VMware Assigned Fourteen Patents

Migrating workloads across host computing systems based on cache content usage characteristics
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,255,188) developed by Manoharan, Manesh Varissery, Govindankutty, Sivaprasad Kundoor, and Jose, Jubish Kulathumkal, Bangalore, India, for “migrating workloads across host computing systems based on cache content usage characteristics.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for migrating workloads across host computing systems in a virtual computing environment are described. In one embodiment, workloads executing on different host computing systems that access identical contents that are stored on storage devices are identified, with the identical contents often being cached in a cache of each of the different host computing systems. Further, migration of one or more of the identified workloads is recommended to consolidate the identified workloads on a single host computing system, thereby allowing the identical contents to be cached within the single host computing system and allowing the identified workloads to access the cached identical contents from the single host computing system after migration in accordance with the recommendation.”

The patent application was filed on April 28, 2014 (14/262,848).

Disk storage allocation for VMs
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,255,005) developed by Li, Xinhui, Beijing, China, Lu, Luke, and Liu, Deng, San Jose, CA, for “systems and methods of disk storage allocation for virtual machines.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method for allocating storage for a virtual machine includes receiving a request to allocate a block of disk storage on a physical disk to a virtual disk associated with the virtual machine. The method also includes identifying a plurality of available blocks on the physical disk, each of the plurality of available blocks defining a radial distance from a center axis of a platter of the physical disk. The method further includes determining which of the plurality of available blocks has a greatest radial distance from the center axis of the platter and, based on the determining, selecting an allocation block from the plurality of available blocks, the allocation block having the greatest radial distance from the center axis of the platter. The method also includes allocating the allocation block to the virtual machine.”

The patent application was filed on December 11, 2017 (15/838,136).

Unified storage/VDI provisioning methodology
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,248,448) developed by Beveridge, Daniel James, Apollo Beach, FL, for an “unified storage/VDI provisioning methodology.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, computer-readable storage medium, and systems described herein facilitate provisioning a virtual desktop infrastructure having virtual shared storage. A provisioning manager receives a desktop pool type and provisions virtual shared storage among a cluster of hosts. The provisioning manager configures the virtual shared storage based on the desktop pool type and provisions at least one virtual machine to each host in the cluster of hosts. The provisioning manager optimizes the virtual shared storage by receiving a storage performance benchmark from each host and performing an optimization on the cluster of hosts if the storage performance benchmark results do not meet a threshold within a pre-defined tolerance.”

The patent application was filed on August 3, 2016 (15/227,052).

Isolating data within computer using private shadow mappings
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,241,819) developed by Chen, Xiaoxin, Cupertino, CA, Waldspurger, Carl A., Palo Alto, CA, and Subrahmanyam, Pratap, Saratoga, CA, for an “isolating data within a computer system using private shadow mappings.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Virtualization software establishes multiple execution environments within a virtual machine, wherein software modules executing in one environment cannot access private memory of another environment. A separate set of shadow memory address mappings is maintained for each execution environment. For example, a separate shadow page table may be maintained for each execution environment. The virtualization software ensures that the shadow address mappings for one execution environment do not map to the physical memory pages that contain the private code or data of another execution environment. When execution switches from one execution environment to another, the virtualization software activates the shadow address mappings for the new execution environment. A similar approach, using separate mappings, may also be used to prevent software modules in one execution environment from accessing the private disk space or other secondary storage of another execution environment.”

The patent application was filed on February 26, 2016 (15/055,468).

Elastic temporary filesystem
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,241,709) developed by Scales, Daniel J., Mountain View, CA, Magdon-Ismail, Tariq, San Jose, CA, Cheveresan, Razvan, Palo Alto, CA, Nelson, Michael, Alamo, CA, and McDougall, Richard, Menlo Park, CA, for an “elastic temporary filesystem.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An elastic filesystem for temporary data provides storage space for virtual machines, (VMs) in a distributed computing system. The filesystem redirects accesses to virtual disks in VMs to a common pool file. The system provides performance and storage efficiency at least on par with local, direct attached virtual disks, while providing a single pool of shared storage that is provisioned and managed independently of the VMs. The system provides storage isolation between VMs storing temporary data in that shared pool. Also, storage space for temporary data may be allocated on demand and reclaimed when no longer needed, thereby supporting a wide variety of temporary space requirements for different Hadoop jobs.”

The patent application was filed on October 17, 2014 (14/517,301).

Allocate logical disk costs to VMs in virtual data center
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,235,473) developed by Chagalakondu, Gurusreekanth, Saha, Mrityunjoy, Gaurav, Kumar, Gautam, Ajay, Chandrashekar, Shrisha, and Kumar Pannem, Hemanth, Bangalore, India, for “methods and systems to allocate logical disk costs to virtual machines in a virtual data center.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods and systems allocate storage costs to virtual machines,(VMs) in a virtual data center. Methods calculate a datastore-base rate based on datastore utilized-storage capacity in each LD and each LD-base rate when the datastore utilized-storage capacity and each LD-base rate are available. Datastore total cost is calculated by multiplying the datastore-base rate by the datastore utilized-storage capacity. Methods also use graph based methods to calculate datastore-base rates when the datastore utilized-storage capacity is unknown for each LD. The datastore-base rate associated with each datastore may then be used to calculate a VM storage cost of each VM hosted by a datastore.”

The patent application was filed on February 19, 2016 (15/047,656).

Hash-based file
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,235,373) developed by Shantharam, Srinivasa, Krishnamurthy, Pradeep, Bangalore, India, Desai, Asit, Palo Alto, CA, Aithal, Prasanna, Bangalore, India, Branstetter, Bryan, Jangam, Prasad Rao, Palo Alto, CA, Hiregoudar, Mahesh S, Pichai, Raghavan, and Patidar, Vivek, Bangalore, India, for a “hash-based file system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”System and method for executing a file system operation for a computer system utilize a computed hash value of a file system object to access a hash block of a file system directory stored in a storage system to locate a hash slot corresponding to the computed hash value. Using at least one of a hash pointer in the hash slot and an allocation block of the file system directory, a dirent slot in a dirent block of the file system directory is located to perform an operational task on the particular dirent slot to execute the file system operation.”

The patent application was filed on June 23, 2017 (15/630,983).

Host-based deduplication using array generated data tags
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,223,371) developed by Thirumal, Thiruvengada Govindan, Bangalore, India, for a “host-based deduplication using array generated data tags.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems include a host computer detecting a request to utilize data stored at a storage address in an external storage device. The host computer, in response to the detected request, transmits a request to the storage device for a tag that uniquely identifies the data. The tag for the data is received from the storage device. In response to determining that the received tag matches a local mapping of tags stored in the host computer, the host computer utilizes the local mapping of tags to process the detected request.”

The patent application was filed on February 9, 2015 (14/616,759).

Scalable storage space allocation in distributed storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,223,035) developed by Wang, Wenguang, Santa Clara, CA, and Lu, Yunshan, San Jose, CA, for a “scalable storage space allocation in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”System and method for managing storage metadata utilize a metadata data structure containing allocation information of storage blocks of a storage system in which a portion of the metadata data structure that corresponds to a group of the storage blocks can be reserved to a requesting client, which then manages the portion of the metadata data structure using a copy of the portion of the metadata data structure.”

The patent application was filed on August 28, 2015 (14/839,853).

Power management for distributed storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,223,016) developed by Chen, Shi, Xie, Pin, Shanghai, China, and Yin, Ting, Beijing, China, for a “power management for distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Example methods are provided to perform power management for a distributed storage system accessible by a cluster in a virtualized computing environment. The method may comprise determining that a power-off requirement is satisfied for a first host from the cluster. The power-off requirement may be satisfied based on multiple second hosts from the cluster complying with a data placement policy configured for the cluster after the first host is powered off. The method may also comprise based on the data placement policy, placing virtual machine data stored on the first host onto one or more of the multiple second hosts. The method may further comprise migrating one or more virtual machines supported by the first host to one or more of the multiple second hosts, and powering off the first host.”

The patent application was filed on May 10, 2016 (15/150,774).

Multi-tenant production and test deployments of Hadoop
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,216,758) developed by Gummaraju, Jayanth, San Francisco, CA, Lu, Yunshan, San Jose, CA, and Cheveresan, Razvan, Palo Alto, CA, for “multi-tenant production and test deployments of Hadoop.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed computing application is described that provides a highly elastic and multi-tenant platform for Hadoop applications and other workloads running in a virtualized environment. Production, test, and development deployments of a Hadoop application may be executed using multiple compute clusters and a shared instance of a distributed filesystem, or in other cases, multiple instances of the distributed filesystem. Data nodes executing as virtual machines, (VMs) for test and development deployments can be linked clones of data nodes executing as VMs for a production deployment to reduce duplicated data and provide a shared storage space.”

The patent application was filed on October 24, 2013 (14/062,723).

Swap file defragmentation in hypervisor
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,216,536) developed by Banerjee, Ishan, Santa Clara, CA, Agarwal, Preeti, San Jose, CA, and Chiang, Jui-Hao, Mountain View, CA, for a “swap file defragmentation in a hypervisor.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Memory data for a virtual machine can be stored in a swap file, which is comprised of storage blocks. A defragmentation procedure can be performed on a thin swap file while the virtual machine is still running. The described defragmentation procedure traversing a page frame space of the virtual machine, identifying candidate page frames, relocating the swapped page, and updating the page frame. Resulting unused storage blocks are released to the storage system. A data structure for aiding the defragmentation process is also described.”

The patent application was filed on March 11, 2016 (15/067,856).

Fault tolerant application storage volumes
for ensuring application availability and preventing data loss using forking techniques
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,210,061) developed by Hegdal, Gururaja, Sankar, Prasanna, and M. S., Marichetty, Bengaluru, India, for a “fault tolerant application storage volumes for ensuring application availability and preventing data loss using forking techniques.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A fault tolerant system is described for deploying an application contained in an application storage volume, which may be a virtual disk, on a virtual machine, (VM) in a remote desktop environment. The application can be executed on the VM after mounting the virtual disk. A backup of the virtual disk is produced by cloning the virtual disk to a different storage device than the location of the primary virtual disk. In some embodiments, if the primary virtual disk fails during execution of the application, the application is suspended, redirected to the backup virtual disk, and resumed from the backup virtual disk. In other embodiments, if the primary virtual disk fails during execution of the application, a child process is spun off from the parent process using forking techniques, the child process is directed to the backup virtual disk, and the application is resumed from the backup virtual disk.”

The patent application was filed on March 20, 2017 (15/462,932).

Synchronizing replicas with media errors in distributed storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,198,312) developed by Xiang, Enning, San Jose, CA, Knauft, Eric, San Francisco, CA, Renauld, Pascal, Palo Alto, CA, and Li, Xin, Fremont, CA, for “synchronizing replicas with media errors in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and techniques are described for transferring data. A described technique includes receiving a request to transmit a data block from a first data storage device to a second data storage device. An attempt to read the data block from the first data storage device is made. A media error resulting from the attempt to read the data block from the first data storage device is detected. In response to detecting the media error, a new data block is generated and includes mismatched checksum data that causes a checksum mismatched error when the new data block is accessed. The new data block is transmitted for storage at the second data storage device in place of the data block.”

The patent application was filed on April 2, 2018 (15/943,293).