Compellent (Dell) Assigned Patent

Compellent Technologies, Eden Prairie, MN, has been assigned a patent (8,555,108) developed by four co-inventors for a “virtual disk drive system and method.”

The co-inventors are Philip E. Soran, Edina, 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 May 10, 2011 (13/104,299).