Huawei Technologies Assigned Ten Patents

Network storage, switch, and controller
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,117,140) developed by Tang, Pengcheng, Shanghai, China, Pentikousis, Konstantinos, Berlin, Germany, and Zhou, Wei, Shanghai, China, for a “network storage method, switch device, and controller.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A network storage method, a switch device, and a controller are provided. The method is applicable to a controller based on OpenFlow protocol. The method includes: determining, by the controller, that a first switching equipment is to cache data requested by a first data packet, and notifying, by the controller, the first switching equipment to cache the data requested by the first data packet, and notifying the first switching equipment to establish a first flow table entry according to issued match information corresponding to the first data packet and issued action instruction information corresponding to the first data packet, wherein the action instruction information corresponding to the first data packet is adapted to instruct the first switching equipment to forward the data cached in the first switching equipment and requested by the first data packet.”

The patent application was filed on April 3, 2017 (15/477,917).

Data storage and network interface card
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,116,746) developed by Qian, Feili, Hangzhou, China, for a “data storage method and network interface card.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data storage method and a network interface card, where in this solution, buffered unsolicited data is written, in a direct memory access, (DMA) manner, into storage space that corresponds to a destination address corresponding to the unsolicited data, and a rate of writing data in the DMA manner is higher than a rate of writing data in a copying manner. Therefore, time required in a data storage process is shortened and a storage efficiency is improved. In addition, because a write operation is performed by hardware of the network interface card, consumption of central processing unit, (CPU) resources is reduced, which further reduces impact on processing rates of other application programs.”

The patent application was filed on July 21, 2016 (15/216,477).

Solid state disk and data moving
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,114,578) developed by Li, Yan, Zhou, Meng, and Zhang, Po, Chengdu, China, for a “solid state disk and data moving method.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A solid state disk and a data moving method are disclosed. The SSD includes a storage medium and a control chip, where storage space of the storage medium is divided into at least two blocks for storing data, and the control chip includes: a service processing module sends a moving command to a moving module, and the moving module receives the moving command, read valid data from the source block according to the moving command, and perform ECC checking on the valid data, and write checked data into a blank page of the destination block. The SSD can control movement of data from a source block to a blank page of a destination block, compared with a data moving process in which read and write are separated, a path that data moving passes through is simple and reduce impact of the data moving process on performance of the SSD.”

The patent application was filed on June 24, 2016 (15/192,614).

Data reading
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,114,577) developed by Liu, Hongkuan, Hangzhou, China, Zhong, Laijun, Shenzhen, China, and Tan, Jiang, Hangzhou, China, for “data reading method, device and system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data reading method, a data processing device, and a data processing system are provided. The method, executed by a first control node, includes receiving a reading message forwarded by a data switching device, where the reading message is used to instruct the first control node to read first data, and the reading message is sent by a second control node to the data switching device, if a data status identifier of the first data in a first storage node is a valid identifier, reading the first data from the first storage node, and sending the read first data to the data switching device, so that the data switching device forwards the read first data to the second control node, where the valid identifier indicates that the first data on the first storage node is available. The present application ensures that the latest first data in the node group is read.”

The patent application was filed on September 19, 2017 (15/708,815).

Memory management and controller
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,108,553) developed by Liu, Yao, Chen, Licheng, Cui, Zehan, and Chen, Mingyu, Beijing, China, for “memory management method and device and memory controller.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A memory management method and device are disclosed. The method includes: managing, by a storage management device, a memory, and when determining that a page table does not include a virtual address carried in a fetch request, managing, by the memory management device, the memory. When determining that the virtual address is valid, the memory management device applies for a blank page. The memory management device is located in a memory controller.”

The patent application was filed on January 25, 2017 (15/415,344).

Source storage device sending data to backup storage device
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,108,367) developed by Ouyang, Ji, and Zou, Ye, Chengdu, China, for a “method for a source storage device sending data to a backup storage device for storage, and storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In a backup method, a source storage device sends data to a backup storage device. The source storage device contains a processor and a cache. The processor receives a write data request which includes target data. And then, the processor reads a period ID recorded in a period ID table, wherein the period ID is corresponding to a first period. Next, the processor modifies the write data request by attaching the period ID to the target data and writes the modified write data request into the cache. After a backup task corresponding to the period is triggered, the processor obtains data received during the period corresponding to the period ID and sends the obtained data to the backup storage device.”

The patent application was filed on March 9, 2016 (15/064,890).

Managing storage array
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,095,429) developed by Gong, Tao, Chengdu, China, for “method, apparatus, and controller for managing storage array.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method and a controller for managing a storage array is presented. The storage array is divided into a first subset of storage devices and a second subset of storage devices according to degrees of wear of storage devices, such that a degree of wear of each of storage device in the first subset is greater than or equal to a degree of wear of any storage device in the second subset, and then, to-be-written data are written into the physical storage devices in the first subset. Therefore, service lives of storage devices in the second subset may be extended relatively by shortening service lives of storage devices in the first subset.”

The patent application was filed on July 28, 2017 (15/662,696).

Data storage and phase change memory
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,083,749) developed by Li, Zhen, He, Qiang, Miao, Xiangshui, Wuhan, China, Xu, Ronggang, Zhao, Junfeng, and Wei, Zhulin, Shenzhen, China, for “data storage method and phase change memory.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data storage method applying to a phase change memory and the phase change memory are provided. After obtaining to-be-stored data, the phase change memory, (PCM) generates an erase pulse signal and a write pulse signal according to the to-be-stored data. The to-be-stored data is multi-bit data. The write pulse signal includes at least two contiguous pulses. Intervals between the at least two contiguous pulses are the same. The intervals between the at least two contiguous pulses have a value determined according to the to-be-stored data. The PCM applies the erase pulse signal to a storage unit of the PCM to enable the storage unit to change to a crystalline state. Further, the write pulse signal is applied to the storage unit to enable the storage unit to change to an amorphous state corresponding to a first resistance value, where the amorphous state represents the to-be-stored data.”

The patent application was filed on January 23, 2017 (15/412,795).

Data backup and data restoration
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,082,982) developed by Zhang, Lei, Chengdu, China, for “data backup method and apparatus, data restoration method and apparatus, and server.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data backup method and apparatus, a data restoration method and apparatus, and a server are presented. The backup method includes the following steps of obtaining, by a backup server, an original differential bitmap of a first target volume, obtaining valid data in each fixed-length data block from the first target volume according to the original differential bitmap, saving a bitmap corresponding to a fixed-length data block including the valid data to a fixed-length volume bitmap file of the fixed-length data block according to the original differential bitmap, and saving the valid data in the fixed-length data block to a fixed-length volume file of the fixed-length data block. According to the foregoing solution, only valid data is transmitted, an amount of data transmitted between the production end and the server can be reduced, a transmission speed can be increased, and storage space can be saved.”

The patent application was filed on April 5, 2017 (15/479,696).

Pooling, partitioning, and sharing network storage resources
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China, has been assigned a patent (10,082,972) developed by Gu, Jiongjiong, Min, Xiaoyong, and Wang, Daohui, Shenzhen, China, for “method and system for pooling, partitioning, and sharing network storage resources.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and a system for sharing a storage resource, where storage resources of a hard disk and a storage array are divided into multiple storage partitions and the multiple storage partitions form a shared storage resource pool, a read-write control module is allocated to each storage partition, and global partition information is generated to record a correspondence between each storage partition in the shared storage resource pool and the read-write control module. The embodiments of the present invention implement fast and simple integration of heterogeneous storage resources, and therefore can efficiently use various storage resources, save cost, and avoid a resource waste.”

The patent application was filed on August 11, 2017 (15/675,226).