VMware Assigned Four Patents

Parallelizing data copy in distributed file system
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,305,014) developed by Frost, Christopher, Los Angeles, CA, Li, Jinyuan, Rawat, Mayank, Sunnyvale, CA, and Vilayannur, Murali, San Jose, CA, for a “method and system for parallelizing data copy in a distributed file system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Multiple servers sharing a distributed file system are used to perform copies of regions of a source file in parallel from a source storage unit to corresponding temporary files at a destination storage unit. These temporary files are then merged or combined into a single file at the destination storage unit in a way that preserves the inode structure and attributes of the source file. A substantial speedup is obtained by copying regions of the file in parallel.“

The patent application was filed on April 28, 2014 (14/263,196).

Providing multiple IO paths in virtualized environment to support
for high availability of virtual machines
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,304,878) developed by Antony, Jinto, Thankappan, Sudhish Panamthanath, and Thomas, Jidhin Malathusseril, Bangalore, India, for a “providing multiple IO paths in a virtualized environment to support for high availability of virtual machines.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”High availability of a virtual machine is ensured even when all of the virtual machine’s IO paths fail. In such a case, the virtual machine is migrated to a host that is sharing the same storage system as the current host in which the virtual machine is being executed and has at least one functioning IO path to the shared storage system. After execution control of the virtual machine is transferred to the new host, IO operations from the virtual machine are issued over the new IO path.“

The patent application was filed on October 11, 2012 (13/649,884).

Recovery system and method for recreating state of datacenter
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,304,873) developed by McElhoe, Glenn Bruce, Arlington, MA, Tam, Hoki, Quincy, MA, Reeves, Dwayne, Cambridge, MA, Krieger, Orran, Newton, MA, and McGachey, Philip, Stow, MA, for a “recovery system and method for recreating a state of a datacenter.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments include a recovery system, a computer-readable storage medium, and a method of recreating a state of a datacenter. The embodiments include a plurality of program modules that is executable by a processor to gather metadata from a first datacenter that includes at least one virtual machine, VM, wherein the metadata includes data representative of a virtual infrastructure of the first datacenter. The program modules are also executable by the processor to recreate a state of the first datacenter within a second datacenter using the metadata upon a determination that a failure occurred within the first datacenter, and to recreate the VM within the second datacenter.“

The patent application was filed on August 23, 2012 (13/593,060).

Replicating virtual machines across different virtualization platforms
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,304,804) developed by Ivanov, Ivan, and Velevski, Ivan, Sofia, Bulgaria, for a “replicating virtual machines across different virtualization platforms.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A first virtual machine executing in a first computer server is replicated to a second virtual machine executing in a second computer server, which is connected to the first computer server over a network. Virtual disks of the first virtual machine are transmitted to the second server, where each transmitted virtual disk corresponds to one of the virtual disks of the second virtual machine, the virtual disks of the first virtual machine having a format different from the format of the virtual disks of the second virtual machine. A plurality of updates to the virtual disks of the first virtual machine is captured, and contiguous data blocks from the virtual disks of the first virtual machine that are subject to the captured updates are identified. The identified contiguous data blocks are then transmitted to the second server for storage in the virtual disks of the second virtual machine.“

The patent application was filed on October 14, 2013 (14/053,147).