Hitachi Assigned Six Patents

Dynamic page reallocation storage system management
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,402,214) developed by Tomohiro Kawaguchi, Cupertino, CA, for a "dynamic page reallocation storage system management."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In one embodiment, a storage system for storage management in a tiered storage environment comprises a plurality of storage volumes in a pool which are divided into a plurality of tiers having different tier levels, the tiers being organized according to a tier configuration rule, the plurality of storage volumes provided by a plurality of physical storage devices in the storage system; and a controller controlling the plurality of physical storage devices, the controller including a processor and a memory. The controller changes tier configurations of the tiers of storage volumes when the tier configuration rule is changed, the tier configurations including the tier levels. The controller allocates the pool to a plurality of virtual volumes based on a change of tier levels against the physical storage devices which occurs when the pool does not meet the tier configuration rule that was in effect."

The patent application was filed on Sept. 16, 2009 (12/560,740).

Managing error codes for storage systems
coupled with external storage systems
Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,407,517) developed by Tomohiro Kawaguchi, Cupertino, CA, and Akira Yamamoto, Kawasaki, Japan, for "methods and apparatus for managing error codes for storage systems coupled with external storage systems."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system comprising a plurality of storage systems, which uses storage devices of multiple levels of reliability. The reliability as a whole system is increased by keeping the error code for the relatively low reliability storage disks in the relatively high reliability storage system. The error code is calculated using hash functions and the value is used to compare with the hash value of the data read from the relatively low reliability storage disks."

The patent application was filed on April 8, 2010 (12/756,475).
 
Migrating thin provisioning volumes
between storage systems
Hitachi, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,407,436) developed by Hiroshi Arakawa, Sunnyvale, CA, for "methods and apparatus for migrating thin provisioning volumes between storage systems."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Multiple storage systems have capability to provide thin provisioning volumes to host computers and capability to transfer (import/export) management information regarding thin provisioning between storage systems. Moreover, at least one of the storage systems posses capability to provide storage area of other storage system as own storage area virtually via connection to the other storage system (i.e. external storage). Target storage system achieves efficient migration and unifying storage resource pool by importing or referring the management information obtained from source storage system and by utilizing the source storage system as external storage. One implementation involves method and process for migration of thin provisioning volumes using chunks having same length between source storage system and destination storage system. In this implementation, storage resource pool is unified by importing management information from the source storage system, and automated page-based relocation is performed to adjust actual location of data."

The patent application was filed on Feb. 11, 2009 (12/369,363).

I/O conversion for storage system
Hitachi, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,423,727) developed by Keiichi Matsuzawa, Arlington, MA, and Yasunori Kaneda, San Jose, CA, for "I/O conversion method and apparatus for storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "An aspect of the invention relates to a method of managing data location of plural files in a storage system having a mixed volume which includes plural pages having a fixed page size, the pages belonging to different tiers. The method comprises mapping pages of different tiers to storage devices of different speeds in the storage system, the storage devices including at least a high speed storage device corresponding to a high tier page and a low speed storage device corresponding to a low tier page; and for each file that is a large file which is larger in size than the page size, performing sub-file tiered management on the large file to assign the large file among pages of different tiers according to access characteristics of different portions of the large file by matching the access characteristics of each portion of the large file with a corresponding tier of the assigned page of the mixed volume."

The patent application was filed on March 16, 2010 (12/724,655).

Managing virtual ports on storage systems
Hitachi, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,429,446) developed by Junichi Hara, San Jose, CA, and Yoshiki Kano, Sagamihara, Japan, for a "method and apparatus for managing virtual ports on storage systems."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A storage system is configured to create and manage virtual ports on physical ports. The storage system can transfer associations between virtual ports and physical ports when a failure occurs in a physical port or a link connected to the physical port so that a host can access volumes under the virtual ports through another physical port. The storage system can also change associations between virtual ports and physical ports by taking into account the relative loads on the physical ports. When a VM is migrated from one host computer to another, the loads on the physical ports in the storage system can be used to determine whether load balancing should take place. Additionally, the storage system can transfer virtual ports to a remote storage system that will take over the virtual ports, so that a VM can be migrated to remote location."

The patent application was filed on Sept. 16, 2011 (13/234,245).

Metrics and management for flash memory storage life
Hitachi, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (8,407,409) developed by Tomohiro Kawaguchi, Cupertino, CA, for "metrics and management for flash memory storage life."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "According to one aspect of the invention, a method of evaluating reliability of flash memory media comprises managing a flash memory remaining life for each disk of a plurality of flash memory media disks provided in one or more flash memory media groups each of which has a configuration and a relationship between said each flash memory media group and the flash memory media disks in said each flash memory media group, wherein each flash memory media group is one of a RAID group or a thin provisioning pool; and calculating to obtain information of each flash memory media group based on the measured flash memory remaining life for each disk in said each flash memory media group, the configuration of said each flash memory media group, and the relationship between said each flash memory media group and the flash memory media disks in said each flash memory media group."

The patent application was filed on March 21, 2012 (13/426,146).