Pure Storage Assigned Seven Patents

Preventing duplicate entries of identical data in storage device
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,594,678) developed by Karr, Ronald S., Palo Alto, CA, and Miller, Ethan L., Santa Cruz, CA, for a “preventing duplicate entries of identical data in a storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Preventing duplicate entries of identical data in a storage device, including: receiving a write request to write data to the storage device, calculating one or more signatures for the data associated with the write request, determining whether any of the calculated signatures match a calculated signature contained in a recently read signature buffer, each entry in the recently read signature buffer associating a calculated signature for data that has been read with an address of a storage location within the storage device where the data is stored, and responsive to determining that one of the calculated signatures matches a calculated signature contained in the recently read signature buffer, determining whether the data associated with the calculated signature is a duplicate of data stored at a particular address that is associated with the calculated signature contained in the recently read signature buffer.“

The patent application was filed on May 27, 2015 (14/722,249).

Adaptive RAID for SSD environment
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,594,633) developed by Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, Hayes, John, Hong, Bo, Mountain View, CA, and Miller, Ethan, Santa Cruz, CA, for a “adaptive raid for an SSD environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for adaptive RAID geometries. A computer system comprises client computers and data storage arrays coupled to one another via a network. A data storage array utilizes solid-state drives and Flash memory cells for data storage. A storage controller within a data storage array is configured to determine a first RAID layout for use in storing data, and write a first RAID stripe to the device group according to the first RAID layout. In response to detecting a first condition, the controller is configured to determine a second RAID layout which is different from the first RAID layout, and write a second RAID stripe to the device group according to the second layout, whereby the device group concurrently stores data according to both the first RAID layout and the second RAID layout.“

The patent application was filed on May 21, 2014 (14/283,628).

Attributing consumed storage capacity among entities storing data in storage array
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,594,512) developed by Cao, Jianting, Mountain View, CA, Harriman, Martin, Aptos, CA, Hayes, John, Mountain View, CA, and Sandvig, Cary, Palo Alto, CA, for a “attributing consumed storage capacity among entities storing data in a storage array.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Attributing consumed storage capacity among entities storing data in a storage array includes: identifying a data object stored in the storage array and shared by a plurality of entities, where the data object occupies an amount of storage capacity of the storage array, and attributing to each entity a fractional portion of the amount of storage capacity occupied by the data object.“

The patent application was filed on June 19, 2015 (14/745,342).

Deduplication of volume regions
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,589,008) developed by Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, Miller, Ethan, Santa Cruz, CA, Hayes, John, Mountain View, CA, Sandvig, Cary, Palo Alto, CA, Golden, Christopher, and Cao, Jianting, Mountain View, CA, for a “deduplication of volume regions.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for performing coarse-grained deduplication of volume regions. A storage controller detects that a first region of a first volume is identical to a second region of a second volume, wherein the first volume points to a first medium and the second volume points to a second medium. In response to detecting the identical regions, the storage controller stores an indication that the first range of the first medium underlies the second range of the second medium. Also in response to detecting the identical regions, the mappings associated with the second range of the second medium are invalidated.“

The patent application was filed on October 4, 2013 (14/046,876).

Drive rebuild
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,588,842) developed by Sanvido, Marco, Belmont, CA, Hankins, Richard, San Jose, CA, Neelakantam, Naveen, Mountain View, CA, Wang, Xiaohui, Sunnyvale, CA, McAuliffe, Mark, East Palo Alto, CA, and Vohra, Taher, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “drive rebuild.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for efficiently distributing data among multiple storage devices. A data storage array receives read and write requests from multiple client computers. The data storage array includes multiple storage devices, each with multiple allocation units, (AUs). A storage controller within the data storage array determines a RAID layout for use in storing data. In response to determining a failure of a first AU, the storage controller begins reconstructing in a second AU the data stored in the first AU. For read and write requests targeting data in the first AU, the request is serviced by the first AU responsive to determining no error occurs when accessing the first AU.“

The patent application was filed on December 11, 2014 (14/567,960).

Scheduling of reactive I/O operations in storage environment
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,588,699) developed by Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, Hayes, John, Hong, Bo, Mountain View, CA, Wang, Feng, Sunnyvale, CA, Miller, Ethan, Santa Cruz, CA, and Harmer, Craig, San Francisco, CA, for a “scheduling of reactive I/O operations in a storage environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for effectively scheduling read and write operations among a plurality of solid-state storage devices. A computer system comprises client computers and data storage arrays coupled to one another via a network. A data storage array utilizes solid-state drives and Flash memory cells for data storage. A storage controller within a data storage array comprises an I/O scheduler. The characteristics of corresponding storage devices are used to schedule I/O requests to the storage devices in order to maintain relatively consistent response times at predicted times. Should a device exhibit an unscheduled behavior which may be indicative of the device being in an unknown state, the scheduler may schedule one or more reactive operations on the device configured to cause the device to enter a known state.“

The patent application was filed on January 22, 2016 (15/004,500).

Dynamically managing control information in storage device
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,588,691) developed by Seppanen, Eric D., Mountain View, CA, for a “dynamically managing control information in a storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Dynamically managing control information in a storage device, including: querying, by an array management module executing on a storage array controller, the storage device for a location of control information for the storage device, the control information describing the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage device, and issuing, by the array management module in dependence upon the location of the control information for the storage device, a request to retrieve the control information for the storage device.“

The patent application was filed on June 10, 2015 (14/736,240).