Compellent (Dell) Assigned Two Patents

Virtual disk drive system
Compellent Technologies Inc., Eden Prairie, MN, has been assigned a patent (8,473,776) developed by four co-inventors for a "virtual disk drive system and method."

The co-inventors are Philip E. Soran, Eden Prairie, MN, John P. Guider, North Oaks, MN, Lawrence E. Aszmann, Prior Lake, MN, and Michael J. Klemm, Minnetonka, MN

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A disk drive system and method capable of dynamically allocating data is provided. The disk drive system may include a RAID subsystem having a pool of storage, for example a page pool of storage that maintains a free list of RAIDs, or a matrix of disk storage blocks that maintain a null list of RAIDs, and a disk manager having at least one disk storage system controller. The RAID subsystem and disk manager dynamically allocate data across the pool of storage and a plurality of disk drives based on RAID-to-disk mapping. The RAID subsystem and disk manager determine whether additional disk drives are required, and a notification is sent if the additional disk drives are required. Dynamic data allocation and data progression allow a user to acquire a disk drive later in time when it is needed. Dynamic data allocation also allows efficient storage of snapshots/point-in-time copies of virtual volume pool of storage, instant data replay and data instant fusion for backup, recovery etc., remote storage, and data progression, etc."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 6, 2010 (12/960,657).

SSD storage system
Compellent Technologies Inc., Eden Prairie, MN, has been assigned a patent (8,468,292) developed by Lawrence E. Aszmann, Prior Lake, MN, Michael J. Klemm, Minnetonka, MN, and Michael H. Pittelko, Chaska, MN, for a "solid state drive storage system and method."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "The present disclosure relates to a storage system and method that includes at least two solid state devices that can be classified in at least two different efficiency levels, wherein data progression is used to allocate data to the most cost-appropriate device according to the nature of the data."

The patent application was filed on July 13, 2009 (12/501,907).