NetApp Assigned Twenty-Three Patents

Managing quality of service in networked storage environment
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,944,679) developed by Kalman, Dean Alan, Scott, John Alexander, and Sundaram, Sudha, Cary, NC, for “methods and systems for managing quality of service 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 assigning a quality of service (QOS) parameter for a storage volume of a networked storage environment having a first storage node and a second storage node, where the QOS parameter is defined by a throughput value that defines a maximum data transfer rate and a number of input/output (I/O) operations executed within a time period (IOPS) distributing the QOS parameter between the first storage node and the second storage node, determining that throughput credit is available for processing an I/O request for using the storage volume, determining that IOPS credit is available for processing the request by the first storage node, and processing the I/O request when both the throughput credit and the IOPS credit is available.”

The patent application was filed on April 19, 2019 (16/389,155).

Cloud object data layout
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,942,813) developed by Pandit, Atul Ramesh, San Jose, CA, Eisler, Michael R., Colorado Springs, CO, Shekhar, Sisir, Bihar, India, and Deshmukh, Vijay Mohan, Fremont, CA, for a “cloud object data layout (CODL).“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An enterprise may use file level and block level storage for operational access to reap the performance benefits, and use object storage for back-up storage and scale out. Data of objects and objects themselves can be organized to allow for efficient storage management operations, including storage snapshot operations and deduplication operations. A root file container can be represented in object storage with a metadata object (file container object) and child file container can be represented in object storage with a metadata object (file group object). Each file can be represented in object storage with a metadata object that indicates the data units of the file depending upon the storage technology hosting the file (e.g., a file data block in file level storage). The data units of the file can be represented in object storage as elements of a data object.”

The patent application was filed on October 30, 2015 (14/929,091).

Selectively compressing data and devices
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,938,938) developed by Kumar, Sudhir, Sunnyvale, CA, for “methods for selectively compressing data 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 assists with selectively compressing data includes identifying data stream characteristics in a received data stream from a client. A data processing operation to perform on the received data stream is determined based on stored compression instructions data obtained using the identified one or more characteristics. The determined data processing operation is performed on the received data stream. The received data stream is performed upon performing the determined data processing operation.”

The patent application was filed on April 23, 2019 (16/392,394).

Accelerating storage media access and devices
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,936,540) developed by Mattankot, Nikhil, Cupertino, CA, V. R., Bharadwaj, San Jose, CA, Katiyar, Manish, Fremont, CA, Kulkarni, Aditya, San Jose, CA, Ting, Daniel, Palo Alto, CA, and Pathan, Asif, Sunnyvale, CA, for “methods for accelerating storage media access 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 accelerate data access requests. With this technology, a hierarchy of a plurality of objects is inserted into a location database. Each of at least a subset of the plurality of objects comprises a physical storage location for data stored in a filesystem. One or more of the plurality of objects includes an object version number and a parent version number of a parent one of the plurality of objects. A determination is made when an invalidation event has occurred in the filesystem. The invalidation event is associated with one of the plurality of objects. The object version number for the one of the plurality of objects is modified to invalidate one or more of the subset of the objects, when the determining indicates that the invalidation event has occurred in the filesystem.”

The patent application was filed on March 14, 2018 (15/921,260).

Object storage backed file
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,929,419) developed by Beard, Derek William, Austin, TX, Sirton, Guy, Delta, CA, Hayes, Garret Lance, and Preston, Jason Dillard, Austin, TX, for an “object storage backed file system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”To leverage the attributes of object storage for applications/systems created to interface with a network files system, an object storage backed file system can accept the defined file system commands from the applications/systems and transform the file system commands into requests that target object storage. The file system is ‘backed’ by object storage because attributes and content of file system entities are stored in objects. For instance, content data and metadata of a file are stored in objects in object storage. This object storage backed file system can be considered a bridge between a client perceived hierarchical file system namespace and a flat namespace of an object storage.”

The patent application was filed on September 25, 2015 (14/866,793).

Iterative object scanning for information lifecycle management
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,929,341) developed by Sirton, Guy, Delta, CA, Seiler, Oliver Erik, New Westminster, CA, Mahony, Robin Scott, and Avram, Vladimir Radu, Vancouver, Canada, for an “iterative object scanning for information lifecycle management.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”To effectively implement ILM policies and account for unreliability in a geographically distributed large-scale storage system, ‘scanners’ and ‘ILM rules appliers’ can be deployed on nodes throughout the storage system for large scale ILM implementation. Each scanner is programmed to deterministically self-assign a region of object namespace and scan that region of object namespace. To ‘scan’ a region, a scanner accesses metadata of each object that has an identifier within the scanner’s region and inserts the object metadata into one of a set of queues for ILM evaluation. An ILM rules applier dequeues object metadata for evaluation against ILM rules and determines whether an ILM task is to be performed for ILM rule compliance.”

The patent application was filed on April 28, 2017 (15/582,423).

Space reservation for distributed storage
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,929,043) developed by Altman, Tymoteusz, Zhang, Yi, Sangamkar, Dheeraj Raghavender, and Vairavanathan, Emalayan, Vancouver, Canada, for a “space reservation for distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques are described for reserving space on a destination node or volume for increasing the likelihood of a successful data transfer in a distributed storage environment. A reservation may be retried at one or more destinations if the reservation fails at a first destination. In some embodiments, the data-transfer process can be paused or terminated prior to data being transferred to one or more destinations if a reservation fails. Reserving space on a destination node or volume can increase the likelihood of a successful data transfer, which can increase the likelihood of efficient resources usage in a storage system.”

The patent application was filed on July 8, 2019 (16/505,339).

Space savings reporting for storage supporting snapshot and clones
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,929,022) developed by Goel, Atul, Foster City, CA, Zheng, Ling, Saratoga, CA, and Purohit, Prahlad, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “space savings reporting for storage system supporting snapshot and clones.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A technique efficiently determines accurate storage space savings reported to a host coupled to a reference-counted storage system that employs de-duplication and compression, wherein the storage space savings relate to snapshots and/or clones supported by the storage system. The snapshot/clone may be represented as an independent volume, and embodied as a respective read-only copy, snapshot) or read-write copy, clone) of a parent volume. Metadata is illustratively organized as one or more multi-level dense trees, wherein each level of each dense tree includes volume metadata entries for storing the metadata. The metadata is illustratively embodied as mappings from LBAs of a LUN to extent keys. Space adjustment counters, such as clone space adjustment (CSA) and diverged space adjustment (DSA) counters, may be employed when determining the storage space savings. The CSA counter is equal to the sum of mapped storage space across all levels of a dense tree. The DSA counter for the clone and for the snapshot equals the total mapped storage space in the level. The storage space savings may be determined by computing a value equal to the addition of the CSA counter to the total amount of data and metadata written to the LUN minus the DSA counters and, thereafter, dividing the value by the total amount of de-duplicated and compressed data for the LUN that is physically stored.”

The patent application was filed on April 25, 2016 (15/137,542).

Handling storage element failures to reduce storage device failure rates
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,915,405) developed by Emami, Tim K., San Jose, CA, Binford, Charles, Wichita, KS, and Gupta, Ratnesh, Alameda, CA, for “methods for handling storage element failures to reduce storage device failure rates 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 determine when a storage element of a data storage device has failed. Address(es) mapped to the failed storage element are identified, when the determining indicates that the storage element has failed. Data corresponding to the address(es) is regenerated according to a data loss protection and recovery scheme (e.g., a RAID scheme). The regenerated data is written to other storage element(s) of the data storage device in order to remap the address(es) to the other storage element(s). This technology allows a data storage device (e.g., an SSD) to be repaired in-place following a failure of storage element(s) (e.g., a die) of the data storage device. Advantageously, entire data storage devices do not have to be failed with this technology as a result of a failure of an individual storage element, thereby reducing data storage device failure rates and associated overhead.”

The patent application was filed on May 26, 2017 (15/606,379).

Cloud storage format to enable space reclamation while minimizing data transfer
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,915,246) developed by Andken, Benjamin Bradford, Bellevue, WA, Kyathanahalli, Sumeeth Channaveerappa, Mountain View, CA, and Jain, Sharad, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “cloud storage format to enable space reclamation while minimizing data transfer.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method, non-transitory computer readable medium, and device that assists with managing cloud storage includes identifying a portion of data in a data unit identified for deletion in the metadata. The identified portion of the data identified for delete is compare to a threshold amount. Deletion of the data unit from a first storage object is deferred when the determined portion of data identified for deletion is less than the threshold amount. A second storage object with a portion of data unmarked for deletion in the data unit is generated when the determined portion of data marked for deletion is equal to the threshold amount, wherein the second storage object has a same identifier as the first storage object.”

The patent application was filed on May 14, 2019 (16/411,880).

Storing and distributing metadata among nodes in storage cluster
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,904,339) developed by Mu, Paul Yuedong, Sundararajan, Manoj, and Ngan, Paul, Sunnyvale, CA, for “techniques for storing and distributing metadata among nodes in a storage cluster system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Various embodiments are generally directed to techniques for reducing the time required for a node to take over for a failed node or to boot. An apparatus includes an access component to retrieve a metadata from a storage device coupled to a first D-module of a first node during boot, the metadata generated from a first mutable metadata portion and an immutable metadata portion, and the first metadata specifying a first address of a second D-module of a second node, a replication component to contact the second data storage module at the first address, and a generation component to, in response to failure of the contact, request a second mutable metadata portion from a N-module of the first node and generate a second metadata from the second mutable metadata portion and the immutable metadata portion, the second mutable metadata portion specifying a second address of the second D-module.”

The patent application was filed on January 24, 2020 (16/751,891).

Archive log management for distributed database clusters
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,901,958) developed by Rachapudi, Amarnath, Kathpal, Atish, Bangalore, India, Karinta, Vineeth, Fremont, CA, Nagalingam, Karthikeyan, Morrisville, NC, and Rao, Santosh Ananth, Cupertino, CA, for an “archive log management for distributed database clusters.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods and systems for a distributed database cluster storing a plurality of replicas of a databases are provided. One method includes locating by a processor, a timestamp of a last stored record in a backup copy of the database from a plurality of logical partitions for a point in time restore operation, identifying by the processor, an operation log for each logical partition with the last stored record, the operation log providing transaction details associated with the database, splitting by the processor, the operation log for each logical partition by ignoring transactions that occurred prior to the timestamp of the last stored record, and using by the processor, the split operation log for restoring the database to the point in time.”

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2018 (15/965,127).

Multiple node repair using high rate minimum storage regeneration erasure code
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,901,844) developed by Hussain, Syed Abid, Bangalore, India, and Narayanamurthy, Srinivasan, Chennai, India, for a “multiple node repair using high rate minimum storage regeneration erasure code.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed storage system can use a high rate MSR erasure code to repair multiple nodes when multiple node failures occur. An encoder constructs m r-ary trees to determine the symbol arrays for the parity nodes. These symbol arrays are used to generate the parity data according to parity definitions or parity equations. The m r-ary trees are also used to identify a set of recovery rows across helper nodes for repairing a systematic node. When failed systematic nodes correspond to different ones of the m r-ary trees, a decoder may select additional recovery rows. The decoder selects additional recovery rows when the parity definitions do not provide a sufficient number of independent linear equations to solve the unknown symbols of the failed nodes. The decoder can select recovery rows contiguous to the already identified recovery rows for access efficiency.”

The patent application was filed on October 11, 2019 (16/599,298).

Fabric attached storage
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,895,984) developed by Chadwell, Craig, Labiaga, Ricardo, Sunnyvale, CA, Kenchammana-hosekote, Deepak, San Jose, CA, Krishnan, Swetha, and Soundararajan, Gokul, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “fabric attached storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Technology is described for a profile-based lifecycle management for data storage servers. The technology can receive a profile, monitor events emitted by devices of the data storage system, determine based on the monitored events that a device of the storage system matches the indicated condition, and perform the action corresponding to the indicated condition, wherein the action includes managing data stored by the data storage system. The received profile can indicate a condition and an action corresponding to the condition.”

The patent application was filed on September 20, 2019 (16/577,201).

Prioritizing events associated with resources of networked storage
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,880,377) developed by Ghatak, Kausik, Kamath, Sandeep Vasanth, and Manoj, Bengaluru, India, for “methods and systems for prioritizing events associated with resources of a networked storage system.“

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 utilizing a training dataset for prioritizing a plurality of events associated with a networked storage system using a plurality of resources. Each event is associated with a plurality of parameters, each parameter associated with a severity level determination for each event, and each event is provided an initial priority score based on a time when each event is selected for resolution. The plurality of parameters may include an event source. The method further includes using the training dataset to identify a weight of each parameter by executing an iterative prediction algorithm, determining a priority score of a new event based on the weight of each parameter, updating the training dataset with the priority score of the new event, and adjusting a resource impacted by the new event, based on the priority score of the new event.”

The patent application was filed on April 5, 2019 (16/376,875).

Facilitating efficient storage operations using host-managed SSD
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,872,036) developed by Gole, Abhijeet, Cupertino, CA, for “methods for facilitating efficient storage operations using host-managed solid-state disks and devices thereof.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, non-transitory machine readable media, and computing devices that facilitate efficient storage operations using host-managed solid-state disks (SSDs) are disclosed. With this technology, a direct memory access (DMA) transfer is initiated of a data block from a location indicated in an application write request to a write buffer in a device memory of an SSD. A determination is made when write rule(s) are satisfied based on content of the write buffer including at least the data block and other data block(s) previously transferred to the write buffer. A copy request is issued to transfer a portion of the content to flash media of the SSD, when the write rule(s) are satisfied. This technology does not require host memory for write buffering or processor cycles for copying data from application data buffers to a write buffer in host memory, and thereby significantly improves resource utilization of host devices managing SSDs.”

The patent application was filed on May 31, 2019 (16/428,894).

Optimized variable-size deduplication using two stage content-defined chunking
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,866,928) developed by Lin, Xing, Fremont, CA, and Ni, Fan, Sunnyvale, CA, for “methods for optimized variable-size deduplication using two stage content-defined chunking and devices thereof.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, non-transitory machine readable media, and computing devices that compare a hash value to a predefined value for sliding windows in parallel for segments partitioned from an input data stream. A bit array is parsed according to minimum and maximum chunk sizes to identify chunk boundaries for the input data stream. The bit array is populated based on a result of the comparison and portions of the bit array are parsed in parallel. Unique chunks of the input data stream defined by the chunk boundaries are stored in a storage device. Accordingly, this technology utilizes parallel processing in two stages. In a first stage, rolling window based hashing is performed concurrently to identify potential chunk boundaries. In a second stage, actual chunk boundaries are selected based on minimum and maximum chunk size constraints. This technology advantageously facilitates significant deduplication ratio improvement as well as improved parallel chunking performance.”

The patent application was filed on January 14, 2019 (16/247,014).

Storage area network attached clustered storage
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,862,966) developed by Rao, Santosh Ananth, Santa Clara, CA, Brown, Geoffrey Stewart, Raleigh, NC, Natarajan, Srikumar, Sunnyvale, CA, Patnaik, Pranab, Tan, Kai, Cary, NC, Corbett, Peter Frank, Lexington, MA, and Venkatesan, Vivek, Morrisville, NC, for a “storage area network attached clustered storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage area network (SAN)-attached storage system architecture is disclosed. The storage system provides strongly consistent distributed storage communication protocol semantics, such as SCSI target semantics. The system includes a mechanism for presenting a single distributed logical unit, comprising one or more logical sub-units, as a single logical unit of storage to a host system by associating each of the logical sub-units that make up the single distributed logical unit with a single host visible identifier that corresponds to the single distributed logical unit. The system further includes mechanisms to maintain consistent context information for each of the logical sub-units such that the logical sub-units are not visible to a host system as separate entities from the single distributed logical unit.”

The patent application was filed on November 13, 2018 (16/188,794).

Unordered idempotent logical replication operations
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,860,542) developed by Rao, Leverett, Bruce, Kazar, Michael, Pittsburgh, PA, Driscoll, Alan Stuart, Fremont, CA, Corbett, Peter Frank, Lexington, MA, Shah, Devang K., San Jose, CA, Simharajan, Srishylam, Cranberry Township, PA, and Smith, Toby, Pittsburgh, PA, for “unordered idempotent logical replication operations.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method and apparatus for replicating a data container of a source storage server at the logical level in an unordered stream of individual data units are described. In certain embodiments, the replication operations can be performed without regard to the differences in geometry of physical persistent storage of the source and destination storage servers and without regard to the differences in data container format of the source and destination storage servers. An initial replication operation of the source data container is performed by transferring the data objects within the source data container to a replica data container in the destination storage server as an unordered stream of individual data units while preserving data object identifiers of the source data objects. Afterwards, incremental replication operations can be performed to capture modifications to the source data container over time after the initial replication operation.”

The patent application was filed on May 1, 2017 (15/582,939).

Planning and configuring file system migration
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,860,529) developed by Prinz, III, Alfred G., Ray, III, Fountain L., and Heath, Douglas Tharon, Austin, TX, for “system and method for planning and configuring a file system migration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A migration plan is created that is based at least in part on an operator input. The resources of a destination file system are provisioned based on the migration plan. One or more processes to migrate the source file system for the provisioned resources of the destination file system are then configured based on the migration plan.”

The patent application was filed on August 11, 2014 (14/456,978).

Clustered storage system path quiescence analysis
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,855,791) developed by Vijayan, Gunalan Perumal, Tamil Nadu, India, Dallas, William D., Merrimack, NH, Balachandriah, Sridhar, and Singhal, Bhaskar, Bangalore, India, for a “clustered storage system path quiescence analysis.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A request that indicates a component that can be quiesced is received at a first node. It is determined that quiescence of the component might impact an endpoint. A request for identification of at least one path between a second node and the endpoint is sent to the second node. It is determined, based on a response received from the second node, whether the endpoint will be accessible to the second node if the component is quiesced. In response to a determination that the endpoint will be accessible to the second node if the component is quiesced, a positive analysis outcome is indicated. In response to a determination that the endpoint will not be accessible to the second node if the component is quiesced, a negative analysis outcome is indicated.”

The patent application was filed on November 25, 2014 (14/553,473).

Multi-tenant security in cloud
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,855,688) developed by Sharabi, Dekel, and Nivy, Ofer, Tel-Aviv, Israel, for a “multi-tenant security in the cloud.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A cloud asset manager can securely provide multi-tenant access to remote assets while preserving isolation across tenants. The remote asset manager defines various roles for legitimate users of the remote asset manager. The roles are associated with credentials that provide access to the remote assets and/or information about the remote assets maintained by a service provider. And the users map to roles based on attempted actions that access the service provider. Thus, a user’s requested action is attempted with credentials associated with a role that maps to the requested action.”

The patent application was filed on December 16, 2014 (14/572,443).

Facilitating adaptive quality of service in storage networks
NetApp Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,855,556) developed by Kalman, Dean, and Palani, Ashwin, Cary, NC, for “methods for facilitating adaptive quality of service in storage networks and devices thereof .“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, non-transitory machine readable media, and computing devices that assign a quality of service (QoS) policy to an instantiated storage object. The assigned QoS policy includes a throughput parameter including a number of input/output (I/O) operations per second (IOPS) based on a storage operation block size. Storage operations are executed with the storage object according to the throughput parameter. Metadata is monitored including a size attribute of the storage object. The QoS policy is then automatically modified to adjust the throughput parameter based on the size attribute. This technology configures, manages, and scales performance provided to storage objects based on a monitored used or allocated size of the storage objects. Accordingly, this technology provides more performance for applications as storage object space is increasingly consumed by the applications, thereby improving the functionality and efficiency of storage nodes or controllers that are executing storage operations and managing I/O in storage networks.”

The patent application was filed on November 15, 2018 (16/192,145).