CN117130954A - Port setting method - Google Patents

Abstract

The port setting method comprises the following steps: respectively determining an active person and a passive person through two shell service managers in an initialization stage; generating and transmitting a control instruction to a corresponding exchanger through each shell service manager according to a pre-stored port corresponding relation; when any one of the switches receives the control instruction of the corresponding shell service manager, the binding setting of each entity port to be bound and the unbinding setting of the other entity ports to be unbinding are executed.

Description

Port setting method

[ field of technology ]

The present invention relates to a method for setting a port, and more particularly, to a method for setting a port of a PCIe Switch (Switch).

[ background Art ]

The conventional clustered storage system generally includes a plurality of solid state disk modules (SSD modules), two control boards (I/O modules, IOMs), and a shell service manager (Enclosure service management, ESMs) disposed on each control board for monitoring the operation status of the solid state disk modules. The two control boards and their components are redundant, and each shell service manager is used for coordinating the starting-up procedure of each peripheral device, monitoring the operation state of each component on the peripheral device (for example, monitoring the operation state of a hard disk), and monitoring the state of the shared component related to the operation environment of each peripheral device (for example, the environment temperature, the fan state, the power supply operation state, etc.). In the system initialization stage (i.e. in the startup procedure), the two shell service managers on the two control boards are electrically connected with each solid state disk module respectively after the initialization is completed, and all Binding (Binding) is completed between the two shell service managers and each solid state disk module's physical port group (arranged on the read-write drive board).

Therefore, when the solid state disk module is inserted for installation, the solid state disk unit is not connected in the test stage, and the physical port which is not required to be connected is also connected with the solid state disk module in a butt joint manner because the shell service manager is connected with the solid state disk module, and the connection is automatically established after the solid state disk module is inserted. In order to avoid that the test system starts and executes unnecessary actions of starting test programs which are not needed to be connected with the solid state disk units and cannot successfully complete the test according to each physical port which is established to be connected with the solid state disk modules, for example, the solid state disk module with the single-port solid state disk unit is only connected with one of the corresponding physical ports, if the test system starts and executes the test program according to the other physical port which is not connected with the single-port solid state disk unit through the shell service manager, the test system cannot successfully complete the corresponding test because the response of the single-port solid state disk unit to the test program cannot be obtained through the other physical port which is not connected with the single-port solid state disk unit, finally declares that the test fails, and after the unnecessary test programs are started, the test system stops executing the test programs corresponding to the physical ports which are not connected with the solid state disk unit one by one, so that the corresponding test programs are inconvenient and unnecessarily time-consuming in operation.

[ invention ]

The present invention is directed to a port setting method that solves the problems occurring in the prior art.

The invention provides a method for setting a port, which is suitable for a storage system, wherein the storage system comprises a plurality of solid state disk modules, two control boards, two exchangers and two shell service managers (Enclosure service management, ESM) respectively arranged on the two control boards. The method for setting the port includes steps (A) - (D).

In step (a), one of the two shell service managers and the other shell service manager are determined to be an Active (Active) and a Passive (Passive) respectively in the initialization stage.

In step (B), a control command is generated and transmitted to the corresponding switch by each shell service manager according to a pre-stored port correspondence. The port correspondence includes a correspondence setting corresponding to the switch and each physical port.

In step (C), when any of the switches receives the control instruction of the corresponding shell service manager, a binding setting corresponding to each of the physical ports to be bound included in the port correspondence is executed to establish a connection (Link-up) with the corresponding at least one solid state disk module, and a unbinding setting corresponding to each of the physical ports to be unbinding included in the port correspondence is executed to not establish a connection (Link-down) with the corresponding at least one solid state disk module.

Preferably, in step (B), each shell service manager further generates and transmits the control command according to whether it is the active or the passive. In step (C), when any one of the switches receives the control command as the shell service manager of the owner, a binding setting with all of the physical ports is performed to establish a connection with all of the solid state disk modules. When any one of the switches receives the control instruction of the shell service manager as the passive, unbinding setting of all the physical ports is executed so as not to establish connection with all the solid state disk modules.

Preferably, in step (a), the two shell service managers communicate via an I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) bus to complete the determination of the active and the passive.

Preferably, in step (B), the control instruction transmitted by each shell service manager is in accordance with a (Memory-mapped remote procedure call, MRPC) Protocol.

Preferably, in step (B), when each shell service manager transmits the control instruction to the corresponding switch and does not receive a response message from the corresponding switch, then, when the shell service manager again determines that the accumulated number of transmissions is less than a preset upper limit number, the shell service manager again transmits the control instruction, and when the shell service manager again determines that the accumulated number of transmissions reaches the preset upper limit number, the shell service manager no longer transmits the control instruction.

Preferably, the method for setting ports further includes (D) between the steps (a) and (B), each of the switches binding at least one corresponding upstream port (Up-stream ports) adapted for electrically connecting to a server host.

Preferably, the method further comprises (E) after the step (C), when another solid state disk module is added to form an electrical connection with one of the shell service managers, and then, when the shell service manager determines that the physical port electrically connected with the other solid state disk module is bound, the shell service manager establishes a connection with the other solid state disk module.

Preferably, the method further comprises (F) after the step (E), when one of the solid state disk modules is removed and the electrical connection with one of the shell service managers is changed from the electrical connection to the non-electrical connection, then the shell service manager and the one of the solid state disk modules do not establish the connection.

Compared with the prior art, the invention stores the port corresponding relation in advance by each shell service manager, so that the two shell service managers can transmit the corresponding control instruction to the corresponding exchanger according to the port corresponding relation in the initialization stage, and the exchanger can execute corresponding binding or unbinding setting with the entity port, thereby avoiding the problems in the prior art.

[ description of the drawings ]

Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the embodiments with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a storage system to which the port configuration method of the present invention is applied;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart illustrating an embodiment of a method for port configuration according to the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart illustrating the embodiment of the port setting method of the present invention; and

Fig. 4 is a flowchart illustrating the embodiment of the port setting method of the present invention.

[ detailed description ] of the invention

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

Referring to fig. 1, an embodiment of a method for setting ports according to the present invention is applicable to a storage system 100 and a server Host (Host) 8. The storage system 100 is a clustered storage system and includes a storage unit 9, two control boards (IOMs), and two switches and two shell service managers (ESMs) respectively disposed on the two control boards. The two control boards and the components thereof are mutually redundant. Each of the switches is exemplified below as a PCIe Switch (PESW), but in other embodiments, switches supporting other protocols or standards may be used.

In this embodiment, the two control boards are defined as a first control board 1 and a second control board 2, respectively, the two PCIe switches are defined as a first PCIe switch 11 and a second PCIe switch 21, respectively, and the two shell service managers are defined as a first shell service manager 12 and a second shell service manager 22, respectively, and the storage unit 9 includes a plurality of solid state hard disk modules conforming to a Single port non-volatile memory host controller interface specification (Single port NVMe) type or a plurality of solid state hard disk modules conforming to a Dual port non-volatile memory host controller interface specification (Dual port NVMe) type. For example, each of the solid state disk modules includes a solid state disk unit for storing data, and two physical ports (for example, a first port and a second port) disposed on a read-write drive board, so that an external portion can be electrically connected to at least one of the physical ports through the read-write drive board to electrically connect and read/write the solid state disk unit, wherein when the solid state disk module is a solid state disk module conforming to a Single port non-volatile memory host controller interface (NVMe) type, the solid state disk unit included in the solid state disk module is a Single port solid state disk, and the Single port solid state disk unit has a Single port, so that the Single port solid state disk unit can only be electrically connected to the read-write drive board through one of the first port and the second port, and the Single port solid state disk unit is electrically connected to the read-write drive board through the first port only, that is, the second port of the read-write drive board is not electrically connected to the Single port solid state disk unit. Furthermore, the solid state disk module only provides the external solid state disk unit which reads the single port through electrically connecting the first port, that is, the data stored in the single port solid state disk unit cannot be read even if the external electronic component/module/device is electrically connected with the second port of the single port solid state disk module. Conversely, the solid state disk unit with two ports is electrically connected with the read-write drive board through the first port and the second port respectively, that is, the external electronic component/module/device can read and write the solid state disk unit with two ports through at least one of the first port and the second port of the solid state disk module with two ports; the number of the solid state disk modules is at most 24, but not limited to this.

The first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 are electrically connected to the server host 8 and the storage unit 9, and are electrically connected to the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22, respectively. The first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 are electrically connected through a communication interface such as an I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) bus or a system management bus (System Management Bus, SMBus).

Referring to fig. 2, 3 and 4, the method for setting the port includes steps S1 to S7 and S10 to S19.

In step S1, the storage system 100 is powered on and starts to execute a system initialization phase (i.e. during a boot process) and an initialization phase of the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22. Next, step S2 is performed.

In step S2, the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 determine, in the initialization phase, one of them to be an Active (Active) and a Passive (Passive) respectively. For example, the second shell service manager 22 acts as the active and the first shell service manager 12 acts as the passive. Then, the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 mutually detect the initialization completion status of each other through the connected communication interface in the initialization stage, or the server host 8 detects the initialization completion status of the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 respectively, so that one of the initialization is firstly completed as an active person, and the other one of the initialization is then completed as a passive person; meanwhile, after the initialization is completed, the passive or the server host 8 performs a switching of the active program (the server host 8 transmits a switching notification indicating that the active operation is abnormal to the passive) when the communication between the passive and the active is failed (the active does not respond within a predetermined time or cannot complete the current communication), so as to trigger the passive to automatically switch to the active, thereby replacing the work performed by the active, and further electrically connecting the solid state disk module of the storage unit 9 to monitor the storage unit 9, and executing step S3.

In step S3, the second shell service manager 22 generates and transmits a control command to the corresponding second PCIe switch 21 according to the corresponding relationship between the master and a pre-stored port. The first shell service manager 12 generates and transmits another control command to the corresponding first PCIe switch 11 according to the port correspondence relationship as the passive agent and stored in advance. The port correspondence includes the corresponding settings of the switch and physical port for the active and passive, i.e., one of binding and unbinding settings. The control instructions conform to the (MRPC) Protocol. The first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 also accumulate (or subtract) a record of the number of transmissions according to the generated and transmitted control command, respectively, taking the control command generated and transmitted by the first shell service manager 12 as an example, the number of transmissions is accumulated by 1 each time the control command is generated and transmitted by the first shell service manager 12. Next, step S4 is performed.

In step S4, the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) determines whether a response message from the corresponding second PCIe switch 21 (or the first PCIe switch 11) is received within a preset time. Step S5 is performed when the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) has received the response information within the preset time, and step S6 is performed when the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) has not received the response information within the preset time.

In step S5, the process is ended (in this embodiment, the boot-up procedure is ended).

In step S6, the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) determines whether the number of times the control command has accumulated reaches a threshold, for example, the threshold is a preset upper limit number of times when using accumulation record (or whether the number of times the control command has accumulated reaches 0 when using accumulation record). When the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) determines that the number of times of transmission reaches (i.e. is equal to) the preset upper limit number of times, the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) does not transmit the control command any more, and resets the number of times of transmission to an initial value, that is, when the manner of accumulating records is used, the number of times of transmission is changed to 0, when the manner of accumulating records is used, the number of times of transmission is changed to the preset upper limit number of times, and then, step S5 is executed. And when the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) determines that the number of transmissions is less than the threshold (the threshold is the preset upper limit number when using the accumulation record mode) (when using the accumulation record mode, it determines that the number of transmissions is greater than the threshold 0), step S7 is performed.

In step S7, the second shell service manager 22 (or the first shell service manager 12) performs step S3 after a predetermined period of time, that is, the control command is to be transmitted again.

After the power-Up of the storage system 100 in step S10, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second external PCIe switch 21 bind at least one corresponding uplink port (Up-stream ports) according to a predetermined setting (e.g., according to the port correspondence), and the at least one uplink port is electrically connected to the server host 8. Next, step S11 is performed.

In step S11, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 determine whether the control instruction is received to perform the binding setting. In the present embodiment, when the second PCIe switch 21 determines that the control instruction is received to perform the binding setting, step S12 is performed, and when the second PCIe switch 21 determines that the control instruction is not received to perform the binding setting, step S13 is performed.

In step S12, the second PCIe switch 21 performs a binding setting with the physical port when the master is corresponding to the port correspondence, so as to bind all downlink-stream ports (downlink-stream ports), and establishes a connection (Link-up) with the solid state disk modules. Next, step S13 is performed.

In step S13, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 determine whether the control instruction is received to perform unbinding setting. In the present embodiment, when the first PCIe switch 11 determines that the control instruction is received to perform the unbinding setting, step S14 is performed, and when the first PCIe switch 11 determines that the control instruction is not received to perform the unbinding setting, step S15 is performed.

In step S14, the first PCIe switch 11 performs unbinding setting with the physical port according to the port correspondence, so as to unbinding all the downstream ports without establishing a connection (Link-down) with the solid state disk modules. Next, step S15 is performed.

In step S15, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 determine whether another solid state disk (i.e. another solid state disk unit) is added to form an electrical connection with the first PCIe switch 11 or the second PCIe switch 21. When the determination is yes, step S16 is performed, and when the determination is no, step S18 is performed.

In step S16, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 determine whether the physical port electrically connected to the other solid state disk (i.e. the other solid state disk unit) is already bound. In this embodiment, assuming that the other solid state disk is added, the second PCIe switch 21 determines that the physical port to which the other solid state disk is electrically connected is already bound, and then step S17 is executed. And the first PCIe switch 11 determines that the physical port electrically connected to the other solid state disk is not bound, then step S18 is executed.

In step S17, in the present embodiment, the second PCIe switch 21 establishes a connection with the other solid state disk (i.e., the other solid state disk unit). Next, step S18 is performed.

In step S18, the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 determine whether one of the solid state disks (i.e., the solid state disk units) is removed and changed from electrical connection to no electrical connection. When the determination is yes, step S19 is performed, and when the determination is no, step S11 is performed.

In step S19, in the present embodiment, it is assumed that one of the solid state disks (i.e. the solid state disk units) is removed, and the second PCIe switch 21 and the one of the solid state disks do not establish a connection. Next, step S11 is performed.

In addition, the following are to be specified: in this embodiment, the port correspondence stored in the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 in step S3 includes the corresponding settings of the switch and physical ports corresponding to the active and the passive, that is, the second PCIe switch 21 corresponding to the active binds all the downstream ports in step S12, and the first PCIe switch 11 corresponding to the passive unbound all the downstream ports in step S14.

In other embodiments, in step S3, the port correspondence stored in the first shell service manager 12 and the second shell service manager 22 may also be a corresponding setting including a physical port number corresponding to each physical port (i.e. a number of each of the downstream ports) of the switch, so that the first shell service manager 12 (or the second shell service manager 22), whether serving as the active or the passive, transmits the corresponding control command to the first PCIe switch 11 (or the second PCIe switch 21) according to the stored port correspondence, so that the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 21 in step S12 execute a binding setting corresponding to each of the downstream ports of each of the physical port numbers to be bound respectively according to the control command received respectively, to establish a connection with the corresponding at least one solid state hard disk module, and so that the first PCIe switch 11 and the second PCIe switch 11 execute a unbinding setting corresponding to each of the physical port numbers to be bound respectively according to the control command received respectively, and the unbinding solid state hard disk module to each of the physical port to be bound respectively.

For example, the physical port numbers are between 01 and 24, and one of the shell service managers stores the port correspondence including the physical port numbers of which more than 12 are to be bound and of which less than or equal to 12 are to be unbound. For another example, the physical port numbers are between 01 and 24, and the port correspondence stored by one of the shell service managers includes which of the physical port numbers is to be bound and which of the physical port numbers is to be unbound. In this way, the first PCIe switch 11 can bind some of the solid state disk modules, and the second PCIe switch 21 can bind other of the solid state disk modules.

In summary, the following effects can be achieved by the port setting method of the present invention: (1) When the production line is tested, the solid state disk is not required to be manually plugged and unplugged, and the hot plug function can be automatically tested by a program instead, so that the test flow is simplified, and the test time and cost are saved; (2) The Operating System (OS) can determine which control board is bound or unbound to the solid state disk, so that the implementation mode of supporting a single control board is provided, and the application range of the product is expanded; (3) The random online phenomenon of the single-port NVMe type solid state disk module is solved; (4) The invention can be achieved without adding extra hardware design cost.

The foregoing is merely illustrative of the present invention, and the present invention is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art will readily recognize that variations or substitutions are within the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the invention is subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims (8)

1. The method for setting the port is suitable for a storage system, the storage system comprises a plurality of solid state disk modules, two control boards, two exchangers and two shell service managers, wherein the two exchangers and the two shell service managers are respectively arranged on the two control boards, and the method for setting the port comprises the following steps:

(A) Determining, by the two shell service managers, one of the two shell service managers to be an active one and the other to be a passive one in an initialization stage;

(B) Generating and transmitting a control instruction to the corresponding switch through each shell service manager according to a pre-stored port corresponding relation, wherein the port corresponding relation comprises corresponding settings of the switch and each entity port;

(C) When any of the switches receives the control instruction of the corresponding shell service manager, the binding setting of each entity port to be bound contained in the corresponding relation of the port is executed so as to establish online with the corresponding at least one solid state disk module, and the unbinding setting of each entity port to be unbinding contained in the corresponding relation of the port is executed so as not to establish online with the corresponding at least one solid state disk module.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein in step (B), each shell service manager generates and transmits the control command according to whether it is the active or the passive, and in step (C), when any one of the switches receives the control command of the shell service manager of the active, binding settings with all of the physical ports are performed to establish connection with all of the solid state disk modules, and when any one of the switches receives the control command of the shell service manager of the passive, unbinding settings with all of the physical ports are performed to not establish connection with all of the solid state disk modules.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein in step (a), the two shell service managers communicate via an I2C bus to complete the determination of the active and the passive.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein in step (B), the control command transmitted by each shell service manager is in accordance with MRPC protocol.

5. The port configuration method according to claim 1, wherein in step (B), when each of the shell service managers transmits the control instruction to the corresponding switch and does not receive a response message from the corresponding switch, then, when the shell service manager again judges that the accumulated number of times of transmission is less than a preset upper limit number of times, the shell service manager again transmits the control instruction, and when the shell service manager again judges that the accumulated number of times of transmission reaches the preset upper limit number of times, the shell service manager no longer transmits the control instruction.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising (D) between steps (a) and (B), each of the switches binding a corresponding at least one upstream port adapted for electrically connecting to a server host.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising (E) after step (C), when another solid state disk module is added to form an electrical connection with one of the shell service managers, then, when the shell service manager determines that the physical port to which the other solid state disk module is electrically connected is bound, the shell service manager establishes a connection with the other solid state disk module.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising (F) after step (E), when one of the solid state disk modules is removed and one of the shell service manager is changed from electrically connected to electrically disconnected, then the shell service manager does not establish a connection with one of the solid state disk modules.