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VMware Assigned Thirteen Patents

Maintaining storage profile consistency in cluster having local and shared storage, transparent virtualization of cloud storage, ensuring storage availability for VMs, VM recovery on non-shared storage, storage policy-based automation of protection for DR, scalable distributed storage architecture, storing checkpoint file in high performance storage device, power management for distributed storage, surfacing host-side storage capacity to virtual machines, incremental backups using retired snapshots, runtime emulating static thread local storage of portable executable software code, active/passive asynchronous replicated storage for live migration, dynamic content disk

Maintaining storage profile consistency in cluster having local and shared storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,830,349) developed by Cota-Robles, Erik, Kirkland, WA, Nema, Kanika, Pune, India, and Jensen, Thorbjoern Donbaek, Hoejbjerg, Danemark, for a “maintaining storage profile consistency in a cluster having local and shared storage.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A per device state is introduced that indicates whether a storage device is shared clusterwide or not. The state may be populated by default based on detected device locality. Devices detected as local and those shared by only a subset of host machines in a cluster of machines may have the state set to ‘FALSE.’ Devices which are shared by all the machines in a cluster may have the state set to ‘TRUE.’ Locality of storage devices in a cluster may be modified using such state information. Operations upon other storage device state may be modified depending upon device sharing state.

The patent application was filed on October 31, 2014 (14/530,430).

Transparent virtualization of cloud storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,830,271) developed by Phelan, Thomas A., San Francisco, CA, Cota-Robles, Erik, Mountain View, CA, Barry, David William, Kensington, CA, and Back, Adam, Sliema, MT, for a “transparent virtualization of cloud storage.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments present a virtual disk image to applications such as virtual machines, (VMs) executing on a computing device. The virtual disk image corresponds to one or more subparts of binary large objects, (blobs) of data stored by a cloud service, and is implemented in a log structured format. Grains of the virtual disk image are cached by the computing device. The computing device caches only a subset of the grains and performs write operations without blocking the applications to reduce storage latency perceived by the applications. Some embodiments enable the applications that lack enterprise class storage to benefit from enterprise class cloud storage services.

The patent application was filed on July 25, 2012 (13/557,650).

Ensuring storage availability for virtual machines
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,823,881) developed by Hegdal, Gururaja, Kasala, Kiran, and M. S., Marichetty, Bangalore, India, for an “ensuring storage availability for virtual machines .

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A management server allocates storage for a virtual disk of a virtual machine configured to execute on a first host computer, where the first host computer is associated with a plurality of data storage devices including first and second data storage devices, and where a first portion of storage is allocated to the virtual disk from the first storage device. The management server receives a request to allocate a second portion of storage to the virtual disk of the virtual machine and, responsive to determining that the first data storage device has insufficient free storage space from which to allocate the second portion of storage, selects the second data storage device having sufficient free storage space from which to allocate the second portion of storage. The management server allocates the second portion of storage for the virtual disk of the virtual machine from the second data storage device, wherein the virtual machine accesses the first and second portions of storage as a single virtual disk.

The patent application was filed on December 23, 2013 (14/139,005).

Virtual machine recovery on non-shared storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,817,734) developed by Ren, Joanne, Cupertino, CA, Farkas, Keith, San Carlos, CA, Zucca, Mike, Palo Alto, CA, and Shah, Parth, Mountain View, CA, for a “virtual machine recovery on non-shared storage in a single virtual infrastructure management instance.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for enabling virtual machine, (VM) recovery on non-shared storage in a single virtual infrastructure management server, (VIMS) instance are provided. In one set of embodiments, a VIMS instance can receive an indication that a VM in a first cluster of the VIMS instance has failed, and can determine whether the VM’s files were being replicated to a storage component of the VIMS instance at the time of the VM’s failure. If the VM’s files were being replicated at the time of the failure, the VIMS instance can search for and identify a cluster of the VIMS instance and a host system within the cluster that, (1) are compatible with the VM, and, (2) have access to the storage component. The VIMS instance can then cause the VM to be restarted on the identified host system of the identified cluster.

The patent application was filed on June 29, 2015 (14/753,817).

Storage policy-based automation of protection for disaster recovery
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,817,722) developed by Gallagher, Ryan David, Sunnyvale, CA, Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, McElhoe, Glenn Bruce, Arlington, MA, Pershin, Aleksey, Fremont, CA, and Piduri, Sudarsan, Campbell, CA, for a “storage policy-based automation of protection for disaster recovery.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include a recovery manager receiving selection of a storage profile to be protected. The storage profile is an abstraction of a set of one or more logical storage devices that are treated as a single entity based upon common storage capabilities. In response to the selection of the storage profile to be protected, a set of virtual datacenter entities associated with the storage profile is added to a disaster recovery plan to automate a failover of the set of virtual datacenter entities from a protection site to a recovery site. The set of one or more virtual datacenter entities includes one or more virtual machines, one or more logical storage devices, or a combination of virtual machines and logical storage devices. The set of virtual datacenter entities is expandable and interchangeable with other virtual datacenter entities.

The patent application was filed on August 29, 2014 (14/473,984).

Scalable distributed storage architecture
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,811,531) developed by Karamanolis, Christos, Los Gatos, and CA, Vasani, Soam, Palo Alto, CA, for a “scalable distributed storage architecture.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are disclosed for providing a file system interface for an object store intended to support simultaneous access to objects stored in the object store by multiple clients. In accordance with one method, an abstraction of a root directory to a hierarchical namespace for the object store is exposed to clients. The object store is backed by a plurality of physical storage devices housed in or directly attached to the plurality of host computers and internally tracks its stored objects using a flat namespace that maps unique identifiers to the stored objects. The creation of top-level objects appearing as subdirectories of the root directory is enabled, wherein each top-level object represents a separate abstraction of a storage device having a separate namespace that can be organized in accordance with any designated file system.

The patent application was filed on August 26, 2013 (14/010,293).

Storing checkpoint file in high performance storage device
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,804,798) developed by Beveridge, Daniel James, Apollo Beach, FL, for a “storing checkpoint file in high performance storage device for rapid virtual machine suspend and resume.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method of enabling ‘fast’ suspend and ‘rapid’ resume of virtual machines, (VMs) employs a cache that is able to perform input/output operations at a faster rate than a storage device provisioned for the VMs. The cache may be local to a computer system that is hosting the VMs or may be shared cache commonly accessible to VMs hosted by different computer systems. The method includes the steps of saving the state of the VM to a checkpoint file stored in the cache and locking the checkpoint file so that data blocks of the checkpoint file are maintained in the cache and are not evicted, and resuming execution of the VM by reading into memory the data blocks of the checkpoint file stored in the cache.

The patent application was filed on February 11, 2013 (13/764,405).

Power management for distributed storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,778,870) developed by Antony, Jinto, Bangalore, India, for a “power management for a distributed storage system accessible by a cluster in a virtualized computing environment.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An example method is provided to perform power management for a distributed storage system accessible by a cluster in a virtualized computing environment. The method may comprise, in response to detecting that a power-off requirement of a host from the cluster is satisfied, retrieving virtual machine data from a first storage resource of the host, storing the virtual machine data on a second storage resource of the host, and powering off one or more components of the host. The second storage resource is configured to be accessible when the one or more components of the host are powered off.

The patent application was filed on June 23, 2015 (14/746,872).

Surfacing host-side storage capacity to virtual machines
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,778,847) developed by Phelan, Thomas A., San Francisco, CA, Rawat, Mayank, Sunnyvale, CA, Madnani, Kiran, Santa Clara, CA, Zhang, Wei, San Jose, CA, Liu, Deng, Mountain View, CA, and Bandarupalli, Sambasiva, Sunnyvale, CA, for “techniques for surfacing host-side storage capacity to virtual machines when performing VM suspend or snapshot operations.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for surfacing host-side flash storage capacity to a plurality of VMs running on a host system are provided. In one embodiment, the host system creates, for each VM in the plurality of VMs, a flash storage space allocation in a flash storage device that is locally attached to the host system. The host system then causes the flash storage space allocation to be readable and writable by the VM as a virtual flash memory device.

The patent application was filed on October 21, 2015 (14/919,379).

Incremental backups using retired snapshots
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,772,907) developed by Christopher, Kevin Scott, Sunnyvale, CA, and Thompson, Trevor John, Los Altos Hills, CA, for an “incremental backups using retired snapshots.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for performing backups to a storage device are provided. For virtual disks of a virtual machine, snapshots are used to backup data periodically to a storage device. A disk virtualization layer ‘retires’ data blocks associated with a snapshot, while retaining a list of block addresses, for comparison in future backup operations. The retired snapshot can be compared against future snapshots to generate incremental backups without occupying storage space with data blocks that have already been copied to another storage device.

The patent application was filed on September 13, 2013 (14/026,789).

Runtime emulating static thread local storage of portable executable software code
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,766,958) 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 May 25, 2016 (15/164,653).

Active/passive asynchronous replicated storage for live migration
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,766,930) 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 an “using active/passive asynchronous replicated storage for live migration.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The disclosure describes performing live migration of objects such as virtual machines, (VMs) from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure changes the storage environment, directly or through a vendor provider, to active/passive synchronous or near synchronous and, during migration, migrates only data which has not already been replicated 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 of active/passive asynchronous.

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2015 (14/752,643).

Dynamic content disk
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA has been assigned a patent (9,766,920) developed by Klee, Christoph, Snoqualmie, WA, and Nijhawan, Aman, Seattle, WA, for a “dynamic content disk.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A dynamic content disk for a virtual computing instance is created as a thinly-provisioned virtual disk having a file system that is synthesized in accordance with a set of applications that are provisioned for a virtual machine, (VM). To limit the allocated size of the dynamic content disk, a filter is attached to the dynamic content disk to intercept input-output operations, (IOs) directed to the dynamic content disk and convert them to IOs directed to an application virtual disk that stores the actual files of the applications that are provisioned for the VM. The application virtual disk may be stored on different back-ends, such as storage area network, (SAN), network file system, virtual SAN, cloud storage, or local storage.

The patent application was filed on August 28, 2015 (14/839,862).

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