Dot Hill Adds Six Patents

Dot Hill Systems Corp. has been granted six new patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, bringing the company’s portfolio to a total of 62 patents.

The new patents include the third super capacitor technology patent granted to Dot Hill for its pioneering use of super capacitors and flash memory as part of the company’s patented EcoStor ‘green’ battery-free alternative for cache memory for the company’s high availability storage area network (SAN) and direct-attach 2000 and 3000 Series products. The EcoStor approach outlasts traditional batteries nearly fivefold, providing lower maintenance and disposal costs and reduced server and application down time due to scheduled battery replacement and maintenance. Dot Hill was an early pioneer in the technology, introducing battery-less cache protection as early as 2005 with its first 2000 Series products.

"Our engineering team continues to accelerate innovation at Dot Hill, as evidenced by this latest round of registered patents," said Jim Kuenzel, senior vice president of Engineering for Dot Hill. "We recognize that customers are always looking for better ways to implement and manage their storage, which is why we put such a focus on designing solutions that make a difference."

The latest Dot Hill patents achieved include:

U.S. Patent 7,661,002 Storage controller super capacitor dynamic voltage throttling
This technology provides a way to maintain super capacitor lifetime by adjusting its voltage in the presence of higher than expected operating temperatures. A temperature sensor recognizes that a capacitor pack has risen above a predetermined threshold while operating at a first voltage value and determines whether a projected lifetime of the capacitor pack is less than the lifetime warranted by the capacitor pack manufacturer. If the projected lifetime is less than the warranted lifetime, a microprocessor reduces the operating voltage of the capacitor pack to a second value, in order to increase the capacitor pack lifetime.

U.S. Patent 7,627,780 Apparatus and method for deterministically performing active-active failover of redundant servers in a network storage appliance
This innovation provides a method of guaranteeing reliable embedded server failover in the event of a server failure in a network storage appliance with multiple redundant servers. Unique hardware and software in each server is used to make sure that failover occurs reliably and a surviving server takes over for a failed server.

U.S. Patent 7,661,014 Network storage appliance with integrated server and redundant storage controllers
This invention provides a redundant blade-oriented architecture to transfer data between one or more application servers and two or more storage controllers within a network storage appliance. This innovation provides for continuous data transfers in the event of a module failure.

U.S. Patent 7,673,185 Adaptive SAS PHY configuration
This innovation improves reliability of serial attached SCSI (SAS) links by optimizing physical configuration settings when errors rise above a specified threshold. A table containing different sets of physical interface configuration settings is maintained by a SAS expander. When communication errors on the SAS link rise above the specified threshold, a microprocessor selects a different set of physical interface configuration parameters for use by the physical interface. In this way, a more optimal set of configuration parameters can be selected, if possible. If none of the sets of physical interface configuration parameters allow it to perform reliably, the physical interface is disabled. This invention allows automatic tuning of a SAS link to allow for various cable lengths, without requiring a user to make any measurements or input new operating parameters through a user interface for the SAS expander.

U.S. Patent 7,676,600 Network, storage appliance, and method for externalizing an external I/O link between a server and a storage controller integrated within the storage appliance chassis
This patent provides a novel way to interconnect a storage controller and a server in a storage appliance with external devices. The external devices may directly communicate with either the server, which runs various storage applications, or the storage controller. This allows the storage appliance to simultaneously support RAID applications, non-RAID applications, and embedded storage applications. Various and different hosts can then utilize the storage appliance according to how they need to operate.

U.S. Patent 7,681,089 Redundant storage controller system with enhanced failure analysis capability
This invention provides a reliable method for obtaining failure analysis information from a failing controller in a pair of redundant storage controllers. Information is automatically transferred from a failing controller to a surviving controller, and the surviving controller provides the failure analysis information to the system administrator. This is more reliable than the conventional method of having the failing controller provide the failure analysis information to the system administrator, and does not require a reboot of the failed controller to attempt to obtain the failure analysis information.