Paragraph Number

71

Also, because the storage controller(s) 152 operate autonomously as RAID controllers, the RAID controllers can perform progressive RAIDing and can transform objects or portions of objects striped across data storage devices 154 with one RAID level to another RAID level without the requesting device 155 being affected, participating or even detecting the change in RAID levels. In the preferred embodiment, progressing the RAID configuration from one level to another level may be accomplished autonomously on an object or even a packet bases and is initiated by a distributed RAID control module operating in one of the storage devices 150 or the storage controllers 152. Typically, RAID progression will be from a higher performance and lower efficiency storage configuration such as RAID 1 to a lower performance and higher storage efficiency configuration such as RAID5 where the transformation is dynamically initiated based on the frequency of access. But, one can see that progressing the configuration from RAID5 to RAID 1 is also possible. Other processes for initiating RAID progression may be configured or requested from clients or external agents such a storage system management server request. One of skill in the art will recognize other features and benefits of a storage device 102 with a storage controller 152 that autonomously manages objects.

Added by DJM 3 2021