Abstract: A system and method for adding file system processors, also known as hot adding, is described. The system and method for adding file system processors operate on a computer network file system that includes a first file server that is operably connected to a network fabric. The system and method for adding file system processors also include a file system that includes first file system information loaded on the first file server. The file system is configured to create second file system information on a second file server that comes online sometime after the first file server has begun servicing file requests. The file system is configured to allow a requester to locate files that are stored by the first file server and files that are stored by the second file server without prior knowledge as to which file server stores the files.

Abstract: A data path controller architecture for a file server is described. The system includes a network interface for communicating with one or more clients and a storage interface for communicating with one or more disk drives. The file server further includes a data engine that is configured to communicate with the storage interface to receive file data from the one or more disk drives. The data engine is further configured to communicate with the network interface to send file data to the one or more clients. A CPU is configured to queue transaction requests for the data engine in response to file requests from the one or more clients. The data engine is configured to receive file data in response to at least a portion of the transaction requests. The data engine is further configured to send file data to the one or more clients in response to at least a portion of the transaction requests.

Abstract: A data interface architecture is described. The data interface architecture includes a network-side interface for communicating with a first bus and a storage-side interface for communicating with a second bus. The data interface architecture further includes a first data cache and a second data cache. The data interface architecture further includes a first parity engine, which is configured to perform parity operations for data transactions between the network-side interface and the first data cache, and a second parity engine, which is configured to perform parity operations for data transactions between the storage-side interface and the first data cache.

Abstract: A system and method for enhancing disk array performance via variable-parity-based load balancing is described. The system and method operate on a computer storage system that includes a plurality of disk drives for storing distributed parity groups. Each distributed parity group includes storage blocks. The storage blocks include one or more data blocks and a parity block that is associated with the one or more data blocks. Each of the storage blocks is stored on a separate disk drive such that no two storage blocks from a given parity set reside on the same disk drive. The computer storage system further includes file system metadata to describe a location of each of the storage blocks. The computer storage system further includes a load-balancing module to dynamically move storage blocks of the distributed parity groups among the plurality of disk drives to balance transaction loading of the plurality of disk drives and thereby to improve throughput of the computer storage system.