Robin Systems Assigned Four Patents

Snapshot deletion in distributed storage
Robin Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,430,292) developed by Mukku, Jagadish K., Sunnyvale, CA, Venkatesan, Dhanashankar, San Jose, CA, and Patel, Ripulkumar Hemantbhai, Fremont, CA, for a “snapshot deletion in a distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A new snapshot of a storage volume is created by instructing computing nodes to suppress write requests. Once pending write requests from the computing nodes are completed, storage nodes create a new snapshot for the storage volume by allocating a new segment to the new snapshot and finalizes and performs garbage collection with respect to segments allocated to the previous snapshot. The snapshots may be represented by a storage manager in a hierarchy. Deleted snapshots may be flagged as such in the hierarchy and deletion may be implemented only in memory on a storage node, which is then restored from the hierarchy in the event of a crash. A snapshot is removed from the hierarchy when all segments previously are freed by garbage collection. A hybrid storage node may perform both computing and storage services. Data may be written with tags indicating encoding protocols used to encode the data.”

The patent application was filed on December 19, 2017 (15/847,693).

Implementing hybrid storage node in distributed storage
Robin Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,430,110) developed by Mukku, Jagadish K., Sunnyvale, CA, Venkatesan, Dhanashankar, San Jose, CA, and Patel, Ripulkumar Hemantbhai, Fremont, CA, for “implementing a hybrid storage node in a distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A new snapshot of a storage volume is created by instructing computing nodes to suppress write requests. Once pending write requests from the computing nodes are completed, storage nodes create a new snapshot for the storage volume by allocating a new segment to the new snapshot and finalizes and performs garbage collection with respect to segments allocated to the previous snapshot. The snapshots may be represented by a storage manager in a hierarchy. Deleted snapshots may be flagged as such in the hierarchy and deletion may be implemented only in memory on a storage node, which is then restored from the hierarchy in the event of a crash. A hybrid storage node may perform both computing and storage services. An IO module determines whether IOPs reference a locally-mounted storage device or a remote storage device. The IO module issues a library call for local IOPs using a shared memory in kernel space.”

The patent application was filed on December 19, 2017 (15/847,652).

Storage scheme for distributed storage
Robin Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,430,105) developed by Venkatesan, Dhanashankar, and Seetala, Partha Sarathi, San Jose, CA, for a “storage scheme for a distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage scheme allocates portions of a logical volume to storage nodes in excess of the capacity of the storage nodes. Slices of the storage nodes and segments of slices are allocated in response to write requests such that actual allocation on the storage nodes is only in response to usage. Segments are identified with virtual segment identifiers that are retained when segments are moved to a different storage node. Logical volumes may therefore be moved seamlessly to different storage nodes to ensure sufficient storage capacity. Data is written to new locations in segments having space and a block map tracks the last segment to which data for a given address is written. Garbage collection is performed to free segments that contain invalid data, i.e. data for addresses that have been subsequently written to.”

The patent application was filed on September 13, 2017 (15/703,719).

Storage scheme for distributed storage
Robin Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,423,344) developed by Singh, Gurmeet, San Jose, CA, Patel, Ripulkumar Hemantbhai, Fremont, CA, and Seetala, Partha Sarathi, San Jose, CA, for a “storage scheme for a distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system maintains a consistency database that maintains a status, current, down, stale) for copies of logical storage volumes stored on storage nodes. As failures are detected, the consistency database is updated. Copies are synchronized with one another using information in the consistency database. Write operations on a primary node for a slice of a logical storage node are assigned a virtual block address, (VBA) that is mapped to a logical block address, (LBA) within the slice. Consistency of the VBAs of the primary node and that of a secondary node is evaluated and used to detect currency. VBA holes are detected and corresponding write commands resent to maintain currency. Physical segments on the primary node are assigned virtual segment identifiers, (VSID) that are maintained consistent with VSIDs on clone nodes so that they can be used for garbage collection and synchronization.”

The patent application was filed on September 19, 2017 (15/709,269).