Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Method and system for facilitating an improved storage system by decoupling the controller from the storage medium

Abstract:

One embodiment facilitates a storage system, which comprises a backplane and a plurality of storage medium cards coupled to the backplane. The backplane is coupled to a host via a first interface, and the backplane comprises global management circuitry coupled to a plurality of groups of components and configured to process an input/output (I/O) request and manage a mapping table. A respective group of components includes: first circuitry configured to perform first computing operations; and second circuitry configured to perform second computing operations. A respective storage medium card is allowed to operate without a controller residing on the storage medium card. Data associated with the I/O request is processed by the global management circuitry and further processed by first circuitry and second circuitry associated with a storage medium card selected for executing the I/O request.