EMC Assigned Six Patents

I/O scheduling for flash drives

EMC Corp., Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (8,375,187) developed by Kendell Chilton, Southborough, MA., and Sachin More, Westborough, MA., for an "I/O scheduling for flash drives."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In a storage system, a controller schedules I/Os to storage devices so that each one substantially performs only reads or only writes, thereby increasing performance. At least one storage device is designated as a current write device. The remainder of the devices are designated current read devices. Host write data is stored in a buffer memory. Storage device reads occur only from the current read devices. Storage device writes occur only to the current write device(s). In response to a triggering event, the designations are updated so that a different storage device is designated the current write device, and the remainder of the storage devices are designated the current read devices. A triggering event may include but not be limited to a time period, number of writes, cache size, device wear, environmental conditions, application requirements, or combination."

The patent application was filed on Sept. 27, 2007 (11/862,417).

Dynamic storage device reconfiguration

EMC, Hopkinton, MA., has been assigned a patent (8,380,950) developed by Gururaj Kulkarni, Bangalore, India, for a "system and method for dynamic storage device reconfiguration."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system and method provides for recovery of a backup process that has been interrupted by an address change for a connected backup storage device. A backup server may manage a backup process from client computers to backup storage devices, each device having a unique address. Devices may be managed by storage node computers, which may occasionally reorganize its associated devices, causing some device address changes. This will interrupt the backup process since the server will not be able to match reorganized devices to known addresses. The present invention provides a method for querying the backup storage device, updating the server with the new address change, and continuing with the backup process. The present invention also provides a method for disabling the device from the backup process if the problem cannot be solved, then resuming the backup process."

The patent application was filed on Sept. 28, 2007 (11/904,756).

Techniques for providing a consolidated system
configuration view using database change tracking
and configuration files

EMC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (8,380,757) developed by six co-inventors for "techniques for providing a consolidated system configuration view using database change tracking and configuration files."

The co-inventors are Lorenzo Bailey, Framingham, MA, Yong Wang, Westborough, MA, Utkarsh Vipul, Mansfield, MA, Ken Kim, Worcester, MA, Xuan Tang, Hopkinton, MA, and Muhamad Djunaedi, Northborough, MA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Described are techniques for providing a consolidated logical view of a system. A plurality of database tables associated with a plurality of processing nodes of a storage system is provided. The plurality of database tables provides a plurality of individual views of the storage system and each of the individual views represents a view of the storage system for a different processing node. A notification is received regarding a modification to one or more of the database tables. The notification identifies an operation performed causing the modification and providing data associated with the modification. A merge database table is modified that provides a consolidated view of said plurality of individual views. The modifying is performed in accordance with the notification and a configuration file including logic describing processing performed to merge the plurality of individual views."

The patent application was filed on March 25, 2011 (13/065,631).

Diagnosing hardware faults in storage system

EMC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (8,407,527) developed by Brion Philbin, North Grafton, MA, Michael Manning, Hopkinton, MA, and Ashok Tamilarasan, Framingham, MA, for a "diagnosing hardware faults in a data storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Hardware faults in storage systems are diagnosed. User I/O errors are received. Disk drive port error counters, primary port error counters, and expansion port error counters are read. A user I/O error threshold is modified based on the error counter readings. Depending on the type of errors counted, the user I/O error threshold may be increased or decreased. Once a first quantity of user I/O errors exceeds the modified user I/O error threshold, a faulty component is identified."

The patent application was filed on June 30, 2009 (12/494,467).

Restoring data backed up in CAS system

EMC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (8,402,063) developed by Scott C. Auchmoody, Irvine, CA, and Eric W. Olsen, Lake Forest, CA, for "restoring data backed up in a content addressed storage (CAS) system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In one example, a method of restoring data backed up in a content addressed storage system may include retrieving a recipe and appended storage addresses from a first storage node of content addressed storage, where the recipe may include instructions for generating a data structure from two or more data pieces, and the two or more data pieces may be resident in locations identified by the appended storage addresses. The example method may further include populating a cache with the appended storage addresses for the two or more data pieces. As well the method may further include retrieving, and populating the cache with, the two or more data pieces without looking up a storage address for any of the two or more data pieces in an index, and restoring the data structure using the retrieved two or more data pieces in the cache."

The patent application was filed on April 30, 2012 (13/460,295).

Storage system having
optical/non-optical communication LCC

EMC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (8,416,772) developed by Jason Pritchard, Hopkinton, MA, for a "data storage system having optical/non-optical communication LCC."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A link control card for disk drives. The link control card includes: a first connector for carrying relatively high frequency user data and low frequency signals; a diplexer connected to the connector, such diplexer having a first port for the high frequency user data and a second port for the low frequency signals; an optical connector for carrying the relatively high frequency user data; and a high frequency user data communication channel disposed between the diplexer and the disk drives for selectively connected either the first port of the diplexer or the optical connector to the disk drives."

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2007 (11/768,319).