Hitachi Assigned Five Patents

Storage system and storage control apparatus
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,984,374) developed by Yoshihara, Tomohiro, Yokohama, Japan, for a “storage system and storage control apparatus.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage system has a RAID group configured by storage media, a system controller with a processor, a buffer memory coupled to storage devices and the processor by a communication network, and a cache memory coupled to the processor and the buffer memory by the network. A processor that stores first data, which is related to a write request from a host computer, in a cache memory, specifies a first storage device for storing data before update, which is data obtained before updating the first data, and transfers the first data to the specified first storage device. A first device controller transmits the first data and second data based on the data before update, from the first storage device to the system controller. The processor stores the second data in the buffer memory, specifies a second storage device, and transfers the stored second data to the specified second storage device.“

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2012 (13/510,299).

Storage control apparatus and control method of storage control apparatus
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,984,352) developed by Katsuragi, Eiju, Odawara, Japan, for a “storage control apparatus and control method of storage control apparatus.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”This invention inhibits the response time of the storage control apparatus from being longer even if the response time of the storage apparatus is long. The disk adapter, DKA, receiving a read message from the channel adapter, CHA, sets the timeout time in accordance with specified conditions, and tries to read data from the storage apparatus 4. As the timeout time, either the normal value or the shortened value is selected. If a timeout error occurs, the read job is reset, and correction read is started.“

The patent application was filed on April 14, 2010 (12/866,915).

Data migration system and data migration method
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,984,248) developed by Morishita, Noboru, Saito, Hideo, Eguchi, Yoshiaki, Yokohama, Japan, Yamamoto, Masayuki, Sagamihara, Japan, and Yamamoto, Akira, Sagamihara, Japan, for a “data migration system and data migration method.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A second storage maps a migration source volume to a virtual volume of a migration destination volume according to storage virtualization technology. A host system including a host switches an access path from an access path to the migration source volume to an access path to the migration destination volume. The second storage executes copy processing of migrating, from the migration source volume to the migration destination volume, data in an assigned area of a virtual volume according to thin provisioning of the migration source volume based on the information contained in the first thin provisioning information in the first storage, and copying that data from the migration destination volume to a virtual volume according to thin provisioning of a copy destination volume in the second storage. The second storage associates the virtual volume of the copy destination volume with the migration destination volume in substitute for the original virtual volume.“

The patent application was filed on December 30, 2013 (14/144,240).

Storage apparatus and control method for storage apparatus
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,984,235) developed by Kudo, Shintaro, Yokohama, Japan, Nonaka, Yusuke, Sagamihara, Japan, and Takada, Masanori, Yokohama, Japan, for a “storage apparatus and control method for storage apparatus.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An exemplary storage apparatus of the invention includes storage devices for storing data of block I/O commands and file I/O commands and a controller including a block cache area and a file cache area. The controller creates block I/O commands from file I/O commands and accesses the storage devices in accordance with the created block I/O commands. In a case where the file cache area is lacking an area to cache first data of a received first file I/O command, the controller chooses one of a first cache method that newly creates a free area in the file cache area to cache the first data in the file cache area and a second cache method that caches the first data in the block cache area without caching the first data in the file cache area.“

The patent application was filed on November 14, 2012 (13/701,656).

Method for assigning storage area and computer system using the same
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,984,221) developed by Satoyama, Ai, Sagamihara, Japan, and Eguchi, Yoshiaki, Yokohama, Japan, for a “method for assigning storage area and computer system using the same.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”When a method for relocating data to a preferable storage area based on access frequency is applied to virtual machines, it takes a long time for determining volumes that are not accessed, and the access performance is deteriorated. The present invention provides a system and method in which a utilization status of a virtual machine is checked by the storage system, and pages used by virtual machines not being utilized are relocated promptly to lower tiers and pages used by virtual machines being utilized are relocated promptly to higher tiers, according to which the performance of the system is improved.“

The patent application was filed on October 18, 2011 (13/318,001).