GreenBytes Assigned Patent

GreenBytes, Inc. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company a patent (8,370,305) for its method of minimizing the amount of network bandwidth needed to copy data between deduplicated storage systems.

The patent recognizes a proprietary method for replicating snapshots by utilizing the company’s zero latency inline deduplication technology, which is a key component in GreenBytes’ IO Offload Engine and vIO solutions for desktop virtualization.

In a traditional desktop virtualization environment protected by replication, each new virtual desktop image must be replicated in full from site A to site B. Although the basis of the image is often 99% the same as every other virtual desktop in the environment, a standard replication engine sees each new image as a completely new set of data.

Patented technology enables the IO Offload Engine appliance and vIO virtual storage appliance to determine that the data already exists in a deduplicated form at site B so it will only send the truly unique data from site A to site B. This results in up to 100x reduction in the amount of data sent across the replication link. With this patented feature, customers are able to reduce connectivity costs between sites while retaining full protection of their virtual desktop environment.
 
"GreenBytes’ deduplicated snapshot replication feature represents the first time that inline deduplication has been brought to replication in the context of primary storage," said Deni Connor, founding analyst, Storage Strategies NOW. "This unique capability will enable companies to maintain contingent copies of their virtual environments at remote sites, dramatically lowering networking costs. This patent award is a notable accomplishment and provides further recognition of GreenBytes’ unique and evolutionary approach to desktop virtualization."

"This patent covers GreenBytes’ development of an optimized deduplicated replication method that only transfers changed and new data between incremental snapshots," said Bob Petrocelli, founder and CTO, GreenBytes. "When duplicate data is detected, we only send a tiny fraction of the data size, reducing the amount of bandwidth required for replication, providing further cost reductions and performance improvements to users of our industry-leading solutions for desktop virtualization."

GreenBytes was previously awarded patents for its method of the allocation of data on physical media by a file system that eliminates duplicate data (8,156,126), and for its method of the allocation of data on physical media by a file system which optimizes power consumption, improving the power efficiency of deploying storage (8,090,924).