Abstract: One or more parts of a storage system may be serviced while the storage system is online. A storage device may be unincorporated from the storage system while maintaining the storage system active. Access to the storage system may continue unaffected, except for the unincorporated section of the storage system, for example, the storage device and possibly other storage devices. Service may be performed on the unincorporated section of the storage system, and the unincorporated section be incorporated back into the storage system.

Abstract: In an embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for updating configuration information associated with a data volume. The method reduces the occurrences of updates of saved configuration information of a data volume by updating the saved configuration information only when a change occurs in a configuration of the data volume.

Abstract: A system and method for managing a time-limited long-running process that acts upon disks of a disk array is based upon a general rule of acting upon each disk in an order based upon the length of time from when it was last acted-upon. Disks having the greatest last acted-upon time value (e.g. were processed the longest-time ago) are queued first by the process for acting-upon in the present run. The greatest last acted-upon time includes disks that have no prior last acted-upon time (e.g. newly added/mounted disks). A registry key entry is maintained in a registry file for each of the RAID groups that includes the volume's file system identifier (FSID) and particular RAID group identifier (RGID). The RGID includes the last acted-upon time for the RAID group. This is set to a positive time number if the process has last acted-upon the group to completion.

Abstract: A method of determining a configuration of a collection of storage units, includes: generating a configuration, identifying for a specific configuration by use of a configuration identifier; and assigning the specific configuration to the first labels of all storage units and then to the second labels of all storage units, and utilizing the configuration identifier to determine the most recent configuration successfully written to all disks in the configuration.

Abstract: In an embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for updating configuration information associated with a data volume. The method reduces the occurrences of updates of saved configuration information of a data volume by updating the saved configuration information only when a change occurs in a configuration of the data volume.