NetApp Assigned Thirteen Patents

Non-disruptive planned failover from primary copy of data at primary storage system to mirror copy of data at cross-site secondary storage system

NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11550679) developed by Kaushik, Akhil, Vijayan, Anoop, Karnataka, India, and Khandelwal, Omprakash, Bangalore, India, for “methods and systems for a non-disruptive planned failover from a primary copy of data at a primary storage system to a mirror copy of the data at a cross-site secondary storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods are described for a non-disruptive planned failover from a primary copy of data at a primary storage system to a mirror copy of the data at a cross-site secondary storage system. According to an example, a planned failover feature of a multi-site distributed storage system provides an order of operations such that a primary copy of a first data center continues to serve I/O operations until a mirror copy of a second data center is ready. This planned failover feature improves functionality and efficiency of the distributed storage system by providing non-disruptiveness during planned failover—even if various failures occur. The planned failover feature also includes a persistent fence to avoid serving I/O operations during a timing window when both primary data storage and secondary data storage are attempting to have a master role to serve I/O operations and this avoids a split-brain situation.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-03-31 (17/219812).

Synchronization cache seeding
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11550819) developed by Mu, Yuedong, San Jose, CA, Ngan, Ching-Yuk Paul, Redwood , CA, and Sundararajan, Manoj V., Sunnyvale, CA, for a “synchronization cache seeding.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Synchronization metadata is read from non-volatile storage. The synchronization metadata comprises indications of one or more synchronization targets. A synchronization target is a node of a clustered storage system. A synchronization cache is populated with the synchronization metadata. After populating the synchronization cache with at least a portion of the synchronization metadata, a connection to a network is established. After the connection to the network is established, a connection to a first of the one or more synchronization targets is established.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-11-13 (16/682007).

Write invalidation of remote location cache entry in networked storage
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11544011) developed by Makam, Sumith, Thapliyal, Rahul, R, Kartik, Bangalore, India, Chuggani, Roopesh, Jaipur, India, Lnu, Abhisar, Gautam Buddha Nagar, India, and S, Maria Josephine Priyanka, Chennai, India, for a “write invalidation of a remote location cache entry in 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: receiving, by a first storage node, a request to modify data stored using a logical storage object presented by the first storage node, the first storage node communicating with a second storage node configured as a failover partner of the first storage node, transmitting, by the first storage node, an invalidation request to the second storage node to invalidate an entry in a storage location cache of the second storage node, the entry indicating a storage location where data is stored by the first storage node, before modification, and responding, by the first storage node, to the request after modifying the data and upon receiving a response from the second storage node indicating successful invalidation of the entry.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-07-28 (17/387792).

Forwarding operations to bypass persistent memory
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11544007) developed by Subramanian, Ananthan, San Ramon, CA, Curtis-Maury, Matthew Fontaine, Devadas, Vinay, Apex, NC, and Vipperla, Bulli Venkata Rajesh, Morrisville, NC, for “forwarding operations to bypass persistent memory.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are provided for forwarding operations to bypass persistent memory. A modify operation, targeting an object, may be received at a persistent memory tier of a node. If a forwarding policy indicates that forwarding is not enabled for the modify operation and the target object, then the modify operation is executed through a persistent memory file system. If the forwarding policy indicates that forwarding is enabled for the modify operation and the target object, then the modify operation is forwarded to a file system tier as a forwarded operation for execution through a storage file system.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-03-30 (17/216869).

Resending missing network data packets
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11546238) developed by Xu, Houze, Lexington, MA, and Qi, Yuepeng, Raleigh, NC, for “methods and systems for resending missing network data packets.”

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 splitting, by a first node, a payload into a plurality of data packets, each data packet having a portion of the payload indicated by an offset value indicating a position of each portion within the payload, transmitting, by the first node, the plurality of data packets to a second node using a network connection for a transaction, each data packet including a header generated by the first node having the offset value and a payload size, receiving, by the first node, a message from the second node indicating an offset value of a missing payload of a missing data packet from among the plurality of data packets, and resending, by the first node, the missing data packet and any other data packet whose offset value occurs after the offset value of the missing payload.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-11-24 (17/456471).

Servicing of network software components of nodes of cluster storage
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11546337) developed by Le, Nam, Los Gatos, CA, Mu, Paul Yuedong, San Jose, CA, Boyles, John Russell, Cranberry Township, PA, Hoffman, John Eric, Pittsburgh, PA, for “servicing of network software components of nodes of a cluster storage systems.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Described herein are method and apparatus for servicing software components of nodes of a cluster storage system. During data-access sessions with clients, client IDs and file handles for accessing files are produced and stored to clients and stored (as session data) to each node. A serviced node is taken offline, whereby network connections to clients are disconnected. Each disconnected client is configured to retain its client ID and file handles and attempt reconnections. Session data of the serviced node is made available to a partner node (by transferring session data to the partner node). After clients have reconnected to the partner node, the clients may use the retained client IDs and file handles to continue a data-access session with the partner node since the partner node has access to the session data of the serviced node and thus will recognize and accept the retained client ID and file handles.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-06-21 (16/448063).

Data backup technique for backing up data to object storage service
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11544151) developed by Hetrick, William, Eastborough, KS, Hahn, Dennis James, Wichita, KS, and Winkler, Russell, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “data backup technique for backing up data to an object storage service.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system, method, and computer program product for a block-based backing up a storage device to an object storage service is provided. This includes the generation of a data object that encapsulates a data of a data extent. The data extent covers a block address range of the storage device. The data object is d with a base that represents a logical block address (LBA) of the data extent. The base is appended with an identifier that deterministically identifies a recovery point that the data object is associated with. The base combined with the identifier represents a data object for the data object. The d data object is then transmitted to the object storage service for backup of the data extent. At an initial backup, the full storage device is copied. In incremental backups afterwards, only those data extents that changed are backed up.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-08-20 (17/408018).

QOS settings of volumes in distributed storage
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11546420) developed by Cady, Tyler, Denver, CO, for “quality of service (QOS) settings of volumes in a distributed storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system, method, and machine-readable storage medium for providing a set of recommended quality of service (QoS) settings are provided. In some embodiments, providing the recommendation includes receiving a set of QoS settings of a volume for a client, a set of measured QoS metrics of the volume for the client, and a measure of load for a slice service corresponding to the volume. Providing the recommendation further includes determining a predicted QoS metric of the volume and a predicted load of the slice service. Providing the recommendation also includes determining, based on the predicted QoS metric, the predicted load, and the set of QoS settings, a set of recommended QoS settings to the client. The set of QoS settings of the volume for the client is then updated with the set of recommended QoS settings.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-02-24 (16/799602).

Elastic, ephemeral in-line deduplication service
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11537573) developed by Ghanbari, Saeed, New Haven, CT, Benight, Barry Patrick, San Jose, CA, Kenchammana-Hosekote, Deepak Raghu, Mountain View, CA, and Chaitanya, Shiva, Watertown, MA, for “elastic, ephemeral in-line deduplication service.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A deduplication service can be provided to a storage domain from a services framework that expands and contracts to both meet service demand and to conform to resource management of a compute domain. The deduplication service maintains a fingerprint database and reference count data in compute domain resources, but persists these into the storage domain for use in the case of a failure or interruption of the deduplication service in the compute domain. The deduplication service responds to service requests from the storage domain with indications of paths in a user space and whether or not a piece of data had a fingerprint match in the fingerprint database. The indication of a match guides the storage domain to either store the piece of data into the storage backend or to reference another piece of data. The deduplication service uses the fingerprints to define paths for corresponding pieces of data.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-03-03 (16/807636).

Synchronous object placement for information lifecycle management
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11531642) developed by Mahony, Robin, Seiler, Oliver, Edwards, Blake, Avram, Vladimir, Kent, Gregory, and Zhao, Chong, Vancouver, Canada, for a “synchronous object placement for information lifecycle management.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A distributed storage system may synchronously apply an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) policy to objects at ingest. In one embodiment of synchronous ILM, three options are available for a user: balanced, strict, and dual commit. Dual commit refers to the behavior where one will always create two replicated copies in the same site and then apply ILM asynchronously. Strict refers to the behavior where the storage system attempts to apply the ILM policy synchronously on ingest, and if the storage system cannot the ingest of the object will fail. This ensures that the storage system can guarantee that ILM has been applied to recently ingested objects. Balanced refers to the behavior where the storage system attempts to apply ILM synchronously, but if the storage system cannot the storage system may fall-back to dual-commit.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-11-07 (16/677565).

Shared storage model for high availability within cloud environments
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11522808) developed by Busick, Christopher, Shrewsbury, MA, Rajaraman, Rajesh, Acton, MA, and Silva, James, Bedford, MA, for a “shared storage model for high availability within cloud environments.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are provided for a high availability solution (e.g., a network attached storage (NAS) solution) with address preservation during switchover. A first virtual machine is deployed into a first domain and a second virtual machine is deployed into a second domain of a computing environment. The first and second virtual machines are configured as a node pair for providing clients with access to data stored within an aggregate comprising one or more storage structures within shared storage of the computing environment. A load balancer is utilized to manage logical interfaces used by clients to access the virtual machines. During switchover, the load balancer preserves an IP address used to mount and access a data share of the aggregate used by a client.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-10-21 (16/658648).

Hierarchical consistency group for storage and associated methods
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11520490) developed by Kalman, Dean Alan, and Natarajan, Srikumar, Cary, NC, for “hierarchical consistency group for storage and associated methods thereof.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems for using a hierarchical consistency group (CG) in a storage system are provided. A parent CG is associated with at least a first child CG having a plurality of storage volumes. An atomic application programming interface (API) provisions the parent CG and the first child CG by allocating storage and storing policies for the parent CG and the first CG. A storage service selected from a backup service, a replication service and a cloning service for the parent CG and the first CG is executed based on the stored policies.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-03-31 (17/218520).

Techniques for dynamically allocating resources in storage cluster
NetApp, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11516148) developed by Miller, Evan, Sunnyvale, CA, for “techniques for dynamically allocating resources in a storage cluster system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Various embodiments are directed to techniques for dynamically adjusting a maximum rate of throughput for accessing data stored within a volume of storage space of a storage cluster system based on the amount of that data that is stored within that volume. An apparatus includes an access component to monitor an amount of client data stored within a volume defined within a storage device coupled to a first node, and to perform a data access command received from a client device via a network to alter the client data stored within the volume, and a policy component to limit a rate of throughput at which at least the client data within the volume is exchanged as part of performance of the data access command to a maximum rate of throughput, and to calculate the maximum rate of throughput based on the stored amount.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-07-12 (17/372728).