EMC IP Holding Assigned Thirteen Patents

Fine-grained shared multi-tenant de-duplication
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,380,098) developed by Marelas, Peter, Melbourne, Australia, for a “fine-grained shared multi-tenant de-duplication system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In one example, a method for managing data includes detecting a data stream that is specific to a first user and that includes one or more user objects each having one or more data chunks. Next, the data associated with the first user is salted by associating a user-specific salt with the data chunks of the one or more user objects to form user-specific combinations of the form, (user-specific salt)+(user data chunk)). Finally, an amount of storage capacity consumed by the one or more user objects is determined.”

The patent application was filed on September 30, 2015 (14/870,407).

Statistics management for scale-out storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,379,780) developed by Fomin, Andrey, Vesevolozhsk, Russia, Danilov, Mikhail, Prikhodko, Vladimir, Trusov, Maxim, and Malygin, Mikhail, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a “statistics management for scale-out storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and processes for statistics management in a distributed storage system using a flat cluster architecture. Statistics for managed objects are collected using virtual statistics groups across multiple storage nodes. The systems and processes are compatible with storage systems that utilize microservice architectures.”

The patent application was filed on June 27, 2016 (15/193,145).

Cloud storage write cache management
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,372,560) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Fomin, Andrey, Vesevolozhsk, Russia, Malygin, Mikhail, Prikhodko, Vladimir, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Rakulenko, Alexander, Seattle, WA, and Trusov, Maxim, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for “cloud storage write cache management system and method.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method, computer program product, and computer system for monitoring health of at least one storage device of a cache in a clustered system. A recovery journal may be maintained, wherein the recovery journal may identify whether one or more chunks of data stored in the cache have been dumped from the at least one storage device to persistent storage in the clustered system. A state of the at least one storage device may be determined based upon, at least in part, the health of the at least one storage device. A recovery action may be performed on the one or more chunks of data stored in the at least one storage device based upon, at least in part, the state of the at least one storage device.”

The patent application was filed on March 2, 2017 (15/447,880).

Recovery of nodes
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,372,556) developed by Baruch, Leehod, Rishon Leziyon, Israel, Natanzon, Assaf, Tel Aviv, Israel, Bigman, Ron, Holon, Israel, Shemer, Jehuda, Kfar Saba, Israel, and Lieberman, Amit, Raanana, Israel, for “recovery of nodes.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method, an apparatus and a computer program product of recovering from a failure of a first node within a data storage system by receiving notice from the data storage system that the first node has failed, and restoring the first node based on a heat map of data I/O activity to the first node.”

The patent application was filed on June 30, 2016 (15/197,857).

Parallel file restoration
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,372,553) developed by Yuan, Hsing, Palo Alto, CA, Nellore, Hymanand, Cupertino, CA, Pandian, Ilavarasu, Sunnyvale, CA, Haidry, Moiz, Campbell, CA, and Kodgire, Abhijeet, San Jose, CA, for “parallel file restoration from a serialized storage device using a network data management protocol.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Performing parallel file restoration from a serialized storage device using a network data management protocol is presented herein. A system can comprise a reader, a parser component, and a set of writers. The reader can be configured to copy data from a tape drive to memory buffers as buffered data. The parser component can be configured to determine, within the buffered data, a location of a file header record representing a file that has been stored in the tape drive, and generate, based on the file header record, a header work item for facilitating restoration of the file in a file system. Further, the set of writers can be configured to create, based on the header work item using the buffered data, the file in the file system.”

The patent application was filed on March 30, 2015 (14/673,284).

Determining causes of performance degradation for storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,372,525) developed by Zhao, Junping Frank, Cao, Yu, and Li, Sanping, Beijing, China, for “method and device for determining causes of performance degradation for storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method and apparatus for determining a cause of performance degradation of a storage system. The method comprises: monitoring performance of the storage system according to a predetermined policy, generating a performance degradation event from a result of the monitoring based on system performance baseline, in response to performance degradation event, obtaining information about the performance degradation, and offline analyzing the information to determine the cause of the performance degradation. Compared with the prior art, embodiments of the present disclosure can manage the system performance degradation effectively and continuously to minimize running costs and enable current performance profiling tools in the manner of insertion.”

The patent application was filed on December 16, 2016 (15/381,596).

Managing storage system using first and second communication areas
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,372,384) developed by Liu, Yousheng, Kang, Jamin Jianbin, Xu, Xinlei, Jia, Ruiyong, Gao, Jian, and Yang, Lifeng, Beijing, China, for “method and system for managing storage system using first and second communication areas.“

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 managing a storage system. In one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method for managing a storage system, where the storage system comprises a first controller, a second controller, a first communication area as well as a second communication area. The method comprising: with respect to a storage device in the storage system, in response to the first controller successfully accessing the storage device, writing to the first communication area a first state that indicates a state relationship between the first controller and the storage device, where the first communication area is readable and writable to the first controller and readable to the second controller, reading from the second communication area a second state that indicates a state relationship between the second controller and the storage device, where the second communication area is readable to the first controller and readable and writable to the second controller, and in response to the second state indicating that the second controller successfully accesses the storage device, initializing the storage system. In one embodiment of the present invention, there is further provided a corresponding system and apparatus.”

The patent application was filed on June 22, 2017 (15/630,863).

Fast snap copy
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,366,014) developed by Ruef, Richard, Santa Cruz, CA, for “fast snap copy.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A fast snap is a consistent point-in-time copy or logical copy of a storage object that can be created more quickly than an ordinary snap. In order to generate a fast snap a storage array creates a copy or logical copy of all of the dirty data associated with a source device by copying or logically copying dirty pages cache into a separate record in volatile memory, instantiates an unpopulated snap device that is backed by persistent storage, and generates a mapping between the record and the unpopulated snap device. The mapping includes the information needed to populate the unpopulated snap device with the dirty pages from the record. Once the fast snap has been created it is possible to service IOs to the source device and the fast snap device because the data can be accessed from the record and the cache.”

The patent application was filed on April 20, 2017 (15/492,184).

Content-based deduplicated storage having multilevel data cache
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,366,011) developed by Schneider, Zvi, Tel Aviv, Israel, Alkalay, Amitai, Kadima, Israel, and Natanzon, Assaf, Tel Aviv, Israel, for a “content-based deduplicated storage having multilevel data cache.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods and apparatus for a content-based deduplicated storage system for generating an address to hash,(A2H) value for a control module as data blocks are received and generating, for a data module, hash to physical,(H2P) values corresponding to the A2H values. A first cache can be provided for the control module, where the first cache can comprise an address value, a hash value, and physical location information. A second cache can be provided for the data module, where the second cache can comprise a bucket value, a hash value, and a filter mechanism, where the filter mechanism is configured to determine whether the hash value is present.”

The patent application was filed on May 3, 2018 (15/970,243).

Storage system with selectable cached and cacheless modes of operation
for distributed storage virtualization
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,365,980) developed by Bromling, Steven, Baergen, Joshua, and Shelley, Paul A., Edmonton, CA, for a “storage system with selectable cached and cacheless modes of operation for distributed storage virtualization.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An apparatus in one embodiment comprises a storage system including a plurality of storage nodes each associated with one or more storage devices. The storage system is configured to provide at least one virtual volume distributed over the storage nodes for utilization by a plurality of host devices. The storage nodes are configured to support selection between multiple operating modes for handling input-output operations directed to the distributed virtual volume by the host devices. The multiple operating modes comprise at least a cached mode of operation in which consistency across the storage nodes for the distributed virtual volume when accessed by different ones of the host devices is ensured utilizing a distributed cache coherence protocol implemented by cooperative interaction of cache controllers of respective ones of the storage nodes, and a cacheless mode of operation in which consistency is ensured without utilizing the distributed cache coherence protocol and its associated cache controllers.”

The patent application was filed on October 31, 2017 (15/798,632).

Creating object in object storage subsystem for managing paged metadata
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,365,847) developed by Miloslavsky, Philip, Ashland, MA, Ivester, Matthew David, Cambridge, MA, Shadmon, David, Newton, MA, Held, Jeffrey, Milford, MA, and Chanler, Andrew, Berlin, MA, for “creating an object in an object storage subsystem for managing paged metadata.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage array uses paged metadata. Each storage director has access to a plurality of object storage systems which describe locations of paged metadata in backing storage. Each object storage system includes different types of inodes which describe objects in backing storage. The object storage systems are used to locate and relocate metadata for loading into global memory, and creation and deletion of objects. An object storage system may be selected based on factors including ratio of different inode types, locality of object usage and anticipated object activity level.”

The patent application was filed on September 19, 2014 (14/491,400).

Mapped RAID restripe for improved drive utilization
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,365,845) developed by Foley, Robert P., Clinton, MA, Puhov, Peter, and Tamilarasan, Ashok, Shrewsbury, MA, for “mapped RAID restripe for improved drive utilization.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for managing restriping of data across drives of a data storage system in a mapped-RAID environment. In response to addition of a drive to existing drives of the data storage system, all drive extents of the data storage system are mapped out in an effort to consume as much free space as possible across the drives. Having mapped out the drive extents, how many free extents remain on each drive is determined. If a quantity of free extents on a drive exceeds a predetermined threshold number, then that drive is logically marked as requiring restriping. Restriping of data is then performed for all logically marked drives. Once the restriping of the data is completed, a determination is made as to whether any further restriping of data across the drives of the data storage system is required, taking into account a relative wear and/or utilization of the respective physical drives.”

The patent application was filed on July 27, 2017 (15/661,679).

Techniques for efficiently organizing storage of compressed extents
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,365,828) developed by Armangau, Philippe, Acton, MA, and Bassov, Ivan, Brookline, MA, for “techniques for efficiently organizing storage of compressed extents.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A technique for efficiently storing compressed data of a storage object in a data storage includes, (a) receiving, in a cache buffer, a number, U, of uncompressed blocks of a uniform size, the uncompressed data blocks received in write requests directed to the storage object,(b) compressing the uncompressed blocks of the cache buffer into respective compressed extents, (c) performing an optimization operation including generating a set of distributions of compressed extents among a plurality of containers and searching the set for a distribution having a minimal total amount of storage taken up by its respective plurality of containers, each container having a respective size equal to a respective integer multiple of the uniform size of the uncompressed data blocks, and, (d) storing the compressed extents within a plurality of containers in persistent storage in accordance with the distribution having the minimal total amount of storage taken up by its respective plurality of containers.”

The patent application was filed on April 30, 2018 (15/966,878).