NetApp Assigned Fifteen Patents

Distributing enclosure services data to coordinate shared storage
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,059) developed by four co-inventors for “a system and method for distributing enclosure services data to coordinate shared storage.”

The co-inventors are George Kong, Anthony F. Aiello, Santa Clara, CA, Radek Aster, Campbell, CA, and Randal Thelen, Mountain View, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for distributing enclosure services information is provided. A plurality of storage systems that are operatively interconnected with one or more intermediate networking devices and/or disk shelves are modified to include a target device driver module that is adapted to receive and process target commands from other storage systems to enable the sharing and retrieval of SES information from a storage shelf’s master storage system.”

The patent application was filed on June 1, 2011 (13/151,100).

Unified storage system supporting file/object duality
Netapp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,620,865) developed by David Slik, Burnaby, CA, for “a system a method for providing a unified storage system that supports file/object duality.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems that permit file protocols and object protocols to co-exist using a file namespace and an object namespace in a unified storage system are disclosed. Data stored in the unified storage system are file-objects that preserve the behaviors expected by both file clients and object clients.”

The patent application was filed on June 24, 2011 (13/168,431).

Modeler for predicting storage metrics
Netapp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,620,921) developed by two co-inventors for “a system and method for modeler for predicting storage metrics .”

The co-inventors are Sai Rama Krishna Susarla, Karnataka, India, Kaladhar Voruganti, San Jose, CA, and Vipul Mathur, Karnataka, India.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Described herein is a system and method for dynamically managing service-level objectives (SLOs) for workloads of a cluster storage system. Proposed states/solutions of the cluster may be produced and evaluated to select one that achieves the SLOs for each workload. A planner engine may produce a state tree comprising nodes, each node representing a proposed state/solution. New nodes may be added to the state tree based on new solution types that are permitted, or nodes may be removed based on a received time constraint for executing a proposed solution or a client certification of a solution. The planner engine may call an evaluation engine to evaluate proposed states, the evaluation engine using an evaluation function that considers SLO, cost, and optimization goal characteristics to produce a single evaluation value for each proposed state. The planner engine may call a modeler engine that is trained using machine learning techniques.”

The patent application was filed on Jan. 28, 2011 (13/016,892).

Achieving consistent read latency from array of SSDs
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,142) developed by two co-inventors for “a method and apparatus for achieving consistent read latency from an array of solid-state storage devices.”

The co-inventors are Steve C. Miller, Sunnyvale, CA, and Jeffrey S. Kimmel, Chapel Hill, NC.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A technique for achieving consistent read latency from an array of non-volatile solid-state memories involves an external entity determining the “busy” or “not busy” status of non-volatile solid-state memory elements in a RAID group. An external data layout engine then uses parity based RAID data reconstruction to avoid having to read from any memory element that is busy in a RAID group, along with careful scheduling of writes and erasures.“

The patent application was filed on April 18, 2011 (13/089,035).

Network storage system including SSD
controlled by external data layout engine
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,146) developed by two co-inventors for a “network storage system including non-volatile solid-state memory controlled by external data layout engine.”

The co-inventors are Steve C. Miller, Livermore, CA, and Jeffrey S. Kimmel, Chapel Hill, NC.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A network storage system includes ‘raw’ flash memory, and storage of data in that flash memory is controlled by an external, log structured, write out-of-place data layout engine of a storage server. By avoiding a separate, onboard data layout engine on the flash devices, the latency associated with operation of such a data layout engine is also avoided. The flash memory can be used as the main persistent storage of a storage server and/or as buffer cache of a storage server, or both. The flash memory can be accessible to multiple storage servers in a storage cluster. To reduce variability in read latency, each flash device provides its status (‘busy’ or not) to the data layout engine. The data layout engine uses RAID data reconstruction to avoid having to read from a busy flash device. “

The patent application was filed on Nov. 4, 2011 (13/289,221).

Reclaiming unused space from thinly provisioned data container
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,172) developed by three co-inventors for “a system and method for reclaiming unused space from a thinly provisioned data container.”

The co-inventors are Vijayan Rajan, Sunnyvale, CA, David Brittain Bolen, Durham, NC, and Douglas P. Doucette, Freeland, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for operating a computer storage system maintains a client computer interacting with the storage system, the client computer storing data on a storage device of the computer storage system. Locating, by a client-side agent executing on the client computer that examines metadata of the client computer, one or more sets of blocks allocated and then deleted, hereinafter referred to as deleted blocks, within the computer storage system. Sending a command to the storage system, the command to identify the deleted blocks within the computer storage system. Deallocating, in response to receiving the command, the identified deleted blocks within the computer storage system.”

The patent application was filed on May 26, 2009 (12/471,822).

Flow-based reply cache
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,154) developed by three co-inventors for a “flow-based reply cache of a storage system is illustratively organized into one or more microcaches, each having a plurality of reply cache entries.“

The co-inventors are Jason L. Goldschmidt, Brookline, MA, Peter D. Shah, Waltham, MA, and Thomas M. Talpey, Stow, MA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A flow-based reply cache of a storage system is illustratively organized into one or more microcaches, each having a plurality of reply cache entries. Each microcache is maintained by a protocol server executing on the storage system and is allocated on a per client basis. To that end, each client is identified by a client connection or logical ‘data flow’ and is allocated its own microcache and associated entries, as needed. As a result, each microcache of the reply cache may be used to identify a logical stream of client requests associated with a data flow, as well as to isolate that client stream from other client streams and associated data flows used to deliver other requests served by the system. The use of microcaches thus provides a level of granularity that enables each client to have its own pool of reply cache entries that is not shared with other clients, thereby obviating starvation of entries allocated to the client in the reply cache.”

The patent application was filed on April 18, 2008 (12/105,914).

Allocating data objects for efficient reads in mass storage subsystem
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,176) developed by Jiri Schindler, Jamaica Plain, MA, for “a method and system for allocating data objects for efficient reads in a mass storage subsystem.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for allocating data objects across multiple physical storage devices in a mass storage subsystem first determines a set of physical properties associated with the physical storage devices. The system assigns portions of the mass storage subsystem to a first division or a second division based on the physical properties, such that read operations directed to logically related data stored in the first division can be executed more efficiently than read operations directed to data stored in the second division. During operation, the system stores data objects with a low SLR in the second division, which may be allocated according to any well-known file system. If a write request is for a new data object with a high SLR, the system stores the new data object in a set of neighboring primary data chunks in the first division. For subsequent write requests that modify a stored data object, the system stores the modified data in a spillover data chunk located in proximity to the primary data chunk.”

The patent application was filed on Jan. 20, 2010 (12/690,849).

Proxying data access commands in storage system cluster
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,612,481) developed by four co-inventors for “a system and method for proxying data access commands in a storage system cluster.”

The co-inventors are James R. Grier, Groton, MA, Vijayan Rajan, Mountain View, CA, John Meneghini, Billerica, MA, and Arthur F. Lent, Newton, MA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method proxies data access commands acrossed a cluster interconnect between storage appliances and a cluster using a file-level protocol. Each storage appliance activates two ports per data access, a local port for data access requests directed to clients of the storage appliance and a proxy port for data access requests directed to the partner storage appliance. Clients utilizing multi-pathing software may send data access requests to either the local port of the storage appliance or the proxy port of the storage appliance. The system and method improves HA, especially during a loss of connectivity due to non-storage appliance hardware failure. “

The patent application was filed on Feb. 11, 2008 (12/029,264).

Use of similarity hash to route data for improved de-dupe in storage cluster
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,607,017) developed by Michael N. Condict, Lexington, MA, for “a technique for the use of similarity hash to route data for improved deduplication in a storage server cluster.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A technique for routing data for deduplication in a storage server cluster includes computing, for each node in the cluster, a value collectively representative of the data stored on the node, such as a “geometric center” of the node. New or modified data is routed to the node which has stored data identical or most similar to the new or modified data, as determined based on those values. Each node stores a plurality of chunks of data, where each chunk includes multiple deduplication segments. A content hash is computed for each deduplication segment in each node, and a similarity hash is computed for each chunk from the content hashes of all segments in the chunk. A geometric center of a node is computed from the similarity hashes of the chunks stored in the node.”

The patent application was filed on Sept. 14, 2012 (13/619,826).

Transparent data migration in storage system environment
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,601,220) developed by four co-inventors for “transparent data migration in a storage system environment.”

The co-inventors are Saadia Khan, Milpitas, CA, Sloan Johnson, San Jose, CA, Vijay Singh, San Jose, CA, and John R. Corbin, El Paso, TX.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In one embodiment, a data migration technique enables a source storage system to efficiently and reliably migrate data to a destination storage system. The source storage system includes a copy engine that is configured to migrate or copy a set of data, e.g., one or more files, to the destination storage system using a file-based protocol over a network. The copy engine is also configured to ensure that any locks associated with the migrated data set are reclaimed at the destination storage system using a lock-based protocol. The source storage system further includes a proxy service that is configured to translate client requests to access the migrated data set to access requests executable (i.e., discernable) by the destination storage system. The proxy service then forwards or proxies the translated requests over the network to the destination storage system for processing. In essence, the proxy service interacts with the copy engine to proxy protocol specific requests and replies between a client and the destination storage system after copying of the migrated data set has completed, thus rendering data migration transparent to the client.”

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2011 (13/098,118).

Managing metadata for plurality of data containers
that are stored at one or more storage volumes in clustered storage system
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,600,998) developed by seven co-inventors for “a method and system for managing metadata for a plurality of data containers that are stored at one or more storage volumes in a clustered storage system.”

The co-inventors are Anant Chaudhary, Fremont, CA, Gaurav Agarwal, Menlo Park, CA, Sloan Johnson, San Francisco, CA, Manish M. Agarwal, Santa Clara, CA, Varun Jobanputra, San Jose, CA, Vikram Shukla, Fremont, CA, Sridher Jeyachandran, Santa Clara, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Method and system is provided for managing metadata for a plurality of data containers that are stored at one or more storage volumes in a clustered storage system. The metadata is collected from one or more storage volumes and then provided to a catalog module. The catalog module pre-processes the metadata and then generates a searchable data structure. The searchable data structure may then be used to respond to a user request for information regarding the storage system.“

The patent application was filed on Feb. 17, 2010 (12/706,953).

Replicating stored information
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,595,457) developed by three co-inventors for “a method and system for replicating stored information.”

The co-inventors are Kapil Kumar, Mountain View, CA, Hitesh Sharma, and David Grunwald, Santa Clara, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Method and system for replicating a storage volume is provided. Information is adaptively replicated in a swap mode or a copy mode. When information is copied from a storage volume to a memory buffer, an application determines if another information transfer from the same source volume is pending. If a transfer from the same source is pending, then information is copied from the memory buffer to a stolen buffer in a copy mode. If a transfer from the same source is not pending, then instead of copying the information, the application enables a swap mode. During the swap mode, an OS for a storage system swaps a pointer from the stolen buffer to information stored in the memory buffer. The memory buffer itself is invalidated so that no other module can access the memory buffer. Because the pointers are swapped, the application accesses information directly from the memory buffer.”

The patent application was filed on Oct. 30, 2008 (12/261,315).

Simple scale-out storage clusters
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,595,313) developed by three co-inventors for “systems and associated methods for flexible scalability of storage systems.“

The co-inventors are Bret S. Weber, Wichita, KS, Mohamad H. El-Batal, Westminster, CO, and William P. Delaney, Wichita, KS.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and associated methods for flexible scalability of storage systems. In one aspect, a storage controller may include an interface to a fabric adapted to permit each storage controller coupled to the fabric to directly access memory mapped components of all other storage controllers coupled to the fabric. The CPU and other master device circuits within a storage controller may directly address memory an I/O devices directly coupled thereto within the same storage controller and may use RDMA features to directly address memory an I/O devices of other storage controllers through the fabric interface.”

The patent application was filed on Nov. 29, 2005 (11/289,140).

VM-based OS simulation using host RAM-based emulation
of persistent mass storage device
NetApp, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,621,461) developed by three co-inventors for “virtual machine based OS simulation using host ram-based emulation of persistent mass storage device.”

The co-inventors are Aravinda Chandrachari,Madhan Rajasekkharan, and Rakshit Karnawat, Bangalore, India.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A virtual storage device of a virtual machine is stored onto a host based RAM drive to achieve performance gains. The virtual machine can be a virtual storage server or a simulated storage server. The disclosed technique can include using the host based RAM drive to store a data image file that represents a virtual disk based emulation of an NVRAM of a storage server. A network server is used to provide persistence across host reboots and to allow virtual machines to be moved between hosts.”

The patent application was filed on Nov. 22, 2010 (12/951,945).