US Patent 11182107 Selective allocation of redundant data blocks to background operations

Example distributed storage systems, controller nodes, and methods provide selective allocation of redundant data blocks to background operations. Background operations may be identified targeting a data unit stored in redundant data blocks in a storage pool with a plurality of storage elements. A subset of data units may be selected for the background operation and the system components including those data units may be isolated. Data requests to the isolated system components may be selectively prevented while the background operation executes on the subset of data units in the isolated system components.