NetApp Assigned Five Patents

Graphical storage system visualization,
timeline based event visualization,
and storage system configuration visualization
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,443,011) developed by Yogesh Kandlikar, Diana Bocskai, and Art Cruz, Sunnyvale, CA, for a "graphical storage system visualization, timeline based event visualization, and storage system configuration visualization."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method and system for visually displaying and navigating a computer storage system are disclosed. The storage system can be graphically browsed to select a particular entity in the storage system. A graphical timeline of events relating to the selected entity is displayed. Selecting an event from the timeline displays a graphical representation of the storage system at a time relating to the selected event or additional graphical detail about the selected event. Based on the selected event, configuration information for the entity in the storage system that experienced the event can be displayed and compared against the configuration of the entity at a different time or against a predefined template."

The patent application was filed on May 2, 2008 (12/114,437).

Provisioning pass-through disk
in virtualized computing environment
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,452,921) developed by Song Li, Sunnyvale, CA, and Thien Nguyen, Milpitas, CA, for a "provisioning a pass-through disk in a virtualized computing environment."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A physical host machine determines that a storage device from a network storage system is available to the host machine as a pass-through disk. Virtualization software running on the host machine assigns the pass-through disk to a temporary resource group on the host machine. The pass-through disk is logically attached to the VM running on the host machine and made available to an OS and application running on the VM."

The patent application was filed on March 17, 2010 (12/725,793).

Performing recovery in storage system
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,473,777) developed by Muralidharan Rangachari, Cupertino, CA, Anagha Barve, Sunnyvale, CA, and Vineeth Karinta, Fremont, CA, for a "method and system for performing recovery in a storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Method and system for performing recovery for a replicated copy of a storage space presented as a logical object is provided. An attribute associated with the logical object for enabling the recovery is set and when the storage space is replicated the attribute is stored as metadata for the replicated copy of the storage space. Based on the attribute, a clone of the logical object is presented as a writable option to write to the first replicated copy. After the write operation where information is written to the clone, a second replicated copy with the clone information is created. The clone is deleted after the second copy is generated."

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2010 (12/770,531).

Dynamic balancing of performance
with block sharing in a storage system
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,443,153) developed by four co-inventors for a "dynamic balancing of performance with block sharing in a storage system."

The co-inventors are John K. Edwards, Sunnyvale, CA, Keith A. Smith, Cambridge, MA, Jiri Schindler, Jamaica Plain, MA, and Steven R. Kleiman, Los Altos, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A storage system provides highly flexible data layouts that can be tailored to various different applications and use cases. The system dynamically balances performance with block sharing, based on service level objectives (SLOs). The system defines several types of data containers, including "regions", "logical extents" and "slabs". Each region includes one or more logical extents. Allocated to each logical extent is at least part of one or more slabs allocated to the region that includes the extent. Each slab is a set of blocks of storage from one or more physical storage devices. The slabs can be defined from a heterogeneous pool of physical storage. The system also maintains multiple "volumes" above the region layer. Each volume includes one or more logical extents from one or more regions. Layouts of the extents within the regions are not visible to any of the volumes."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 6, 2010 (12/683,385)

Utilizing virtualized compute cluster
as execution engine for VM of storage system cluster
NetApp, Inc. Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,468,521) developed by Brian Pawlowski, Palo Alto, CA, for a "system and method for utilizing a virtualized compute cluster as an execution engine for a VM of a storage system cluster."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system and method employs one or more clients of a virtualized compute cluster as an execution engine for a portion of a storage OS implemented as a VM on a storage system node of a storage system cluster. If there is processing bandwidth of a client that is not fully utilized and the load on the storage system node is high, the portion of the storage OS is ported to the client of the compute cluster in a manner that externally distributes the storage architecture from the storage system cluster. Advantageously, the processing performance of the storage system cluster is improved by, among other things, offloading some of the network processing load from the storage system node."

The patent application was filed on Oct. 26, 2007 (11/925,133).