Amazon Assigned Four Patents

Scheduled or gradual redundancy encoding schemes for storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NV, has been assigned a patent (8,806,296) developed by Colin L. Lazier, Seattle, WA, for the “scheduled or gradual redundancy encoding schemes for storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for optimizing data storage are disclosed herein. In particular, methods and systems for implementing redundancy encoding schemes with data storage systems are described. The redundancy encoding schemes may be scheduled according to system and data characteristics. The schemes may span multiple tiers or layers of a storage system. The schemes may be generated, for example, in accordance with a transaction rate requirement, a data durability requirement or in the context of the age of the stored data. The schemes may be designed to rectify entropy-related effects upon data storage. The schemes may include one or more erasure codes or erasure coding schemes. Additionally, methods and systems for improving and/or accounting for failure correlation of various components of the storage system, including that of storage devices such as hard disk drives, are described.”

The patent application was filed on June 27, 2012 (13/535,200).

Storage integrity validation
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NV, has been assigned a patent (8,805,793) developed by four co-inventors for “storage integrity validation.”

The co-inventors are Kestutis Patiejunas, Sammamish, WA, Colin L. Lazier, Mark C. Seigle, and Bryan J. Donlan, Seattle, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to, among other things, validating the integrity of received and/or stored data payloads. In some examples, a storage service may perform a first partitioning of a data object into first partitions based at least in part on a first operation. The storage service may also verify the data object, by utilizing a verification algorithm, to generate a first verification value. In some cases, the storage service may additionally perform a second partitioning of the data object into second partitions based at least in part on a second operation. The second partitions may be different from the first partitions. Additionally, the archival data storage service may verify the data object using the verification algorithm to generate a second verification value. Further, the storage service may determine whether the second verification value equals the first verification value.”

The patent application was filed on Aug. 8, 2012 (13/570,151).

Managing access of multiple executing programs to non-local block storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NV, has been assigned a patent (8,806,105) developed by five co-inventors for “managing access of multiple executing programs to non-local block storage.”
 
The co-inventors are Roland Paterson-Jones, Peter N. DeSantis, Atle Normann Jorgensen, Cape Town, South Africa, Matthew S. Garman and Tate Andrew Certain, Seattle, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are described for managing access of executing programs to non-local block data storage. In some situations, a block data storage service uses multiple server storage systems to reliably store network-accessible block data storage volumes that may be used by programs executing on other physical computing systems. A group of multiple server block data storage systems that store block data volumes may in some situations be co-located at a data center, and programs that use volumes stored there may execute on other physical computing systems at that data center. If a program using a volume becomes unavailable, another program (e.g., another copy of the same program) may in some situations obtain access to and continue to use the same volume, such as in an automatic manner in some such situations.”

The patent application was filed on Aug. 26, 2011 (13/219,318).

Partitioning and indexing table data using composite primary key
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NV, has been assigned a patent (8,819,027) developed by nine co-inventors for “a system and method for partitioning and indexing table data using composite primary key.”

The co-inventors are Jakub Kulesza, Bellevue, WA, Stefano Stefani, Issaquah, WA, Wei Xiao, Kirkland, WA, Swaminathan Sivasubramanian, Chiranjeeb Buragohain, Rande A. Blackman, Timothy Andrew Rath, Grant A. M. McAlister,and Raymond S. Bradford, Seattle, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system that implements a scaleable data storage service may maintain tables in a non-relational data store on behalf of service clients. Each table may include multiple items. Each item may include one or more attributes, each containing a name-value pair. The system may provide an API through which clients can query tables maintained by the service. Items may be partitioned and indexed in a table according to a simple or composite primary key contained in all items in the table. A composite primary key may include a hash key attribute, and a range key attribute. The range key attribute may be usable to order items having the same hash key attribute value, and to partition them dependent on a range of range key attribute values. A query request may specify a logical or mathematical expression dependent on range key attribute values and may be directed to multiple partitions.”

The patent was filed on Oct. 28, 2013 (14/064,943).