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NetApp Assigned Twenty Two Patents

Snapshot metadata arrangement for efficient cloud integrated data management, providing cloud based micro-services, manager election for erasure coding groups, managing service level objectives in networked storage environment managing service level objectives in networked storage environment, federated namespace of heterogeneous storage system namespaces, readable media providing arbitrary sizing of data extents, managing application performance, managing workload throughput in storage system and devices, recovery of erasure coded data, NVRAM loss handling, managing network addresses in clustered storage environment, managing networked storage system resources, extensible and elastic data management services engine external to storage domain, techniques for LIF placement in SAN storage cluster synchronous DR, incremental transfer with unused data block reclamation, real-time analysis for dynamic storage, technique for reducing metadata stored in memory of node, techniques for de-dupe of media content, addressing misaligned holes and writes to end of files while performing quick reconcile operation during synchronous filesystem replication, selectively storing data into allocation areas using streams, network storage management at scale using service level objectives, dynamic update to views of file system backed by object storage

Snapshot metadata arrangement for efficient cloud integrated data management
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,824,589) developed by Jain, Sharad, Santa Clara, CA, Tapaswi, Hrishikesh Ashok, Sunnyvale, CA, Zheng, Ling, Saratoga, CA, Bhat, Onkar, and Kaushik, Akhil, San Jose, CA, for a “snapshot metadata arrangement for efficient cloud integrated data management.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A storage appliance arranges snapshot data and snapshot metadata into different structures, and arranges the snapshot metadata to facilitate efficient snapshot manipulation, which may be for snapshot management or snapshot restore. The storage appliance receives snapshots according to a forever incremental configuration and arranges snapshot metadata into different types of records. The storage appliance stores these records in key-value stores maintained for each defined data collection, e.g., volume). The storage appliance arranges the snapshot metadata into records for inode information, records for directory information, and records that map source descriptors of data blocks to snapshot file descriptors. The storage appliance uses a locally generated snapshot identifier as a key prefix for the records to conform to a sort constrain of the key-value store, which allows the efficiency of the key-value store to be leveraged. The snapshot metadata arrangement facilitates efficient snapshot restore, file restore, and snapshot reclamation.

The patent application was filed on October 28, 2016 (15/338,219).

Providing cloud based micro-services
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,824,462) developed by Pasupathy, Shankar, Milpitas, CA, Abraham, Maneesh, Sunnyvale, CA, and Taylor, Jr., William Earl, Bahama, NC, for “methods and systems for providing cloud based micro-services.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Methods and systems for a networked computing system are provided. One method includes deploying a micro-service associated with data stored by a networked storage system at a storage device, the micro-service deployed as a virtual machine of a cloud-based system having a data store, and an application programming interface (API) for providing analytic information associated with the data and resources of the networked storage system, where the cloud based system is accessible to a client system via a first network connection, processing performance data associated with the micro-service by a first computing system, storing the processed performance data for the micro-service at a storage volume accessible via a second network connection, copying the processed performance data at the data store by a data loader, and providing access to the processed performance data to the client system from the data store via the API and the first network connection.

The patent application was filed on March 19, 2019 (16/358,298).

Manager election for erasure coding groups
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,393) developed by Sangamkar, Dheeraj Raghavender, Vancouver, Canada, Yoon, Song Guen, Coquitlam, Canada, Vairavanathan, Emalayan, and Zhang, Yi, Vancouver, Canada, for a “manager election for erasure coding groups.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: To ensure that there is an elected manager among storage nodes of an erasure coding group, ‘ECG’, an ECG manager, (ECGM) election process is periodically performed among available storage nodes that are configured with the software to perform the services of an ECGM. When a storage node is activated, an ECGM process of the storage node begins executing and is assigned a process identifier (PID). A storage node can utilize a service query framework to identify other available storage nodes and retrieve their ECGM PIDs. The storage node then selects a PID according to a criterion and elects the storage node corresponding to the selected PID to be the acting ECGM. This process is performed periodically, so even if the acting ECGM storage node fails, a new ECGM is eventually selected from the available storage nodes.

The patent application was filed on April 23, 2019 (16/391,842).

Managing service level objectives in networked storage environment
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,348) developed by Dimnaku, Alma, Wellesley, MA, and MacFarland, Jeffrey Scott, Wake Forest, NC, for “methods and systems for managing service level objectives in a networked storage environment.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Methods and systems for a networked storage system are provided. One method includes determining by a processor, a demand pattern for a first workload that is assigned a service level objective, SLO) for using a resource of a networked storage system. The SLO is defined by an allotted performance parameter, and the demand pattern identifies a first duration when a SLO allotment for the first workload is underutilized, and a second duration when the SLO allotment is being utilized. The SLO allotment is dynamically adjusted for the first duration by modifying a parameter associated with the performance parameter, while maintaining the SLO allotment for the second duration. This makes additional performance capacity of the resource available for re-allocation. The additional available performance capacity is dynamically allocated for an identified second workload that needs an increase in SLO allotment for a certain duration and/or for provisioning a new workload.

The patent application was filed on February 14, 2019 (16/275,649).

Federated namespace of heterogeneous storage system namespaces
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,812,313) developed by Bakre, Ajay, Bangalore, India, Krishnamurthy, Dhruva, Cupertino, CA, Muthyala, Kartheek, Hyderabad, India, Sharma, Chhavi, New Delhi, India, and Talwadker, Rukma, Bangalore, India, for a “federated namespace of heterogeneous storage system namespaces.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A system and computer-based method for performing a data transaction in a network storage system is provided. In an embodiment, the method includes receiving, from a client, a first data transaction request including a first data identifier associated with a first namespace protocol, determining a storage system associated with the first data identifier and associated with a second namespace protocol, determining a second data identifier associated with the first data identifier, wherein the second data identifier conforms to the second namespace protocol, and forwarding a second data transaction request including the second data identifier to the storage system based on determining an association between the second data identifier and the first data identifier, wherein the first namespace protocol and the second namespace protocol are different.

The patent application was filed on June 27, 2014 (14/318,460).

Computer readable media providing arbitrary sizing of data extents
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,802,740) developed by Sterns, Randolph, Boulder, CO, Binford, Charles, Delaney, William P., Blount, Joseph, Kaufmann, Reid, and Moore, Joseph, Wichita, KS, for “systems, methods, and computer readable media providing arbitrary sizing of data extents.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A method includes: storing a first data extent on a physical medium, wherein the physical medium is divided into a plurality of storage blocks, wherein each of the storage blocks has a size that is different than a size of the first data extent, further wherein the first data extent is stored to a first block of the plurality of storage blocks, generating a descriptor for the first data extent, wherein the descriptor indicates that the first data extent starts within the first block of the plurality of blocks and indicates an offset from the beginning of the first block at which the first data extent starts, and storing the descriptor within the first block.

The patent application was filed on April 21, 2016 (15/135,161).

Managing application performance
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,798,207) developed by Susarla, Sai Rama Krishna, Bangalore, India, Hubbard, Scott, Delaney, William Patrick, and Dekoning, Rodney A., Wichita, KS, for “system and method for managing application performance.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A system and method for managing application performance includes a storage controller including a memory containing machine readable medium comprising machine executable code having stored thereon instructions for performing a method of managing application performance and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor is configured to execute the machine executable code to receive storage requests from a plurality of first applications via a network interface, manage QoS settings for the storage controller and the first applications, and in response to receiving an accelerate command associated with a second application from the first applications, increase a first share of a storage resource allocated to the second application, decrease unlocked second shares of the storage resource of the first applications, and lock the first share. The storage resource is a request queue or a first cache. In some embodiments, the second application is a throughput application or a latency application.

The patent application was filed on February 13, 2018 (15/895,845).

Managing workload throughput in storage system and devices
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,798,159) developed by Eggert, Lars, Munich, Germany, and Santry, Douglas, Kent, Great Britain, for “methods for managing workload throughput in a storage system and devices thereof.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Methods, non-transitory computer readable media, and computing devices that managing network traffic in a storage system include parse one or more packets received from a client to identify header data, and wherein the parsing comprises identifying when the one or more packets is a read request or a write request. A server is identified based on the parsed one or more packets. One or more rules are modified in the parsed one or more packets to allow data exchange between the client and the identified server. The parsed one or more packets are transmitted with the modified one or more rules to the identified server, wherein data exchange is initiated between the client and the identified server based on the parsed one or more packets with the modified one or more rules.

The patent application was filed on July 26, 2017 (15/659,930).

Recovery of erasure coded data
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,795,789) developed by Vairavanathan, Emalayan, Sangamkar, Dheeraj Raghavender, Vancouver, Canada, Yoon, Song Guen, Coquitlam, Canada, and Zhang, Yi, Vancouver, Canada, for an “efficient recovery of erasure coded data.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: To efficiently recover from a multiple storage node failure, a storage node concurrently restores data fragments to the multiple failed storage nodes, as opposed to restoring each node individually. In the VCS based storage technique, storage nodes are restored as part of an ECG repair process. For each ECG being repaired, a storage node performing the restoration process reads data fragments from active nodes in the ECG and generates new data fragments to replace any lost data fragments. The node then stores one of the new data fragments across each of the failed storage nodes. By concurrently restoring data fragments to each failed storage node, the data fragments needed to repair each ECG are only read once, thereby preserving disk operations and network bandwidth.

The patent application was filed on July 2, 2019 (16/460,404).

NVRAM loss handling
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,789,134) developed by Zheng, Ling, Saratoga, CA, and Kimmel, Jeffrey S., Chapel Hill, NC, for a “NVRAM loss handling.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A technique restores a file system of a storage input/output (I/O) stack to a deterministic point-in-time state in the event of failure (loss) of non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) of a node. The technique enables restoration of the file system to a safepoint stored on storage devices, such solid state drives (SSD), of the node with minimum data and metadata loss. The safepoint is a point-in-time during execution of I/O requests (e.g., write operations) at which data and related metadata of the write operations prior to the point-in-time are safely persisted on SSD such that the metadata relating to an image of the file system on SSD (on-disk) is consistent and complete. Upon reboot after NVRAM loss, the technique identifies (i) the most recent safepoint, as well as (ii) the inflight writes that were persistently stored on disk after the most recent safepoint. The data and metadata of those inflight writes are then deleted to place the on-disk file system to its state at the most recent safepoint.

The patent application was filed on April 15, 2016 (15/130,280).

Managing network addresses in clustered storage environment
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,785,304) developed by Accetta, Michael Joseph, McKees Roacks, PA, Semke, Jeffrey Eric, Allison Park, PA, and Prem, Jeffrey David, Pittsburgh, PA, for “methods and systems for managing network addresses in a clustered storage environment.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Methods and systems are provided for a clustered storage system. The method assigns a network access address to a virtual network interface card (VNIC) at a first cluster node of a clustered storage system, where a physical network interface card assigned to the network access address is managed by a second cluster node of the clustered storage system, and use the VNIC by a virtual storage server at the first cluster node to communicate on behalf of the second cluster node.

The patent application was filed on November 1, 2018 (16/178,436).

Managing networked storage system resources
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,778,771) developed by Sprague, John Jason, Westford, MA, Holden, James Stephen, Concord, MA, Kessel, Omri, Newton, MA, Strunk, John, and Klosterman, Andrew Joseph, Cary, NC, for “methods and systems for managing networked storage system resources.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Methods and systems for a networked storage environment are provided. One method includes mirroring a plurality of requests from a switch and transmitting the mirrored plurality of requests to a remote acquisition unit, extracting application layer protocol data units from assembled transport layer packets, parsing the application layer protocol data units to obtain file system requests, identifying storage volume identifiers from the parsed file system requests that are associated with a greatest number of operations, identifying network addresses for client systems initiating the greatest number of operations for the storage volumes and network addresses of target storage systems managing the storage volumes, and providing a total number of operations for the plurality of requests in a given time, the identified storage volume identifiers, the network addresses of the client systems and the network addresses of the target storage systems to a management console.

The patent application was filed on January 10, 2019 (16/244,416).

Extensible and elastic data management services engine external to storage domain
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,769,212) developed by Kenchammana-Hosekote, Deepak Raghu, Mountain View, CA, Chaitanya, Shiva, Watertown, MA, Ghanbari, Saeed, New Haven, CT, Benight, Barry Patrick, San Jose, CA, and Slik, David Anthony, Northridge, CA, for “extensible and elastic data management services engine external to a storage domain.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A data management services architecture includes architectural components that run in both a storage and compute domains. The architectural components redirect storage requests from the storage domain to the compute domain, manage resources allocated from the compute domain, ensure compliance with a policy that governs resource consumption, deploy program code for data management services, dispatch service requests to deployed services, and monitor deployed services. The architectural components also include a service map to locate program code for data management services, and service instance information for monitoring deployed services and dispatching requests to deployed services. Since deployed services can be stateless or stateful, the services architecture also includes state data for the stateful services, with supporting resources that can expand or contract based on policy and/or service demand. The architectural components also include containers for the deployed services.

The patent application was filed on July 31, 2015 (14/815,470).

Techniques for LIF placement in SAN storage cluster synchronous disaster recovery
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,769,037) developed by Lalsangi, Raj, Cary, NC, Mathew, Pramod John, Natarajan, Subramanian, Bangalore, India, and Rao, Santosh, Sunnyvale, CA, for “techniques for LIF placement in SAN storage cluster synchronous disaster recovery.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Improved techniques for disaster recover within storage area networks are disclosed. Embodiments include replicating a LIF of a primary cluster on a secondary cluster. LIF configuration information is extracted from the primary cluster. A peer node from a secondary cluster is located. One or more ports are located on the located peer node that match a connectivity of the LIF from the primary cluster. One or more ports are identified based upon one or more filtering criteria to generate a candidate port list. A port from the candidate port list is selected based at least upon a load of the port. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

The patent application was filed on March 23, 2018 (15/933,519).

Incremental transfer with unused data block reclamation
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,769,024) developed by Subramanian, Ananthan, San Ramon, CA, Svarcas, Rimas, Sunnyvale, CA, Kesavan, Ram, San Francisco, CA, Simharajan, Srishylam, Cranberry Township, PA, and Destefano, John Frederick, Newark, CA, for an “incremental transfer with unused data block reclamation.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for incremental transfer with unused data block reclamation. For example, source volume of a source storage filer may have a physical replication relationship with a destination volume of a destination storage filer. Snapshots of a file system of the source volume may be used to identify new data blocks, (e.g., data blocks allocated or reallocated to a new snapshot) and/or unused data blocks (e.g., data blocks of a deleted snapshot) used to incrementally update the destination volume so that the destination volume is a mirrored replication of the source volume. In this way, new data blocks may be updated and unused data blocks may be punched out (e.g., deallocated) of the destination volume during execution of an incremental update.

The patent application was filed on September 22, 2015 (14/861,310).

Real-time analysis for dynamic storage
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,768,817) developed by Kesavan, Sachithananthan, Karnataka, India, Nagarajan, Rajesh, and Allu, Nandakumar Ravindranath, Tamil Nadu, India, for a “real-time analysis for dynamic storage.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for dynamically provisioning logical storage pools of storage devices for applications. For example, a logical storage pool, of one or more storage devices, may be constructed based upon a service level agreement for an application (e.g., an acceptable latency, an expected throughput, etc.). Real-time performance statistics of the logical storage pool may be collected and evaluated against the service level agreement to determine whether a storage device does not satisfy the service level agreement. For example, a latency of a storage device within the logical storage pool may increase overtime as log files and/or other data of the application increase. Accordingly, a new logical storage pool may be automatically and dynamically defined and provisioned for the application to replace the logical storage pool. The new logical storage pool may comprise storage devices expected to satisfy the storage level agreement.

The patent application was filed on June 22, 2018 (16/015,928).

Technique for reducing metadata stored in memory of node
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,762,070) developed by Swaminathan, Manish, Fremont, CA, Patel, Dhaval, Sunnyvale, CA, McClanahan, Edward D., Danville, CA, and Kimmel, Jeffrey S., Chapel Hill, NC, for a “technique for reducing metadata stored in a memory of a node.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A technique reduces an amount of metadata stored in a memory of a node in a cluster. An extent store layer of a storage input/output (I/O) stack executing on the node stores key-value pairs in a plurality of data structures, e.g., cuckoo hash tables, resident in the memory. The cuckoo hash table embodies metadata that describes an extent and, as such, may be organized to associate a location on disk with a value that identifies the location on disk. The value may be embodied as a locator that includes a reference count used to support deduplication functionality of the extent store layer with respect to the extent. The reference count is divided into two portions: a delta count portion stored in memory for each slot of the hash table and an overflow count portion stored on disk in a header of each extent. One bit of the delta count portion is reserved as an overflow bit that indicates whether the in-memory reference count has overflowed. Another bit of the delta count portion is reserved as a sign bit that indicates whether the value of the remaining delta count portion, which stores the ‘delta’ of the reference count, is positive or negative. Overflow updates to the overflow count portion on disk are postponed until all of the bits of the delta count portion are consumed as negative/positive transitions.

The patent application was filed on February 13, 2018 (15/895,593).

Techniques for deduplication of media content
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,761,944) developed by Wilson, Michael G., San Jose, CA, and Storer, Mark W., Walnut Creek, CA, for “techniques for deduplication of media content.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Examples are disclosed for identifying duplicated media content in a plurality of media files. In some examples, according to a media file format, media content sequences may be located and duplicated media content sequences identified. For these examples, at least a portion of the identified duplicated media content sequences may then be deleted or not stored at a storage system. Other examples are described and claimed.

The patent application was filed on February 11, 2014 (14/177,298).

Method to address misaligned holes and writes to end of files while performing quick reconcile operation during synchronous filesystem replication
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,761,768) developed by Kaushik, Akhil, Vijayan, Anoop Chakkalakkal, Bangalore, India, Narasingarayanapeta, Krishna Murthy Chandraiah setty, Karnataka, India, and Sengar, Shrey, Jharkhand, India, for a “method to address misaligned holes and writes to end of files while performing quick reconcile operation during synchronous filesystem replication.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Techniques are provided for handling misaligned holes and writes beyond end of files during a quick reconciliation process. During quick reconciliation, a read operation is performed to read data from a first storage object and is replicated to a second storage object. If the data read from the first storage object comprises misaligned holes, then a different range of data is read from the first storage object so that aligned holes are read and replicated to the second storage object. If the read operation targets a region beyond an end of the first storage object, then the second storage object is truncated to a size of the first storage object.

The patent application was filed on February 28, 2019 (16/288,506).

Selectively storing data into allocation areas using streams
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,761,750) developed by Dronamraju, Ravikanth, Pleasanton, CA, Sterling, Kyle Diggs, San Francisco, CA, Bhattacharjee, Mrinal K., Karnataka, India, and Gupta, Mohit, San Jose, CA, for “selectively storing data into allocation areas using streams.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Techniques are provided for selectively storing data into allocation areas using streams. A set of allocation areas (e.g., ranges of block numbers such as virtual block numbers) are defined for a storage device. Data having particular characteristics (e.g., user data, metadata, hot data, cold data, randomly accessed data, sequentially accessed data, etc.) will be sent to the storage device for selective storage in corresponding allocation areas. For example, when a file system receives a write stream of hot data, the hot data may be assigned to a stream. The stream will be tagged using a stream identifier that is used as an indicator to the storage device to process data of the stream using an allocation area defined for hot data. In this way, data having different characteristics will be stored/confined within particular allocation areas of the storage device to reduce fragmentation and write amplification.

The patent application was filed on March 9, 2017 (15/453,949).

Network storage management at scale using service level objectives
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,747,620) developed by Voruganti, Kaladhar, Kleiman, Steven Robert, Holl, II, James Hartwell, Soundararajan, Gokul, Sunnyvale, CA, Kamila, Shailaja, Bangalore, India, and Mohan, Subramaniam, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “network storage management at scale using service level objectives.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: Technology is disclosed for managing network storage services by service level objectives (SLOs). The method receives multiple service level capability (SLC) templates, creates at least one storage service level (SSL) instance using at least one of the SLC templates, provisions a storage object located in a network storage infrastructure based on the SSL instance, and services storage requests using the storage object.

The patent application was filed on July 22, 2014 (14/338,157).

Dynamic update to views of file system backed by object storage
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,740,302) developed by Slik, David, Northridge, CA, Altman, Tym, and Ciapponi, Adam F., Vancouver, Canada, for a “dynamic update to views of a file system backed by object storage.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A system can apply file placement rules to dynamically place files and directories within file system views backed by objects in an object storage system. After detection of an update to a first file system view that causes an update of an object in a storage grid, an object manager begins evaluation of file placement rules against metadata of the object. For each file placement rule that is triggered, the object manager determines identifies gateways that export the first file system view. The object manager then instructs the gateways to update their representations of the first file system view. The disclosed embodiments may be able to scale to managing hundreds of billions of files spanning thousands of file system views, especially in the presence of disconnected operation.

The patent application was filed on May 25, 2016 (15/164,465).

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