Cisco Technology Assigned Two Patents

Complete autozoning in fibre channel SANs
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,297,009) developed by Tummala, Venu Gopal, Karnataka, India, Bharadwaj, Harsha, Varghese, Sunil John, Bangalore, India, and Menon, Pramod, Karnataka, India, for a “complete autozoning in fibre channel SANs.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An initiator emulator is implemented on a control plane of a switch fabric connected to target ports of a storage array having storage configured with logical partitions. After an initiator port of a server logs into the switch fabric and is blocked from discovering the target ports, the initiator emulator, acting as proxy for the initiator port, discovers information that indicates logical partition masking enforced at the target ports for the initiator port. The initiator emulator determines allowed (initiator (I), target (T)) (I, T) port combinations that should be allowed access via the switch fabric based on the information from the discovery. The initiator emulator configures the switch fabric with one or more zones based on the allowed (I, T) port combinations. The initiator emulator then sends to the initiator port an indication of a zone change to the switch fabric.”

The patent application was filed on April 3, 2020 (16/839,486).

Use of virtual lanes to solve credit stall on target ports in FC SAN
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,297,006) developed by Bharadwaj, Harsha, Bangalore, India, for “use of virtual lanes to solve credit stall on target ports in FC SAN.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method is performed at a switch fabric that communicates with a storage array target port. The method includes sending frames to the target port responsive to receiving buffer-to-buffer (B2B) credits that indicate a receive buffer at the target port is available for the frames. The method further includes, in response to detecting a credit stall at the target port, operating in a virtual lane mode. The operating in the virtual lane mode includes: determining whether a frame destined for the target port is a command frame or a data frame, based on the determining, marking the frame to indicate that the frame is destined for a particular virtual lane among virtual lanes of the receive buffer, and receiving from the target port a per-virtual lane B2B credit that indicates the particular virtual lane is available and, in responsive, sending the frame to that virtual lane on the target port.”

The patent application was filed on June 3, 2020 (16/891,321).