HDS Assigned Seven Patents

Enhancing availability of distributed object storage system during partial database outage
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,183,096) developed by Bryant, Alan G., Walpole, MA, Grimaldi, Kevin S., Roslindale, MA, Palmer, Trek, Cambridge, MA, and Pinkney, David B., Andover, MA, for a “system and method for enhancing availability of a distributed object storage system during a partial database outage.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An ‘operate with missing region’ feature allows a cluster to continue servicing reads for available regions even when some regions are missing. Upon a given node failure condition, the cluster is placed in an effective read-only mode for all regions. The node failure condition typically is one where there has been a failure of an authoritative region copy and no backup copy is then available. Typically, ‘read-only’ means no client write or update requests succeed while the cluster is in this state. Those requests should fail with an error message that indicates failure because of the read-only status. Preferably, such requests are re-tried. In this mode, regions are only allowed to perform read operations but the cluster continues to operate with missing regions, and missing regions are entered on a region map. The cluster then automatically recovers returning missing regions, after which it leaves the read-only state.“

The patent application was filed on June 24, 2013 (13/924,666).

Optimizing protection levels when replicating data in object storage system
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,146,689) developed by Rogers, Richard, Stoughton, MA, Isherwood, Benjamin, Tewksbury, MA, McDonald, Matthew Michael, Quincy, MA, Pannese, Donald P., Westford, MA, and Pinkney, David, Andover, MA, for a “system and method for optimizing protection levels when replicating data in an object storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A redundant array of independent nodes are networked together. Each node executes an instance of an application that provides object-based storage. The nodes are grouped into a plurality of systems each having multiple nodes. A data protection level method comprises setting a numerical value of a system dynamic data protection level for each system of nodes, and in response to user input, setting a value of a data protection level for one or more data objects in a system, the value being a fixed numerical value or a dynamic value. If the one or more data objects have a dynamic value of the data protection level in a system, the one or more data objects inherit the system dynamic data protection level of the system in which the one or more data objects reside. The value of the data protection level represents a number of copies of data of the one or more data objects to be kept where the one or more data objects reside.“

The patent application was filed on February 25, 2014 (14/189,4316).

Data privacy in fixed content distributed data storage
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,143,485) developed by Shaw, David M., Newton, MA, for a “method for data privacy in a fixed content distributed data storage.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage cluster of symmetric nodes includes a data privacy scheme that implements key management through secret sharing. The protection scheme preferably is implemented at install time. At install, an encryption key is generated, split, and the constituent pieces written to respective archive nodes. The key is not written to a drive to ensure that it cannot be stolen. Due to the secret sharing, any t of the n nodes must be present before the cluster can mount the drives. To un-share the secret, a process runs before the cluster comes up. It contacts as many nodes as possible to attempt to reach a sufficient t value. Once it does, the process un-shares the secret and mounts the drives locally. Given bidirectional communication, this mount occurs more or less at the same time on all t nodes. Once the drives are mounted, the cluster can continue to boot as normal.“

The patent application was filed on June 3, 2013 (13/908,002).

Decentralized distributed computing system
Hitachi Data Systems Engineering UK Limited, Berkshire, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (9,110,719) developed by Hartman, David Stephen, Glass, Thomas Andrew, Sinha, Shantanu, Santa Clara, CA, Bernhard, Ben, Arlington, MA, Kiselev, Oleg, Palo Alto, CA, and Mattly, James, Campbell, CA, for a “decentralized distributed computing system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed system includes a plurality of nodes connected over a network. Each node has a unique node identifier which identifies the node in the distributed system. Tasks are launched from any node in the distributed system and include one or more node identifiers. If a node receives a task including its node identifier, the node executes the task. Each node may store each task in a log. If a node fails, after recovering from the failure, the node queries the distributed system for tasks which were not received and tasks which were not completed due to the failure.“

The patent application was filed on November 7, 2014 (14/535,850).

File cloning and de-cloning in data storage system
Hitachi Data Systems Engineering UK Limited, Berkshire, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (9,087,072) developed by Picken, Daniel J. N., Ticknall, Great Britain, and Berrington, Neil, San Jose, CA, for a “file cloning and de-cloning in a data storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A file cloning mechanism allows for quickly creating copies, clones) of files within a filesystem, such as when a user makes a copy of a file. In exemplary embodiments, a clone of a source object is at least initially represented by a structure containing references to various elements of the source object, (e.g., indirect onodes, direct onodes, and data blocks). Both read-only and mutable clones can be created. The source file and the clone initially share such elements and continue to share unmodified elements as changes are made to the source file or mutable clone. None of the user data blocks or the metadata blocks describing the data stream, i.e., the indirect/direct onodes) associated with the source file need to be copied at the time the clone is created. At appropriate times, cloned files may be ‘de-cloned’.“

The patent application was filed on April 14, 2014 (14/252,144).

Configuring virtual machine
Hitachi Data Systems Engineering UK Limited, Berkshire, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (9,069,784) developed by Hartman, David Stephen, Glass, Thomas Andrew, Sinha, Shantanu, Santa Clara, CA, Bernhard, Ben, Arlington, MA, Kiselev, Oleg, Palo Alto, CA, and Mattly, James, Campbell, CA, for a “configuring a virtual machine.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In some examples, a node in a distributed system may receive one or more IP addresses for use with one or more virtual machines. For example, at least one of the received IP addresses may be encoded into a respective MAC address. Further, a hypervisor implemented on the node may configure a virtual machine on the node. For instance, configuring the virtual machine may include passing the encoded MAC address to the virtual machine through the hypervisor. The virtual machine may be configured to decode the IP address from the encoded MAC address, and the IP address is assigned to the virtual machine.“

The patent application was filed on November 17, 2014 (14/542,756).

Independent data integrity and redundancy recovery in storage system
Hitachi Data Systems Engineering UK Limited, Berkshire, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (9,021,296) developed by Kiselev, Oleg, Palo Alto, CA, Paul, Gaurab, Cupertino, CA, and Youngworth, Christopher, San Jose, CA, for a “independent data integrity and redundancy recovery in a storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage system includes a plurality of nodes connected to a network. Each node is capable of performing its own recovery of partially written data and maintaining consistency of the data stored on the storage system. The nodes may independently calculate the location of the data across the nodes and independently balance the data, maintain consistency based on a redundancy policy of the storage system, and migrate data according to a location change. If a node determines that the stored data thereon is incomplete or damaged, the node may reconstruct its respective data from replica data on other nodes. During migration of data between the nodes, I/O processing from a host is not interrupted in some examples.“

The patent application was filed on December 29, 2014 (14/583,900).