Caringo Assigned Patent

Caringo, Inc., Austin, TX, has been assigned a patent (8,566,626) developed by James E. Dutton, Spicewood, TX, Laura Arbilla, and David Yoakley, Austin, TX, for a “method for processing a request by selecting an appropriate computer node in a plurality of computer nodes in a storage cluster based on the least submitted bid value.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Each node and volume in a storage cluster makes a decision whether to reduce power consumption based on lack of requests from client applications and nodes over a time period. Node configuration parameters determine how long to wait until idling a node or volume, and how long to wait while idle before performing integrity checks. A bid value is calculated by each node and reflects how much it will cost for that node to write a file, read a file, or keep a copy. A node with the lowest bid wins, and nodes that are idle have a premium added to each bid to ensure that idle nodes are kept idle. In an archive mode, writes bids are reversed, nodes with less capacity submit lower bids, fuller nodes fill up faster and are then idled, while empty or near empty nodes may remain idle before winning a write bid.”

The patent application was filed on June 19, 2012 (13/527,430).