Red Hat Assigned Twelve Patents

Failure recovery in shared storage operations
Red Hat Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,959,176) developed by Litke, Adam, Bethel Park, PA, Soffer, Nir, and Aravot, Liron, Raanana, Israel, for a “failure recovery in shared storage operations.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for failure recovery in shared storage operations. An example method comprises: acquiring a lock with respect to a storage domain comprising a specified disk image, creating a transaction marker associated with the disk image, creating a component of a new volume associated with the disk image, destroying the transaction marker, and releasing the lock with respect to the storage domain.”

The patent application was filed on February 29, 2016 (15/055,861).

Managing deduplicated data index
Red Hat Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,953,042) developed by Coburn, Jonathan, and Fortson, Michael, Cambridge, MA, for “managing a deduplicated data index.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Among other things, in one aspect, in general, a system for managing data in a data storage system includes a plurality of index nodes each storing a map of entries, each entry of the map including an identifier corresponding to a particular portion of data stored in the data storage system, and metadata indicating a location where the particular portion of data is stored in the data storage system, and one or more supernodes configured to return an identification of an index node that recently submitted a request for a particular identifier associated with at least one of the portions of data.”

The patent application was filed on March 1, 2013 (13/782,836).

Erasing storage block before writing partial data
Red Hat Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,952,984) developed by Patocka, Mikulas, Prague, Czech Republic, for an “erasing a storage block before writing partial data.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A mechanism for managing storage block of a data volume is disclosed. A method includes determining, by a processing device, whether a current data is to be written into an entirety of a storage block of a data volume of an operating system. The method also includes deleting, by the processing device, all of previously written data on the storage block before writing the current data into the storage block in response to determining that the current data is not to be written into the entirety of the storage block. The current data is different from the previously written data.”

The patent application was filed on May 19, 2016 (15/158,964).

Provisioning machines having virtual storage resources
Red Hat Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,952,845) developed by DeHaan, Michael Paul, Morrisville, NC, for “provisioning machines having virtual storage resources.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments relate to systems and methods for provisioning machines having virtual storage resources, such as virtual disks. A provisioning, (or ‘cobbler’) server can interact with a local virtual machine installation client to initiate software provisioning to a set of target machines. Each virtualization profile or virtualized system record can have one or more virtual disks associated with it for installation and storage. The provisioning process can entail, for example, the delivery of an operating system, applications, or other software to the targets. The virtual machine installation client can identify potential locations for virtual disks on the target, such as volume identifiers, media types, and/or file systems. The cobbler server can generate a distribution to the target machine taking the configuration of the virtual disk into account, and install the provisioned software to that storage resource without a need to manually specify storage parameters. Diskless machines can also be provisioned.”

The patent application was filed on August 29, 2008 (12/202,189).

Disk image deletion with failure resistant data erasure
Red Hat Israel, Ltd., Raanana, Israel, has been assigned a patent (9,946,480) developed by Litke, Adam Gerard, Bethel Park, PA, Soffer, Nir, Raanana, Israel, and Aravot, Liron, Ramat Gan, Israel, for a “disk image deletion with failure resistant data erasure.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for disk image deletion with failure resistant data erasure. An example method may comprise: receiving a request to delete a first disk image associated with a data storage portion, associating the data storage portion with a second disk image responsive to receiving the request to delete the first disk image, deleting the first disk image, and initiating a data erasure procedure on the data storage portion.”

The patent application was filed on April 26, 2016 (15/138,515).

Live migration of virtual disks
Red Hat Israel, Ltd., Raanana, Israel, has been assigned a patent (9,940,064) developed by Baron, Ayal, Kiryat Ono, Israel, and Simoncelli, Federico, Fano, Italy, for a “live migration of virtual disks.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Live migration of a virtual disk of a virtual machine between storage devices is described. In accordance with one example, a computer system prepares a first area of a first storage device and a second area of a second storage device for a live snapshot of a virtual disk of a virtual machine. A transaction is then executed that includes storing the live snapshot in the first area of the first storage device, copying the live snapshot to the second area of the second storage device, and mirroring a change to the virtual disk that occurs after the creation of the live snapshot, where the mirroring is via one or more write operations to the live snapshot in the first area and to the copy of the live snapshot in the second area.”

The patent application was filed on January 15, 2016 (14/996,417).

Size adjustable volumes for containers
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,916,110) developed by Walsh, Daniel J., Marlboro, MA, Goyal, Vivek, Westford, MA, and Mahajan, Shishir, Lowell, MA, for “size adjustable volumes for containers.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Implementations of the disclosure provide for size adjustable volumes for containers. A method of the disclosure includes determining, by a processing device of the PaaS system, a size used space in a storage volume with respect to a container associated with an execution of an application. The size is a summation of current usage of disk space for the storage volume by the application. This size of the used space is compared to a threshold size. The threshold size indicates a determined amount of the storage volume allocated to the container. Responsive to the size meeting the threshold size, an increase in the allocated amount of the storage volume associated with the container is regulated by the processing device.”

The patent application was filed on February 23, 2016 (15/051,367).

Lazy persistent storage volume provisioning
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,891,952) developed by Chen, Huamin, Westborough, MA, for a “lazy persistent storage volume provisioning.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems for provisioning persistent storage are disclosed. For example, a new isolated guest and associated persistent storage volume are requested to be created. The isolated guest is based on an image file in an image repository and is associated with metadata. An orchestrator obtains the image file. The orchestrator reserves the persistent storage volume by updating the system resource allocation database based on the metadata. The persistent storage volume is then created in the persistent storage based on the reservation of the persistent storage volume in the system resource allocation database. The orchestrator activates the constructed isolated guest and the isolated guest accesses the persistent storage volume.”

The patent application was filed on May 12, 2017 (15/593,932).

Delayed allocation for data object creation
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,886,449) developed by Van Riel, Henri, Merrimack, NH, for a “delayed allocation for data object creation.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for data storage management technology that optimizes the creation and storage of data objects. An example method may involve: receiving a request to create a data object, storing a first portion of the data object in a first data storage, determining a location in a second data storage in view of a predicted size of the data object and an access unit size of the second data storage, copying, by a processing device, the first portion of the data object from the first data storage to the location in the second data storage, and in response to receiving a second portion of the data object, directly storing the second portion in the second data storage.”

The patent application was filed on February 15, 2017 (15/433,051).

Memory first live snapshot
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,842,032) developed by Blake, Eric, Salt Lake City, UT, for a “memory first live snapshot.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The subject matter of this specification can be implemented in, among other things, a method including receiving a request to create a live snapshot of a state of a virtual machine including a memory and an original disk file. The method further includes copying, by a hypervisor, data from the memory to a storage device to form a memory snapshot. The method further includes pausing the virtual machine and creating a new disk file at a reference point-in-time. The original disk file is a backing file of the new disk file. The method further includes resuming the virtual machine. The virtual machine is to perform disk operations using the new disk file after the reference point-in-time. The method further includes copying the original disk file to a disk snapshot file. The method further includes providing the live snapshot including the disk snapshot file and the memory snapshot.”

The patent application was filed on August 27, 2013 (14/011,572).

Storage block deallocation in virtual environments
Red Hat Israel, Ltd., Raanana, Israel, has been assigned a patent (9,841,985) developed by Baron, Ayal, Kiryat Ono, Israel, for a “storage block deallocation in virtual environments.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method deallocates data blocks in virtual environments with high efficiency. A computer system hosting a virtual machine includes an I/O device driver in the guest operating system of the virtual machine. The I/O device driver intercepts an operation performed by the guest operating system that causes a data block to be deallocated in the virtual machine. The I/O device driver informs a hypervisor of the computer system that the data block is to be deallocated. The hypervisor then instructs the data storage to deallocate the data block for reuse.”

The patent application was filed on April 12, 2011 (13/084,915).

Guest ordering of host file system writes
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC, has been assigned a patent (9,836,402) developed by Riel, Henri Van, Merrimack, NH, for a “guest ordering of host file system writes.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for data storage management technology that enables a guest module of a virtual machine to indicate an order in which a host module should write data from physical memory to a secondary storage. An example method may comprise: identifying, by a processing device executing a host module, a plurality of modifications to physical memory made by a plurality of direct access operations executed by a guest module of a virtual machine, determining, by the host module, an order of the plurality of modifications to physical memory, receiving, by the host module, a synchronization request from the guest module, and responsive to the synchronization request, copying, by the host module, data from the physical memory to a secondary storage in view of the order of the plurality of modifications.”

The patent application was filed on July 22, 2016 (15/216,826).