Hitachi Assigned Four Patents

Storage system
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (9,697,097) developed by Takada, Masanori, and Yamamoto, Akira, Tokyo, Japan, for a “storage system and method for controlling storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods are in use for saving data stored in a volatile memory to a non-volatile memory during a power outage in a storage system so that the data on the volatile memory is not lost. In the related art, the entire data saved to the non-volatile memory is read and written in the volatile memory when electric power supply is restored. Then, an operation as the storage system is resumed and an access request from a host is accepted. In the related art, the data saved in the non-volatile memory has to be read in entirety, and thus time is required until resumption of the access request acceptance and availability is impeded. According to the invention, a cache directory and cache data are saved to a non-volatile memory during a power outage and the cache directory is copied from the non-volatile memory to a volatile memory, a storage location of the data whose storage location in the cache directory prior to the saving is the volatile memory is changed to the non-volatile memory, and host I/O processing is initiated when electric power is restored in order to address this problem.“

The patent application was filed on June 2, 2014 (14/424,734).

Backup management
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (9,697,090) developed by Naganuma, Yuki, and Taguchi, Yuichi, Tokyo, Japan, for a “backup management system and backup management method.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The backup management system includes a storage device that retains a location management table that stores therein at least one of position specifying information uniquely specifying a location provided by a computer resource in each cloud service and an area specifying information specifying a predetermined area including the location provided without uniquely specifying the location provided, and a processing device configured to perform a process of receiving a designation related to a computer resource as a backup target and a backup requirement, from a user of the cloud service, and a process of specifying as a backup destination a computer resource that has a position relation with the computer resource as the backup target satisfying the backup requirement, based on a designation from the user and at least one of the position specifying information and the area specifying information.“

The patent application was filed on November 7, 2014 (14/535,711).

Disaster recovery virtualization
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (9,697,082) developed by Nakajima, Akio, and Deguchi, Akira, Santa Clara, CA, for a “method and apparatus of disaster recovery virtualization.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods described herein involve a virtual storage utilized to virtualize the storage of storage systems across multiple sites. The virtual storage is associated with a virtual multipath control. The virtual multipath control manages the virtual path state of the inter-physical storage, the remote copy volume state which has primary volume or secondary volume state, and the volume copy operation mode such as synchronous copy mode journal copy mode, or bitmap resync mode. The virtual multipath control of the virtual storage facilitates choices from the host for a preferred site, path, state, and volume by utilizing a virtual multipath state from a get virtual multipath information command.“

The patent application was filed on March 14, 2013 (14/443,341).

Storage system
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has been assigned a patent (9,696,922) developed by Okada, Naoya, Nonaka, Yusuke, Araki, Akihiko, Kudo, Shintaro, and Mizuno, Makio, Tokyo, Japan, for a “storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage controller has a processor, a volatile first cache memory that is coupled to the processor and that temporarily stores data, a nonvolatile second cache memory that is coupled to a microprocessor and that temporarily stores data, and a battery that is configured to supply electrical power to at least the processor and the first cache memory when a power stoppage has occurred. The second cache memory includes a dirty data area for storing dirty data, which is data that is not stored in the storage device, and a remaining area other than the dirty data area. When a power stoppage has occurred, the processor stores as target data in the remaining area of the second cache memory either all or a part of the data stored in the first cache memory.“

The patent application was filed on December 24, 2013 (14/762,039).