VMware Assigned Eight Patents

Opportunistic asynchronous deduplication using in-memory cache
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,612,749) developed by Wang, Wenguang, Santa Clara, CA, for a “opportunistic asynchronous deduplication using an in-memory cache.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Examples perform asynchronous deduplication of storage, such as virtualized or physical disks. Incoming input/output, (I/O) commands containing data are subdivided into blocks which are written both to storage and to an in-memory cache. As idle processing resources become available, deduplication is performed on the storage using the in-memory cache. In this manner, read operations from storage are avoided in favor of the read operations from the in-memory cache.“

The patent application was filed on May 19, 2015 (14/716,832).

Memory buffer management
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,584,446) developed by Zhang, Ronghua, Mountain View, CA, and Thakkar, Pankaj, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “memory buffer management method and system having multiple receive ring buffers.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The present invention is directed to a method and system of memory management that features dual buffer rings, each of which includes descriptors identifying addresses of a memory space, referred to as buffers, in which portions of data packets are stored. Typically, the header segment of each data packet is stored at a first set of a plurality of buffers, and the portion of the payload segment that does not fit among the buffers of the first set is stored in the buffers of a second set. In this manner, the size of the individual buffers associated with the first buffer rings may be kept to the smallest size of useable storage space, and the buffers corresponding to the second buffer ring may be arbitrary in size.“

The patent application was filed on March 18, 2008 (12/050,900).

Data deployment for parallel data processing system
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,582,209) developed by Shih, Chiao-Chuan, and Nayak, Samdeep, Palo Alto, CA, for a “efficient data deployment for a parallel data processing system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “This document describes techniques for efficient data deployment for a parallel data processing system. In one embodiment, a virtualization platform running a parallel processing application that includes one or more virtual data nodes receives a first command to write a data block to a storage device. The platform then determines whether the first command was sent by a first virtual data node. If the first command was sent by a first virtual data node, the platform then (1) writes, the data block to a first location in the storage device, (2) returns the first location to the first virtual data node and (3) determines whether the data should be replicated. If the data should be replicated, the platform instructs the storage device to make a copy of the data block to a second location in the storage device and storing the second location in a tracking structure.“

The patent application was filed on June 24, 2015 (14/748,262).

Dynamic protection of storage resources for disaster recovery
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,575,858) developed by Sugabrahmam, Giridharan, Santa Clara, CA, Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, and Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, for a “dynamic protection of storage resources for disaster recovery.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A recovery manager discovers replication properties of datastores stored in a storage array, and assigns custom tags to the datastores indicating the discovered replication properties. A user may create storage profiles with rules using any combination of these custom tags describe replication properties. The recovery manager protects a storage profile using a policy-based protection mechanism. Whenever a new replicated datastore is provisioned, the datastore is dynamically tagged with the replication properties of their underlying storage, and will belong to one or more storage profiles. The recovery manager monitors storage profiles for new datastores and protects the newly provisioned datastore dynamically, including any or all of the VMs stored in the datastore.“

The patent application was filed on October 2, 2014 (14/505,413).

Preventing migration of virtual machine from affecting disaster recovery of replica
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,575,856) 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: “To prevent a user from initiating potentially dangerous virtual machine migrations, a storage migration engine is configured to be aware of replication properties for a source datastore and a destination datastore. The replication properties are obtained from a storage array configured to provide array-based replication. A recovery manager discovers the replication properties of the datastores stored in the storage array, and assigns custom tags to the datastores indicating the discovered replication properties. When storage migration of a virtual machine is requested, the storage migration engine performs or prevents the storage migration based on the assigned custom tags.“

The patent application was filed on August 29, 2014 (14/473,664).

Host-based replication with end-to-end compression
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,575,687) developed by Desai, Asit, San Ramon, CA, for a “host-based replication with end-to-end compression.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for enabling end-to-end compression when performing host-based replication, (HBR) are provided. In one set of embodiments, a hypervisor running on a host system at a primary site can intercept I/O write requests that originate from a virtual machine, (VM) configured to be replicated via HBR, the I/O write requests being destined for a virtual disk, (VMDK) of the VM. The hypervisor can further track VMDK file blocks that are modified by the I/O write requests and can retrieve the VMDK file blocks from a storage tier at the primary site. The hypervisor can then compress the retrieved VMDK file blocks and transmit the compressed blocks to a secondary site.“

The patent application was filed on January 29, 2015 (14/609,054).

Storage-network de-duplication
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,558,201) developed by Ben-Shaul, Israel Zvi, Palo Alto, CA, and Vasetsky, Leonid, Zikhron Yaakov, Israel, for a “storage-network de-duplication.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are provided for de-duplication of data. In one embodiment, a system comprises de-duplication logic that is coupled to a de-duplication repository. The de-duplication logic is operable to receive, from a client device over a network, a request to store a file in the de-duplicated repository using a single storage encoding. The request includes a file identifier and a set of signatures that identify a set of chunks from the file. The de-duplication logic determines whether any chunks in the set are missing from the de-duplicated repository and requests the missing chunks from the client device. Then, for each missing chunk, the de-duplication logic stores in the de-duplicated repository that chunk and a signature representing that chunk. The de-duplication logic also stores, in the de-duplicated repository, a file entry that represents the file and that associates the set of signatures with the file identifier.“

The patent application was filed on January 7, 2014 (14/149,762).

Asynchronous replicated storage for live migration
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,552,217) developed by Tarasuk-Levin, Gabriel, San Jose, CA, Dirks, Patrick William Penzias, Los Gatos, CA, Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, and Kolovson, Curt, Redwood City, CA, for a “using active/active asynchronous replicated storage for live migration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Examples perform live migration of VMs from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure changes the storage environment, directly or through a vendor provider, to active/active synchronous and, during migration, migrates only data which is not already stored at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes, with exclusive access to the storage disks, and the system is returned to the previous storage environment, (e.g., active/active asynchronous).“

The patent application was filed on December 31, 2014 (14/588,023).