00c0c5	5000cca02f00aeed
10	5000cca02f00929d	5000cca02f00e675

The host 1 generates and sends the corresponding control signal for each hard disk device 2 according to the established actual connection relationship such that the L ED light source 242 of the first cable 24 of each of the first hard disk device 2 to a target hard disk device 2 is illuminated while the L ED light source 242 of the first cable 24 of each of the other hard disk devices 2 is not illuminated, thereby visually indicating the first connection route to the target hard disk device 2. note that the ED 2 ED light sources 242 of the first cable 24 of the first hard disk device 2 to the target hard disk device 2 may be illuminated simultaneously in response to the corresponding control signals, respectively, as soon as visually indicating the connection route, or the ED 2 ED light sources 242 of the first hard disk device 2 to the first cable 24 of the target hard disk device 2 may be illuminated sequentially in response to the corresponding control signals, for example, the ED 64 light source of the first hard disk device 2 may be illuminated first for a predetermined interval (as second interval after illuminating), as first interval (as second interval), as first interval after the first connection status of the ED 2 ED light sources 242 to the first hard disk device 2 is illuminated by the first hard disk device 2, as well as the first connection status of the first hard disk device 2 is maintained by the first connection status of the first hard disk device 2, and the first hard disk device 2 is illuminated by the first interval (e.g. the first connection status of the first hard disk device 2 is maintained as first connection status of the first hard disk device 2), and then the first hard disk device 2 is maintained by the first connection status of the first hard disk device 2, then the first hard disk.

On the other hand, for each hard disk device 2, the first expander 22 or the second expander 23 can transmit status data related to the storage error condition of the hard disks 20 to the host 1, so that the host 1 determines whether each hard disk 20 of the hard disk device 2 needs to be replaced according to the status data from each hard disk device 2. Thus, in the storage system 100 of the present invention, when the host 1 determines that at least one of the hard disks 20 of the target hard disk device 2 should be replaced according to the status data from the target hard disk device 2 during actual use, not only the user can easily find the location of the target hard disk device 2 due to the aforementioned visually indicated connection route, but also the correct connection of the associated first and

second cables

24, 25 can be ensured during replacement, thereby avoiding the inconvenience encountered in the prior art.

In summary, the storage system 100 of the present invention can achieve the objective of the present invention.

The detailed description and examples of the present invention are given above with reference to the accompanying drawings, but the scope of the present invention is not limited thereto, and the equivalent modifications and variations within the scope of the claims of the present invention should be considered as falling within the scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. A storage system, comprising:

a host computer; and

a plurality of hard disk devices connected in series and electrically connected to the host, each hard disk device including

A plurality of hard disks, each of which is a disk,

an expander electrically connected to the hard disks and allocated with a unique address,

a cable unit including a light-emitting optical fiber cable electrically connected between one of the expander and the host of an adjacent front-stage hard disk device and the expander, and including a transparent outer tube, a bundle of optical fibers extending in the transparent outer tube for data transmission, and at least one L ED light source installed in the transparent outer tube and electrically connected to the expander, the at least one L ED light source being capable of emitting light or not in response to a corresponding control signal, the light emitted from the at least one L ED light source being guided by the bundle of optical fibers to be transmitted to the entire transparent outer tube when the at least one L ED light source emits light;

wherein the expander of each hard disk device can transmit the address data including the address allocated by itself and the addresses allocated by the expanders of the preceding hard disk device and the succeeding hard disk device adjacent to the preceding hard disk device to the host, so that the host establishes the actual connection relationship of the hard disk devices according to the address data from the expander of each hard disk device;

the host generates and sends the corresponding control signal to each hard disk device according to the actual connection relationship, so that the L ED light source of the optical fiber cable connecting a first hard disk device of the host to each target hard disk device is made to emit light, and the L ED light source of the optical fiber cable of each other hard disk device is made not to emit light, thereby visually indicating the connection route of the first hard disk device to the target hard disk device.

2. The storage system of claim 1, wherein said L ED light sources of said fiber optic cables from said first hard disk device to said target hard disk device are simultaneously illuminated in response to said corresponding control signals, respectively.

3. The storage system of claim 1, wherein said L ED light sources of said fiber optic cables from said first hard disk device to said target hard disk device are sequentially illuminated in response to said corresponding control signals, respectively.

4. The storage system of claim 1, wherein:

for each hard disk device, the expander transmits status data related to storage error conditions of the hard disks to the host, so that the host judges whether each hard disk of the hard disk device needs to be replaced according to the status data from each hard disk device; and

the host determines that at least one of the hard disks of the target hard disk device needs to be replaced according to the status data from the target hard disk device.