Amazon Assigned Seventeen Patents

Storage volume compression
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,824,374) developed by Gasser, Timothy David, Seattle, WA, for “system and method for storage volume compression.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Intelligent compression of data storage volumes in a service provider system. For example, in one embodiment of a computer-implemented method, attachment metrics are compiled for block storage volumes coupled to a storage server. The attachment metrics may include temporal data related to block storage volume detachments and attachments in relation to a plurality of compute instances, and prioritizing compression of the block storage volumes based on the attachment metrics, and compressing the block storage volumes in accordance with the prioritization.”

The patent application was filed on June 25, 2018 (16/017,871).

Managing access of multiple executing programs to non-local block storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,824,343) developed by Paterson-Jones, Roland, DeSantis, Peter N., Jorgensen, Atle Normann, Cape Town, South Africa, Garman, Matthew S., and Certain, Tate Andrew, Seattle, WA, for “managing access of multiple executing programs to non-local block data storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques are described for managing access of executing programs to non-local block data storage. In some situations, a block data storage service uses multiple server storage systems to reliably store network-accessible block data storage volumes that may be used by programs executing on other physical computing systems. A group of multiple server block data storage systems that store block data volumes may in some situations be co-located at a data center, and programs that use volumes stored there may execute on other physical computing systems at that data center. If a program using a volume becomes unavailable, another program (e.g., another copy of the same program) may in some situations obtain access to and continue to use the same volume, such as in an automatic manner in some such situations.”

The patent application was filed on November 29, 2016 (15/364,104).

Network-accessible volume creation and leasing
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,327) developed by Vashishtha, Rohit, Seattle, WA, and Lin, Jerry, Palo Alto, CA, for “network-accessible volume creation and leasing.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data volume can be created on a network-accessible storage device in a data center for use by a virtual machine instance. More specifically, a management system of the data center may request storage servers to allocate space for the data volume. Prior to receiving confirmation that the data volume has been created, the management system may further request the storage servers to establish a lease that authorizes the virtual machine access to the data volume.”

The patent application was filed on June 10, 2019 (16/436,348).

Moving storage volumes for improved performance
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,325) developed by Dhoolam, Surya Prakash, Flaherty, Mitchell Gannon, Greenwood, Christopher Magee, Herndon, Jr., Gary Michael, Karnik, Rahul, and Venugopal, Sriram, Seattle, WA, for “moving storage volumes for improved performance.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Data volumes hosted for customers in a multi-tenant environment can be moved advantageously throughout the environment to improve performance and reduce cost. A data volume can serve I/O for a virtual machine instance, and it can be advantageous for the virtual machine and the data volume to be in the same network locality, or share at least some of the same network state and interconnection. Since there is limited capacity in a network locality, data volumes not attached to virtual machines can be moved to other locations in the environment. This can include moving data volumes to other local network topologies or snapshotting data volumes and writing the snapshots to another storage service. If the data volume is again needed for I/O, the data volume can moved, allocated, or reattached as necessary.”

The patent application was filed on February 19, 2019 (16/279,980).

Command aggregation for storage operations
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,810,157) developed by Paterra, Frank Charles, Kirkland, WA, Neilsen, Eric, Lynnwood, WA, Basarir, Firat, Seattle, WA, and Portnoy, Andrew, Bellevue, WA, for a “command aggregation for data storage operations.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data storage system implements aggregation, bifurcation, and/or reduction techniques to improve the efficiency of processing data storage requests. Data storage requests and/or their associated payloads may be aggregated based on one or more parameters. Data to be stored and the associated commands may be separated so as to optimize a system’s throughput and latency for each. Furthermore, extraneous commands and requests may be reduced or eliminated based on heuristics associated with the requests and the data.”

The patent application was filed on September 28, 2016 (15/279,225).

Masking sensitive information in records of filtered accesses to unstructured
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,803,197) developed by Liao, Ning, Sammamish, WA, Schiefer, Josef, Chawla, Karishma, Zhao, Ruiwen, Banfield, Michael, Seattle, WA, Yuan, Fusheng, Kenmore, WA, and Qu, Kaiwen, Seattle, WA, for “masking sensitive information in records of filtered accesses to unstructured.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Unstructured data items are stored at an object storage service. A filtering requirement to be used to generate a result set for an access request is determined. Using a transformed representation of the filtering requirement, a target set of tokens of the filtering requirement which are to be obfuscated within a log record is identified. A log record that comprises substitute tokens for the target set of tokens is generated and stored.”

The patent application was filed on April 13, 2018 (15/952,793).

Variable data replication for storage implementing quorum-based
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,803,012) developed by Madhavarapu, Pradeep Jnana, Mountain View, CA, Gupta, Anurag Windlass, Atherton, CA, Leshinsky, Yan Valerie, Kirkland, WA, McKelvie, Samuel James, Seattle, WA, and Corey, James McClellan, Bothell, WA, for “variable data replication for storage systems implementing quorum-based.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data store may implement variable data replication and quorum-based durability schemes. Write requests may be maintained in complete views of the data or incomplete views of the data at storage nodes in a quorum set in the data store. Write requests may be received at different storage nodes sufficient to establish a write quorum, and stored in the replicas of the data at the storage nodes where they are received. Storage nodes maintaining incomplete views of the data may determine that each of the storage nodes maintaining a complete view of the data in the quorum set stores certain write requests, and in response, may reclaim storage space for those write requests included in the incomplete views of the data in order to store other data at the storage node.”

The patent application was filed on May 9, 2014 (14/274,368).

Modular mass storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,803,002) developed by Frink, Darin Lee, Lake Tapps, WA, and Ross, Peter George, Olympia, WA, for a “modular mass storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system for storing data includes a rack, one or more data storage modules coupled to the rack, and one or more data control modules coupled to the rack. The data storage modules may include a chassis, two or more backplanes coupled to the chassis, and one or more mass storage devices (for example, hard disk drives) coupled to the backplanes. The data control modules may access the mass storage devices in the data storage modules.”

The patent application was filed on February 1, 2019 (16/265,802).

Master and slave copies of data volume based on sequential operation numbers
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,802,921) developed by Fan, Jianhua, Issaquah, WA, Hawks, Benjamin Arthur, Seattle, WA, Kusters, Norbert Paul, Redmond, WA, Arumugam, Nachiappan, Wei, Danny, Seattle, WA, and Guthrie, John Luther, Bellevue, WA, for “systems and methods including committing a note to master and slave copies of a data volume based on sequential operation numbers.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods for provisioning a slave copy for redundant data storage and for writing data to persistent storage in a block-based storage system using sequential operation numbers are provided. In one embodiment, the method includes maintaining a master copy and a slave copy of a data volume, the master copy including data generated by a plurality of operations having respective sequential operation numbers, receiving a write instruction for second data to be added to the master copy, and recording the second data as a note that is not readable. The method may further include sending a copy of the note from the master copy to the slave copy, committing the note to the master copy with a sequential operation number, and committing the copy of the note to the slave copy based in part on the sequential operation number. A B-tree may be created based at least in part on an offset for a write instruction associated with the second data, a length, and an operation number included in the note.”

The patent application was filed on January 28, 2019 (16/259,571).

Policy-driven multiple storage class representation in versioned storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,802,746) developed by Lazier, Colin Laird, Seattle, WA, Thrane, Leon, Issaquah, WA, and Vass, William J., Bainbridge Island, WA, for a “policy-driven multiple storage class representation in versioned storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for maintaining versioning of data objects as a result of policy-based changes to the data objects are described herein. Metadata associated with a data object is updated as a result of an operation that is specified in a data policy associated with the data object. The metadata associated with the data object is updated based on a version key that is associated with the data object that is an identifier that identifies the data storage object in a plurality of data storage classes.”

The patent application was filed on March 2, 2017 (15/448,384).

Data stream ingestion and persistence techniques
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,795,905) developed by Theimer, Marvin Michael, Bellevue, WA, Ghare, Gaurav D., Seattle, WA, Dunagan, John David, Redmond, WA, Burgess, Gregory M., and Xiong, Ying, Seattle, WA, for “data stream ingestion and persistence techniques.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A programmatic interface is implemented, enabling a client of a stream management service to select a data ingestion policy for a data stream. A client request selecting an at-least-once ingestion policy is received. In accordance with the at-least-once policy, a client may transmit an indication of a data record one or more times to the service until a positive acknowledgement is received. In response to receiving a plurality of transmissions indicating a particular data record, respective positive acknowledgements are sent to the client. Based on a persistence policy selected for the stream, copies of the data record are stored at one or more storage locations in response to one particular transmission of the plurality of transmissions.”

The patent application was filed on December 29, 2017 (15/858,480).

Storage and retrieval of parameters for infrastructure-as-code computing services
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,791,021) developed by Sharma, Anuj Premnarayan, Bellevue, WA, for “storage and retrieval of parameters for infrastructure-as-code computing services.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Technologies are disclosed for storage and retrieval of parameters used in the creation and editing of infrastructure-as-code (IAC) templates. An infrastructure-as-code (IAC) template related to desired resources available in a service provider network for configuring a stack of the desired resources in the service provider network is provided. The IAC template includes an identification of a key-value pair associated with resource definitions related to the desired resources and are stored in a data store. Based upon the identification of the key-value pair, a look-up function is used to call a stateless event driven compute service function to query the data store for the resource definitions. Once the resource definitions are received from the data store, based upon the IAC template and the resource definitions, the stack of the desired resources is configured.”

The patent application was filed on June 9, 2017 (15/619,297).

Providing distributed transaction information storage service
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,789,237) developed by Gupta, Vikas, Cupertino, CA, Vermeulen, Allan H., Singh, Rahul, Krause, Duane J., and Malhotra, Nipoon, Seattle, WA, for “providing a distributed transaction information storage service.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques are described for providing a storage service that stores information about large numbers of transactions in a persistent manner, such as with a high degree of reliability, availability and scalability based at least in part on use of a distributed computing and storage system. In some situations, the transaction information storage service stores various information about transactions that each include at least one monetary payment (e.g., a micro-payment) between financial accounts of two or more of numerous users having accounts with one or more entities. The transaction information storage service may be provided by or otherwise affiliated with a merchant, and customers of the merchant may purchase usage of the storage service for programs executed by or otherwise affiliated with the customers, with the storage service available to remote executing programs via a defined API of the storage service, such as a Web services-based API.”

The patent application was filed on August 9, 2017 (15/673,266).

Managing secure content in content delivery network
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,785,037) developed by Richardson, David R., Abrar, Mustafa I., Johnson, Don, Cormie, John, Marshall, Bradley Eugene, and Cavage, Mark Joseph, Seattle, WA, for “managing secure content in a content delivery network.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system, method, and computer readable medium for managing secure content by CDN service providers are provided. A network storage provider stores one or more resources on behalf of a content provider. A CDN service provider obtains client computing device requests for secure content. Based on processing first signature information, the CDN service provider determines whether the secure content is available to the client computing device. If the CDN service provider does not maintain the requested content, the CDN service provider transmits a request to the network storage provider. Based on second signature information and an identifier associated with the CDN service provider, the network storage provider processes the request based policy information associated with the identifier.”

The patent application was filed on November 19, 2018 (16/195,628).

Robotic device movement optimization in storage library
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,783,931) developed by Mercer-Taylor, Andrew James, Bellevue, WA, for a “robotic device movement optimization in data storage library systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An archival data storage service dispatches a first robotic device of a data storage library to perform a first task that involves moving a first data storage tape from a tape drive to a slot of the data storage library. The service select a second task to be performed by a second robotic device, which can be performed without the first robotic device causing delay of the second task. While the first robotic device is performing the first task, the archival data storage service dispatches the second robotic device to perform the second task.”

The patent application was filed on June 20, 2019 (16/447,843).

Service-based storage synchronization
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,783,120) developed by Brown, Michael F., Belmont, MA, Palmer, Lawrence, Concord, MA, and Kropelin, Adam Daniel, Boston, MA, for a “service-based storage synchronization.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A file synchronization service generates a listing of files stored on a local data volume by executing a plurality of threads corresponding to directories of the data volume. Files to synchronize with a remote data storage service are identified based on comparison of the listed files with cached data indicative of files stored by the remote data storage service. A plurality of file synchronization requests are sent to the remote data storage service, where the plurality of files are sent in an order that is determined at least partly based on a scaling characteristic of the remote data storage service.”

The patent application was filed on November 21, 2018 (16/197,923).

Implementing scalable storage service
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,776,395) developed by Sivasubramanian, Swaminathan, Sammamish, WA, Stefani, Stefano, Buragohain, Chiranjeeb, Issaquah, WA, Blackman, Rande A., Seattle, WA, Rath, Timothy Andrew, Des Moines, WA, Bradford, Raymond S., McAlister, Grant Alexander MacDonald, Seattle, WA, Kulesza, Jakub, Bellevue, WA, Hamilton, James R., Seattle, WA, and Cabrera, Luis Felipe, Bellevue, WA, for “system and method for implementing a scalable data storage service.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system that implements a scalable data storage service may maintain tables in a non-relational data store on behalf of clients. The system may provide a Web services interface through which service requests are received, and an API usable to request that a table be created, deleted, or described, that an item be stored, retrieved, deleted, or its attributes modified, or that a table be queried (or scanned) with filtered items and/or their attributes returned. An asynchronous workflow may be invoked to create or delete a table. Items stored in tables may be partitioned and indexed using a simple or composite primary key. The system may not impose pre-defined limits on table size, and may employ a flexible schema. The service may provide a best-effort or committed throughput model. The system may automatically scale and/or re-partition tables in response to detecting workload changes, node failures, or other conditions or anomalies.”

The patent application was filed on September 3, 2017 (15/694,828).