Symantec Assigned Four Patents

Hierarchical space management for storage systems
Symantec Corp., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,495,111) developed by four co-inventors for a "system and method of hierarchical space management for storage systems."

The co-inventors are Feng Wang, Sunnyvale, CA, John A. Colgrove, Los Altos, CA, Bo Hong, Mountain View, CA, and Oleg Kiselev, Palo Alto, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system and method for storing data. In one embodiment, a storage system includes a resource manager and a hierarchical entry tree describing storage entities of the storage system. At each given level of the tree higher than the bottom level, metadata entries summarize storage availability at a level below the given level. The resource manager receives a request to store data of a target size at a target location corresponding to a first portion of the entry tree and scans the entry tree to determine if contiguous, free storage entities of the target size are available at the target location. In response to determining that contiguous, free storage entities of the target size are not available at the target location, the resource manager scans portions of the entry tree outside the first portion to identify contiguous, free storage entities of the target size, where it stores the data."

The patent application was filed on Sept. 23, 2008 (12/236,194).

Selectively protecting against chosen plaintext attacks
in untrusted storage environments
that support data deduplication
Symantec Corp., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,479,304) developed by Thomas G. Clifford, Edina, MN, for "selectively protecting against chosen plaintext attacks in untrusted storage environments that support data deduplication."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Various methods and systems for selectively protecting against chosen plaintext attacks when encrypting data for storage on an untrusted storage system are disclosed. One method involves generating an encryption key for use in encrypting data and generating an identifier for the data. Generation of the encryption key is based upon a hash of the data to be encrypted, and generation of the identifier is based upon the data to be encrypted and/or the encryption key. The method also involves detecting whether an encrypted copy of the data is already stored by a storage system, based upon the identifier. The method also detects whether a higher level of security has been specified for the data and, if so, modifies the data to be encrypted or the encryption key, based upon a client-specific value, prior to generating the identifier."

The patent application was filed on March 31, 2009 (12/415,577).

Efficiently creating backup files with less redundancy
Symantec Operating, Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,464,097) developed by Sunil Shah, Fremont, CA, Kirk L. Searls, Maitland, FL, and Ynn-Pyng ‘Anker’ Tsaur, Oviedo, FL, for a "method and apparatus for efficiently creating backup files with less redundancy."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method of creating backup files having less redundancy. The method creates a backup file by creating an overhead segment for each file that is to be backed up and creating a data segment containing the data that is to be backed up for each file. After creating the overhead segment and the data segment, the overhead segment is placed into an overhead stream data segment is stored in memory. The overhead segment is also positioned in the overhead stream with a pointer that identifies the data segment within the memory. For backups of subsequent servers or the same server at a later time, the backup software will create a separate overhead stream. However, a plurality of overhead streams may contain pointers to the same data segments such that redundant data segments do not need to be stored in a backup server."

The patent application was filed on June 1, 2012.

Providing exclusive and secure access
to virtual storage objects in VM cluster
Symantec Corp., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,495,323) developed by Venkata Tatavarty, Sunnyvale, CA, for a "method and system of providing exclusive and secure access to virtual storage objects in a VM cluster."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system, method, and medium for implementing I/O fencing in a VM cluster sharing virtual storage objects. A volume manager driver receives access requests from VMs directed to a virtual storage object such as a volume. The volume manager driver then translates the access request to point to a storage device underlying the volume. The access request includes keys and/or other group reservation data required to implement an I/O fencing method so as to prevent access to shared data by malfunctioning or non-responsive VMs."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 7, 2010 (12/962,234).