Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Method and system for deploying mixed storage products on a uniform storage infrastructure

Abstract:

A system is provided to receive a first request to write data to a hard disk drive (HDD) which comprises a plurality of tracks which can be configured as a conventional magnetic recording (CMR) media or as a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) media, wherein an SMR-configured track stores a greater amount of data than a CMR-configured track. The system writes the data to a first CMR-configured track, and classifies data stored in CMR-configured tracks as hot or cold based on a first or a second predetermined threshold. The system copies cold data from the CMR-configured tracks to an SMR zone, and makes available portions of the CMR-configured tracks previously occupied by the cold data.