Commvault Assigned Eighteen Patents

Dynamic management of expandable cache storage for multiple network shares configured in file server
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11494340) developed by Kilaru, Satish Chandra, Manalapan, NJ, Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Marlboro, NJ, Kumarasamy, Paramasivam, Morganville, NJ, and Katcher, William, Tinton Falls, NJ, for a “dynamic management of expandable cache storage for multiple network shares configured in a file server.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Expandable cache management dynamically manages cache storage for multiple network shares configured in a file server. Once a file is written to a directory or folder on a specially designated network share, such as one that is configured for ‘infinite backup,’ an intermediary pre-backup copy of the file is created in an expandable cache in the file server that hosts the network share. On write operations, cache storage space can be dynamically expanded or freed up by pruning previously backed up data. This advantageously creates flexible storage caches in the file server for each network share, each cache managed independently of other like caches for other network shares on the same file server. On read operations, intermediary file storage in the expandable cache gives client computing devices speedy access to data targeted for backup, which is generally quicker than restoring files from backed up secondary copies.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-06-30 (16/917565).

Search filtered file system using secondary storage, including multi-dimensional indexing and searching of archived files
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11494332) developed by Kumarasamy, Paramasivam, Morganville, NJ, Varadharajan, Prakash, Manalapan, NJ, Attarde, Deepak Raghunath, Marlboro, NJ, Bedadala, Pavan Kumar Reddy, Piscataway, NJ, and Kilaru, Satish Chandra, Manalapan, NJ, for a “search filtered file system using secondary storage, including multi-dimensional indexing and searching of archived files.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for enabling user search of content stored in a file archive include providing a search interface comprising a search rules portion and an action rules portion, receiving a file archive search criterion comprising at least one search rule, and searching the file archive using the search criterion. The techniques also include generating a set of files filtered using the search criterion and performing an action specified in the action rules portion on a file included in the set of files.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-02-25 (17/185064).

Healing failed erasure-coded write attempts in distributed storage system configured with fewer storage nodes than data plus parity fragments
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11487468) developed by Gupta, Suhani, Milpitas, CA, Lakshman, Avinash, Fremont, CA, Vastrad, Anand Vishwanath, Santa Clara, CA, and Lakshman, Srinivas, San Jose, CA, for a “Healing failed erasure-coded write attempts in a distributed data storage system configured with fewer storage nodes than data plus parity fragments.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A distributed data storage system using erasure coding (EC) provides advantages of EC data storage while retaining high resiliency for EC data storage architectures having fewer data storage nodes than the number of EC data-plus-parity fragments. To ameliorate the effects of certain storage node outages or fatal disk failures, incoming data is temporarily replicated so that read and write operations can continue from/to the storage system. The system automatically heals failed EC write attempts in a manner transparent to users and/or applications: when all storage nodes are operational, the distributed data storage system automatically converts the temporarily replicated data to EC storage and reclaims storage space previously used by the temporarily replicated data. Individual hardware failures are healed through migration techniques that reconstruct and re-fragment data blocks according to the governing EC scheme. An illustrative embodiment is a three-node data storage system using EC 4+2.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-06-01 (17/336081).

Monitoring, diagnosing, and repairing management database in storage management system
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11474896) developed by Haridas, Ganesh, Eatontown, NJ, Narasimman, Sundar, Bangalore, India, Suriyanarayanan, Karthik, Tamilnadu, India, A S, Gunassekaran, Palladam, India, and Klose, Michael Frank, San Jose, CA, for “monitoring, diagnosing, and repairing a management database in a data storage management system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A lightweight always-on monitoring, collecting, diagnosing, and correcting utility operates in an enhanced storage manager that manages a data storage managements system. The always-on utility provides a comprehensive and pro-active approach, which is intended to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for after-the-fact diagnostics. The always-on utility also enforces so-called best practices and other heuristics, which include pro-actively activating certain database settings that are not enabled by default, manipulating certain aspects of the database to improve performance, and reporting aspects that are outside best-practice parameters to the trouble report system so that system administrators and/or developers may intervene before a catastrophic failure occurs. In some cases, the best-practice parameters represent heuristics designed by the present inventors to improve the performance and general health of the management database.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-21 (17/076005).

Backing up to virtual tape library
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11474753) developed by Zakharkin, Dmitriy, Monmouth Junction, NJ, and Kumarasamy, Paramasivam, Morganville, NJ, for “systems and methods for backing up to a virtual tape library.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Presented herein are systems and methods for backing up and restoring data from a client computing system to a provider’s virtual tape library using a proxy. The proxy emulates a physical tape library that interfaces with a client’s system and allowing the use of client’s native tape backup commands to initiate the backup data process. The backup data is transferred into files that represent tapes in the proxy and further processed into extents in the provider’s object store. The processed backup data is stored in the local cache in the object store where it is retained for future access. The backup data may also be transferred to long-term storage via a media agent that facilitate movement of the data from the local cache to secondary storage. The present disclosure also provides for creating auxiliary copies of the backed-up data using a second VTL at a second site.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-30 (17/086026).

Identify unprotected virtual machines
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11468005) developed by Pawar, Rahul S., Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Gokhale, Parag, Marlboro, NJ, Deshpande, Sumer Dilip, Ocean, NJ, and Dornemann, Henry Wallace, Eatontown, NJJ, for “systems and methods to identify unprotected virtual machines.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Virtualization sprawl can lead to virtual machines with no designated periodic backup. If the data associated with these unprotected virtual machines is not backed up, it cannot be restored if needed, leading to system failures. A data storage system identifies and protects the unprotected virtual machines. For instance, the system compares a list of virtual machines with a list of computing devices having a designated backup policy in the data storage system and determines which of the virtual machines are unprotected. The system further automatically categorizes the unprotected virtual machines, identifies those unprotected virtual machines that remain uncategorized, and applies a default backup policy to the uncategorized and unprotected virtual machines to provide protected virtual machines.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-07-09 (16/925179).

In-flight data encryption/decryption for distributed storage platform
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11470056) developed by Lakshman, Avinash, Fremont, CA, and Hrishikesh, Swathi, San Jose, CA, for “in-flight data encryption/decryption for a distributed storage platform.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Encryption of data occurs before it is written to the storage platform, decryption occurs after it is read from the storage platform on a computer separate from the storage platform. By encrypting data before it travels over a wide-area network to a storage platform (and by only decrypting that data once it has arrived at an enterprise from the storage platform), we address data security over the network. Application data is encrypted at the virtual disk level before it leaves a controller virtual machine, and is only decrypted at that controller virtual machine after being received from the storage platform. Encryption and decryption of data is compatible with other services of the storage system such as de-duplication. Any number of key management services can be used in a transparent manner.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-08 (17/066316).

Storage and synchronization of metadata in distributed storage
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11468015) developed by Lakshman, Avinash, Fremont, CA, Camargos, Lasaro, Uberlandia, Brazil, and Jain, Deepak, Delhi, India, for “storage and synchronization of metadata in a distributed storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A client machine writes to and reads from a virtual disk on a remote storage platform. Metadata is generated and stored in replicas on different metadata nodes of the storage platform. A modified log-structured merge tree is used to store and compact string-sorted tables of metadata. During file storage and compaction, a consistent file identification scheme is used across all metadata nodes. A fingerprint file is calculated for each SST (metadata) file on disk that includes hash values corresponding to regions of the SST file. To synchronize, the fingerprint files of two SST files are compared, and if any hash values are missing from a fingerprint file then the key-value-timestamp triplets corresponding to these missing hash values are sent to the SST file that is missing them. The SST file is compacted with the missing triplets to create a new version of the SST file. The synchronization is bi-directional.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-07-02 (16/919712).

Migrating content and metadata from backup system
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11467914) developed by Bhagi, Sri Karthik, Morganville, NJ, and Sinha, Prosenjit, San Jose, CA, for “migrating content and metadata from a backup system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method and system for migrating data and metadata from a first backup system to a second backup system via a content staging system is disclosed. The system accesses the backup data from the first backup system and restores it, along with the associated metadata, to a staging system. A metadata file is created at the staging system which comprises of the metadata that is to be migrated to the second backup system. The system then migrates the data from the staging system to the second backup system. The metadata is also migrated to the second backup system in a format such that it can be indexed. As a result, the migrated data can be browsed and searched based on one or more search criteria based on the associated metadata. Other details are provided herein.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-09-29 (17/037294).

On-demand restore of virtual machine data
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11467753) developed by Kilaru, Satish Chandra, Manalapan, NJ, Dornemann, Henry Wallace, Eatontown, NJ, Dasharatha, Sagar Mardur, Bangalore, India, and Nashikkar, Sandeep Prakash, Pune, India, for “on-demand restore of virtual machine data.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An improved information management system is described herein that provides on-demand or live mount access to virtual machine data in a secondary copy format. For example, instead of restoring all of the virtual machine data in the secondary copy format to a virtual disk that is then mounted to a virtual machine, the improved information management system can, in response to request to access virtual machine data in a secondary copy format, create a virtual disk having a universal network component (UNC) path and create a virtual machine configured to access data via the UNC path. Once created and booted, the administrator or user can attempt to access the desired virtual machine data via the virtual machine.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-02-14 (16/792026).

Storage management for protecting cloud-based data including on-demand protection, recovery, and migration of databases-as-a-service and/or serverless database management systems
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11461184) developed by Ramohalli Gopala Rao, Girish, Telagamsetti, Sunil Babu, Eatontown, NJ, Vallabhaneni, Brahmaiah, Marlboro, NJ, and Oshinsky, David Alan, East Brunswick, NJ, for “data storage management system for protecting cloud-based data including on-demand protection, recovery, and migration of databases-as-a-service and/or serverless database management systems.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A streamlined approach enables customers to retain management control over their data in a database-as-a-service (‘DBaaS’) setting, by providing managed backup copies outside cloud service providers’ sphere of control. An illustrative data storage management system provides control over performing backup operations to generate managed backup copies, storing managed backup copies, recovering managed backup copies in whole or in part, migrating managed backup copies, and migrating DBaaS instances. Management control also extends to choices of where to store the managed backup copies, whether on the same cloud computing platform as the source DBaaS, on a different cloud computing platform, and/or in a non-cloud data center.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-12-11 (16/711220).

Lightweight mounting of secondary file system data
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11461016) developed by Kumarasamy, Paramasivam, Morganville, NJ, for “lightweight mounting of a secondary file system data.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data storage system allows a user to search a secondary copy such as a back up, archive, or snapshot and receive an abbreviated version of the secondary copy of the file system as a result of the search. The abbreviated version of the secondary copy of the file system may include metadata such as a listing of secondary copy data that correspond with a search term or other filtering criteria provided by the user. An operating system of the user’s computing device may mount the abbreviated version so that it can be displayed within a view of the file system of the computing device. Once a user selects one or more desired data objects listed in the abbreviated version, the selected actual one or more data objects are retrieved from secondary storage.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-11-18 (16/687312).

Disk usage growth prediction system
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11449253) developed by Dwarampudi, Bheemesh R., Morganville, NJ, Mishra, Vibhor, West Long Branch, NJ, and Bedadala, Pavan Kumar Reddy, Piscataway, NJ, for a “disk usage growth prediction system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Certain embodiments described herein relate to an improved disk usage growth prediction system. In some embodiments, one or more components in an information management system can determine usage status data of a given storage device, perform a validation check on the usage status data using multiple prediction models, compare validation results of the multiple prediction models to identify the best performing prediction model, generate a disk usage growth prediction using the identified prediction model, and adjust the available space of the storage device according to the disk usage growth prediction.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-01-20 (17/153803).

Failover systems and methods for performing backup operations, including heterogeneous indexing and load balancing of backup and indexing resources
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11449394) developed by Bedadala, Pavan Kumar Reddy, Piscataway, NJ, Gokhale, Parag, Marlboro, NJ, Mazur, Pavlo, Tinton Falls, NJ, Varadharajan, Prakash, Morganville, NJ, Varsheny, Ankur, Tinton Falls, NJ, Venugopalsamy, Gopikannan, Sunnyvale, CA, and Dos Reis Mansano, Marcelo, Paraná, Brazil, for “failover systems and methods for performing backup operations, including heterogeneous indexing and load balancing of backup and indexing resources.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Indexing preferences generally associate each data source with a type of indexing technology and/or with an index/catalog and/or with a computing device that hosts the index/catalog for tracking backup data generated from the source data. Indexing preferences govern which index/catalog receives transaction logs for a given storage operation. Thus, indexing destinations are defined granularly and flexibly in reference to the source data. Load balancing without user intervention assures that the various index/catalogs are fairly distributed in the illustrative backup systems by autonomously initiating migration jobs. Criteria for initiating migration jobs are based on past usage and going-forward trends. An illustrative migration job re-associates data sources with a different destination media agent and/or index/catalog, including transferring some or all relevant transaction logs and/or indexing information from the old host to the new host.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-11-15 (16/685326).

File indexing for virtual machine backups in storage management
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11449486) developed by Dornemann, Henry Wallace, Eatontown, NJ, Nagrale, Ajay Venkat, Marlboro, NJ, and Mitkar, Amit, Manalapan, NJ, for a “file indexing for virtual machine backups in a data storage management system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An illustrative file indexing approach enhances what was previously possible with hypervisor-free live browsing of virtual machine (VM) block-level backup copies. Capabilities are described for indexing files discovered in VM block-level backup copies, including file content. The illustrative file indexing functionality activates a live-browse session to discover files present within VM block-level backup copies and indexes file s and directory structures as created by an original source VM, resulting in an illustrative file index. The illustrative file indexing functionality optionally indexes file contents within VM block-level backup copies, resulting in an illustrative content index. The file index and content index are retained in persistent data structure(s) stored apart from the VM block-level backup copies. The indexes are searchable without mounting or live-browsing the VM block-level backup copies. In some embodiments the file index and the content index are consolidated. An enhanced storage manager is also disclosed.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-20 (17/075001).

Unified reconstruction in storage
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11442820) developed by Gokhale, Parag, Marlboro, NJ, for “systems and methods of unified reconstruction in storage systems.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods for reconstructing unified data in an electronic storage network are provided which may include the identification and use of metadata stored centrally within the system. The metadata may be generated by a group of storage operation cells during storage operations within the network. The unified metadata is used to reconstruct data throughout the storage operation cells that may be missing, deleted or corrupt.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-01-23 (16/751004).

Faster browse of secondary copies of block-level data volumes
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11442623) developed by Bhagi, Sri Karthik, Morganville, NJ, and Gutta, Sunil Kumar, Hyderabad, India, for a “faster browse of secondary copies of block-level data volumes.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An information management system is described herein that performs either a pre-processing or a post-processing operation to increase browse and restore speeds when a user attempts to browse for and restore files from a secondary copy of a data volume. For example, the information management system can implement the pre-processing operation by parsing a master file table (MFT) when a secondary copy operation is initiated on the data volume. The information management system can implement the post-processing operation by parsing the MFT after a secondary copy operation is complete. The parsing can occur to identify records of the MFT that include information useful for enabling a user to browse a secondary copy of the data volume. The information management system can then store the secondary copy of these records for use later in constructing an interface for browsing a secondary copy of the data volume.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-05-02 (16/402099).

Optimizing restoration of deduplicated data stored in cloud-based storage resources
Commvault Systems, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ, has been assigned a patent (11442896) developed by Agrawal, Saurabh, Ocean, NJ, and Vijayan, Manoj Kumar, Marlboro, NJ, for “systems and methods for optimizing restoration of deduplicated data stored in cloud-based storage resources.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques disclosed herein are used for restoring deduplicated backup data from cloud-based storage and from multi-node replicated files systems, and they also may be used in more traditional data storage technologies. Pre-restore steps include analysis of deduplication indexes to identify data segments that are stored consecutively on storage media. Reading data in aggregate runs of consecutively stored data segments reduces interactions with storage media that hosts the deduplicated data and speeds up retrieval. Parallel reads from multiple storage devices in multi-node replicated file systems also speed up retrieval. An illustrative enhanced media agent pre-fetches data (stored in deduplicated form) in anticipation of read requests that are expected in the restore operation. The pre-fetched data is temporarily stored locally at the media agent, which is responsible for interfacing with storage media and is further responsible for orchestrating the disclosed techniques within an illustrative data storage management system.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-23 (17/079023).