VMware Assigned Thirteen Patents

Emulating stretched storage device using shared replicated storage device
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,442,811) developed by Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, Krishnan, Sriram, Shrewsbury, MA, and Sugabrahmam, Giridharan, Santa Clara, CA, for a “emulating a stretched storage device using a shared replicated storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include receiving a command from a recovery manager running on a management server within a first or second datacenter. In response to the command, device identifiers for one or more logical storage devices within the first datacenter are requested. In response to the request, a first device identifier for a first logical storage device within the first datacenter and a peer device identifier for a second logical storage device within the second datacenter are received. Data is replicated from the first logical storage device to the second logical storage device. The first and second logical storage devices are in an active-passive configuration, the first logical storage device storing the replicated data being active and the second logical storage device storing the replicated data being passive. The command with the peer device identifier is sent to the underlying storage.“

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2014 (14/265,055).

Using stretched storage to optimize disaster recovery
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,442,792) developed by Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, and Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, for a “using stretched storage to optimize disaster recovery.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include determining that at least a portion of a protected site has become unavailable. A first logical storage device within underlying storage of a recovery site is determined to be a stretched storage device stretched across the protected and recovery sites. A failover workflow is initiated in response to the unavailability of the protected site, wherein the failover workflow includes transmitting an instruction to the underlying storage to isolate the first logical storage device from a corresponding logical storage device within the protected site.“

The patent application was filed on June 23, 2014 (14/312,561).

Migrating virtual machines between cloud computing facilities
using multiple extended local virtual networks and static network addresses
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,430,256) developed by Raghu, Jagannath, Palo Alto, CA, for a “method and apparatus for migrating virtual machines between cloud computing facilities using multiple extended local virtual networks and static network addresses.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The current document discloses methods and systems for extending an internal network within a source cloud-computing facility to a new target cloud-computing facility and redeploying a virtual machine or virtual application previously running on a target cloud-computing facility within the context of an extended internal network in the target cloud-computing facility. The currently disclosed methods and systems, which allow a virtual machine or virtual application formerly executing on a target cloud-computing facility to resume execution on a new target cloud-computing facility, using the computational and storage facilities of the new target cloud-computing facility but depending on network support from the source cloud-computing facility, without changing IP and local network addresses and the network connectivity, based on those addresses, between the virtual machines and virtual applications and other local and remote computational entities with which the virtual machines and virtual applications communicate.”

The patent application was filed on December 2, 2013 (14/094,612).

Generating remediation options within cluster of host computers
that run virtual machines
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,424,063) developed by Kirubanandam, Jeevitha, Sunnyvale, CA, Shanmuganathan, Ganesha, Mountain View, CA, Farkas, Keith, San Carlos, CA, Epping, Duncan, Helmond, The Netherlands, and Parikh, Aashish, Santa Clara, CA, for a “method and system for generating remediation options within a cluster of host computers that run virtual machines.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for adjusting the configuration of host computers in a cluster on which virtual machines are running in response to a failed change in state is disclosed. The method involves receiving at least one reason a change in state failed the present check or the future check, associating the at least one reason with at least one remediation action, wherein the remediation action would allow the change in state to pass both a present check and a future check, assigning the at least one remediation action a cost, and determining a set of remediation actions to perform based on the cost assigned to each remediation action. In an embodiment, the steps of this method may be implemented in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions that, when executed in a computing device, causes the computing device to carry out the steps.“

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2014 (14/264,700).

Emulating stretched storage device using shared storage device
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,423,956) developed by Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, Krishnan, Sriram, Shrewsbury, MA, and Sugabrahmam, Giridharan, Santa Clara, CA, for a “emulating a stretched storage device using a shared storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include receiving a device discovery command from a recovery manager running on a management server within a first or second datacenter. In response to the device discovery command, device identifiers for one or more logical storage devices within the first datacenter are requested. In response to the request, a device discovery response including a first identifier is received. The received device discovery response is modified to include the first device identifier as the identifier for both an underlying logical storage device and as an identifier for a peer logical storage device. The modified response is returned to the recovery manager in response to the device discovery command.”

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2014 (14/265,027).

Preventing migration of virtual machine from affecting disaster recovery of replica
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,417,976) developed by Sugabrahmam, Giridharan, Santa Clara, CA, Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, and Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, for a “preventing migration of a virtual machine from affecting disaster recovery of replica.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage migration engine and a recovery manager are provided that enable failover operations to be performed in situations where storage migration and array-based replication are involved. The storage migration engine stores information related to storage migrations directly into a source datastore and a destination datastore, which are then replicated over to a recovery site. The recovery manager uses the information stored in the recovered datastores to select which instance of virtual machine data is to be used to fail over to a virtual machine at the recovery site.“

The patent application was filed on August 29, 2014 (14/473,744).

Unified storage/VDI provisioning methodology
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,417,891) developed by Beveridge, Daniel James, Apollo Beach, FL, for a “unified storage/VDI provisioning methodology.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods, computer-readable storage medium, and systems described herein facilitate provisioning a virtual desktop infrastructure having virtual shared storage. A provisioning manager receives a desktop pool type and provisions virtual shared storage among a cluster of hosts. The provisioning manager configures the virtual shared storage based on the desktop pool type and provisions at least one virtual machine to each host in the cluster of hosts. The provisioning manager optimizes the virtual shared storage by receiving a storage performance benchmark from each host and performing an optimization on the cluster of hosts if the storage performance benchmark results do not meet a threshold within a pre-defined tolerance.“

The patent application was filed on June 11, 2012 (13/493,939).

System software interfaces for space-optimized block devices
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,411,517) developed by Vaghani, Satyam B., San Jose, CA, and Aswathanarayana, Tejasvi, Salem, NH, for a “system software interfaces for space-optimized block devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Interfaces to storage devices that employ storage space optimization technologies, such as thin provisioning, are configured to enable the benefits gained from such technologies to be sustained. Such an interface may be provided in a hypervisor of a virtualized computer system to enable the hypervisor to discover features of a logical unit number, (LUN), such as whether or not the LUN is thinly provisioned, and also in a virtual machine, (VM) of the virtualized computer system to enable the VM to discover features of a virtual disk, such as whether or not the virtual disk is thinly provisioned. The discovery of these features enables the hypervisor or the VM to instruct the underlying storage device to carry out certain operations such as an operation to deallocate blocks previously allocated to a logical block device, so that the storage device can continue to benefit from storage space optimization technologies implemented therein.”

The patent application was filed on July 12, 2011 (13/181,163).

Online virtual machine disk migration
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,377,963) developed by Colbert, Osten Kit, Mountain View, CA, Hutchins, Gregory, San Francisco, CA, Bosch, Robert, Sunnyvale, CA, Ranganathan, Jairam, Los Angeles, CA, and Baxter, Joel, San Carlos, CA, for a “online virtual machine disk migration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for migrating a virtual machine disk, (VM disk) from first physical storage to second physical storage while the virtual machine, (VM) is running, the method comprising:, (a) creating a first child VM disk to which writes are redirected from a first parent VM disk, the first parent VM disk being on the first physical storage, (b) copying the first parent VM disk to the second physical storage as a second parent VM disk, (c) re-parenting the first VM child disk to the second parent VM disk.“

The patent application was filed on April 2, 2014 (14/242,928).

Persisting high availability protection state for virtual machines
stored on distributed object-based storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,367,414) developed by Sevigny, Marc, Harvard, MA, Farkas, Keith, San Carlos, CA, and Karamanolis, Christos, Los Gatos, CA, for a “persisting high availability protection state for virtual machines stored on distributed object-based storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are disclosed for persisting high availability, (HA) protection state for virtual machines, (VMs) running on host systems of a host cluster, where the host cluster aggregates locally-attached storage resources of the host systems to provide an object store, and where persistent data for the VMs is stored as per-VM storage objects across the locally-attached storage resources comprising the object store. In one embodiment, a host system in the host cluster executing a HA module determines an identity of a VM that has been powered-on in the host cluster. The host system then persists HA protection state for the VM in a storage object of the VM, where the HA protection state indicates that the VM should be restarted on an active host system in the case of a failure in the host cluster.“

The patent application was filed on June 27, 2014 (14/317,637).

Catastrophic data loss avoidance
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,367,253) developed by Gough, Michael, San Jose, CA, and Brauen, Rick, Puyallup, WA, for a “catastrophic data loss avoidance.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems divide data into a plurality of portions such that the data is recoverable using a subset of the plurality of portions. For each portion of the data, a storage device different than storage devices storing all other portions of the data is selected. The selecting of storage devices includes distributing the portions of data based upon diversity of geographic locations of storage devices and diversity of storage device characteristics. The storage device characteristics include at least one of hardware characteristics, software characteristics, and operating history characteristics. Each portion of the data is stored on a corresponding selected storage device.”

The patent application was filed on March 13, 2014 (14/209,792).

Protecting virtual machines against storage connectivity failures
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,361,199) developed by Ren, Joanne, Cupertino, CA, Tarashansky, Igor, Concord, MA, Farkas, Keith, San Carlos, CA, Ziskind, Elisha, Sharon, MA, and Krishnan, Manoj, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “protecting virtual machines against storage connectivity failures.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system for monitoring a virtual machine executed on a host. The system includes a processor that receives an indication that a failure caused a storage device to be inaccessible to the virtual machine, the inaccessible storage device impacting an ability of the virtual machine to provide service, and applies a remedy to restore access to the storage device based on a type of the failure.”

The patent application was filed on August 23, 2013 (13/975,098).

Runtime emulating static thread local storage
of portable executable software code
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,354,949) developed by Clark, Jonathan, San Francisco, CA, for a “runtime emulating static thread local storage of portable executable software code.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A computer readable storage medium containing a program which, when executed by a processor, performs an operation of emulating static thread local storage of an executable software code at runtime, is disclosed. The operation includes executing the executable software code within a process memory space. During the execution of the executable software code, an occurrence of an event that is associated with a thread create operation is monitored. When the monitored event occurs, a thread data block duplicate is established within the process memory space and associated with a thread created by the thread create operation. The thread data block duplicate is configured to be accessed by executing a thread local storage callback function.“

The patent application was filed on October 16, 2013 (14/055,597).