Amazon Technologies Assigned Twenty Patents

Fast crash recovery for distributed database
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,030,055) developed by Gupta, Anurag Windlass, Atherton, CA, Burchall, Laurion Darrell, Seattle, WA, Madhavarapu, Pradeep Jnana, Mountain View, CA, and Fachan, Neal, Seattle, WA, for a “fast crash recovery for distributed database systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed database system may implement fast crash recovery. Upon recovery from a database head node failure, a connection with one or more storage nodes of a distributed storage system storing data for a database implemented by the database head node may be established. Upon establishment of the connection with the storage nodes, that database may be made available for access, such as for various access requests. In various embodiments, redo log records may not be replayed in order to provide access to the database. In at least some embodiments, the storage nodes may provide a current state of data stored for the database in response to requests.”

The patent application was filed on March 7, 2014 (Appl. No.14/201,505).

Sub-block modifications for block-level snapshots
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,029,851) developed by Kumar, Sandeep, Agrawal, Shobha, Sammamish, WA, Doshi, Sahil, Sajja, Suresh Babu, Bellevue, WA, and Ganguly, Shuvabrata, Kirkland, WA, for “sub-block modifications for block-level snapshots.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Generally described, one or more aspects of the present application relate to a public snapshot service for creating and managing block-level snapshots. Snapshots can be configured to enable writing at the sub-block level. Subsequent modifications made to blocks storage volume that forms the basis of the snapshots can be backed up as a sub-block level operations.”

The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (Appl. No.16/586,565).

Placement of data volumes in data center
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,023,535) developed by Greenwood, Christopher Magee, Guo, Yilin, Lin, Wells, Flaherty, Mitchell Gannon, Seattle, WA, Venugopal, Sriram, Issaquah, WA, Yu, Linfeng, Brennan, Patrick E., and Herndon, Jr., Gary Michael, Seattle, WA, for a “placement of data volumes in a data center.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A new metadata field is described that can be used with requests to store a volume in a block storage service. The metadata field is a parameter included in the request and is a logical association identifier that associates the volume to be stored with other already-stored volumes. Using this logical association identifier, the block storage service can ensure that all volumes having the same identifier are sufficiently spread across server computers. The logical association identifier can be a workload identifier indicating that the volumes are all from a same relational database, application, etc. Target customers are defined as customers that request an action of a service within a cloud environment and the service then makes a request to the block storage service. In this case, the service is a customer of the block storage service and it can pass the target customer identifier as the logical association identifier.”

The patent application was filed on March 21, 2018 (Appl. No.15/927,782).

Data access control for object storage service based on owner-defined code
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,023,416) developed by Miller, Kevin C., Bainbridge Island, WA, Harris, Timothy Lawrence, Cambridge, Great Britain, and Datta, Ramyanshu, Seattle, WA, for a “data access control system for object storage service based on owner-defined code.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods are described for modifying input and output (I/O) to an object storage service by implementing one or more owner-specified functions to I/O requests. A function can implement data access control, such as controlling which users are provided access to which portions of an object collection maintained by the object storage service. For example, data access control functions can be applied prior to implementing a request method (e.g., GET or PUT) specified within the I/O request, and may grant or deny access based on a variety of factors such as user identity, time window, prior access, keywords, geographical region, etc. In this manner, owners of the object collection are provided with greater control over how the object collection is accessed.”

The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (Appl. No.16/586,647).

On-demand code execution in input path of data uploaded to storage service in multiple data portions
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,023,311) developed by Datta, Ramyanshu, Seattle, WA, Harris, Timothy Lawrence, Cambridge, Great Britain, Miller, Kevin C., Bainbridge Island, WA, Devnath, Haripriya, Bellevue, WA, and Wilson, Robert Devers, Seattle, WA, for an “on-demand code execution in input path of data uploaded to storage service in multiple data portions.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods are described for modifying input and output (I/O) to an object storage service by implementing one or more owner-specified functions to I/O requests. A function can implement a data manipulation, such as filtering out sensitive data before reading or writing the data. The functions can be applied prior to implementing a request method (e.g., GET or PUT) specified within the I/O request, such that the data to which the method is applied my not match the object specified within the request. For example, a user may request to obtain (e.g., GET) a data set. The data set may be passed to a function that filters sensitive data to the data set, and the GET request method may then be applied to the output of the function. In this manner, owners of objects on an object storage service are provided with greater control of objects stored or retrieved from the service.”

The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (Appl. No.16/586,825).

Intermediary duplication to facilitate copy requests in distributed storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,023,157) developed by Greenwood, Christopher Magee, Wei, Danny, Seattle, WA, Muniswamy-Reddy, Kiran-Kumar, Sammamish, WA, Lin, Wells, Seattle, WA, Kostic, Igor A., Kirkland, WA, and Williams, Colin, Seattle, WA, for an “intermediary duplication to facilitate copy requests in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Generally described, aspects of the present application correspond to enabling rapid duplication of data within a data volume hosted on a network storage system. The network storage system can maintain a highly distributed replica of the data volume, designated for duplication of data within the volume and separate from one or more other replicas designated for handling modifications to the data volume. By providing increased parallelization, the highly distributed replica can facilitate rapid duplication of the volume. When a sufficiently large request to duplicate the data volume is received, the system can create additional duplicate portions of the volume to further increase parallelization. For example, a partition of the highly distributed replica may be repeatedly duplicated to create a large number of intermediary duplicate partitions. The intermediary duplicate partitions can then be used to service the duplication request rapidly, due to increased parallelism.”

The patent application was filed on April 30, 2018 (Appl. No.15/967,284).

Snapshot block storage path structure
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,016,671) developed by Kumar, Sandeep, Sammamish, WA, Valicherla, Chakravarthi Kalyana, Redmond, WA, Palekar, Ashish, Clyde Hill, WA, Nene, Rucha, Seattle, WA, and Verma, Shailendra, Bellevue, WA, for a “snapshot block storage path structure wherein identification of blocks that are identical between two snapshots are determined without performing block by block comparison between the two snapshot.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Generally described, one or more aspects of the present application relate to a public snapshot service for creating and managing block-level snapshots. For example, the public snapshot service can create a snapshot based on (i) a specification of a parent snapshot to be used as a basis for a given snapshot, and (ii) a specification of the data blocks to be backed up in the given snapshot. The data blocks in the snapshot may be stored in a specific storage path structure that facilitates computation of a block difference with respect to the parent snapshot.”

The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (Appl. No.16/586,640).

Secure destruction machine
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,014,093) developed by Drexler, Shane, Kalva, Avirbhav, Seattle, WA, Brandwine, Eric Jason, Haymarket, VA, Lauducci, Thomas Joseph, Worthington, OH, Carter, David Francis, Bothell, WA, and Yuan, Ruicong, Seattle, WA, for a “secure destruction machine.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system includes an enclosure about a path toward a physical damaging system configured for rendering media storage devices inoperable. A scanning system obtains identifying information of a media storage device in the path. A barrier is selectively movable between an accessible state in which media storage device introduction into the enclosure is permitted and a blocking state in which such introduction into the enclosure is prevented. A locking mechanism locks the barrier in the blocking state in response to the barrier being moved to the blocking state. The locking mechanism unlocks the barrier and permits a shift to the accessible state subsequent to the scanning system obtaining the identifying information and subsequent to an action triggered based on the identifying information obtained from the scanning system.”

The patent application was filed on November 22, 2017 (Appl. No.15/821,560).

Simulated object storage using on-demand computation of data objects
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,010,188) developed by Brooker, Marc, Wagner, Timothy Allen, Seattle, WA, Danilov, Mikhail, Sammamish, WA, Mullen, Niall, Seattle, WA, Mesrobian, Holly, Bellevue, WA, and Piwonka, Philip Daniel, Seattle, WA, for “simulated data object storage using on-demand computation of data objects.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods are described for simulated data object storage on a data storage system. The system may allow clients to store computed data objects, which are generated from a source data object based on a user-defined transformation. For example, computed data objects may be thumbnail images generated based on a full resolution image. When a request to store a computed data object is received, the system can predict a timing of a next request for the data object. If expected resource consumption associated with storing the data object until a next request exceeds expected resource consumption associated with generating the data object in response to the next request, the system can acknowledge the request to store the data object, but not actually store the data object. Instead, the system may generate the data object in response to the next request.”

The patent application was filed on February 5, 2019 (Appl. No.16/268,353).

Approximating replication lag in cross-zone replicated block storage devices
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,010,089) developed by Seguy, Romain Benoit, Upadhyaya, Rahul, Seattle, WA, Muniswamy-Reddy, Kiran-Kumar, Sammamish, WA, Lin, Wells, Bellevue, WA, Jain, Divya Ashok Kumar, Issaquah, WA, and Zaharchuk, William, Seattle, WA, for an “approximating replication lag in cross-zone replicated block storage devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”The present disclosure generally relates to creating virtualized block storage devices whose data is replicated across isolated computing systems to lower risk of data loss even in wide-scale events, such as natural disasters. The virtualized device can include at least two volumes, each of which is implemented in a distinct computing system. Due to separation between volumes, replication lag may occur, in which data persisted to a first volume is not immediately persisted to a second volume. Such lag can increase a potential for data loss in the event that the first volume fails. Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to managing data loss risk by determining an expected maximum difference between the data stored at the two volumes, in a manner that does not require decrypting the data written to the volumes or perfect knowledge of the state of the distributed system at a single point.”

The patent application was filed on September 23, 2019 (Appl. No.16/579,620).

Data system with flush views
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,010,064) developed by Kusters, Norbert Paul, Redmond, WA, Arumugam, Nachiappan, Seattle, WA, Podnozov, Andre, Kenmore, WA, Agrawal, Shobha, Sammamish, WA, Ramalingam, Shreyas, Wei, Danny, Richardson, David R., Brooker, Marc John, Watson, Christopher Nathan, Guthrie, II, John Luther, and Nankani, Ravi, Seattle, WA, for a “data system with flush views.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data storage system includes a head node and mass storage devices. The head node is configured to flush data stored in a storage of the head node to a set of the mass storage devices of the data storage system. A head node may flush both current version data and point-in-time version data to the set of mass storage devices. Also, the data storage system maintains an index that indicates storage locations of data for particular portions of a volume before and after the data is flushed to the set of mass storage devices. In some embodiments an index includes a current version reference for a volume or portion of a volume and one or more point-in-time snapshot references.”

The patent application was filed on February 15, 2017 (Appl. No.15/433,956).

Searchable encrypted data stores
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,003,783) developed by Ursachi, Cristi, Iasi, Romania, Gray, Amanda, Berlin, Germany, Marappan, Priti, San Francisco, CA, and Mutescu, Dan, Iasi, Romania, for “searchable encrypted data stores.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Disclosed are various embodiments for searchable encrypted data stores. A plurality of rows in a data table that have a cell in a column of the row that matches a value are identified. A bitmap that represents the plurality of rows is generated. The bitmap is encrypted. A key is then generated for a key-value pair. The key can be represented by a message authentication code (MAC) based at least in part on a tuple of a name of the data table, an identifier of the column, and the value. The key-value pair with the key and the encrypted bitmap is then sent to a remote computing device for storage.”

The patent application was filed on September 21, 2018 (Appl. No.16/137,987).

Aggregator systems for storage of data segments
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (11,003,690) developed by O’Shea, John, Borris, Ireland, for “aggregator systems for storage of data segments.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An aggregator system obtains a first set of measurements from a logical partition of a computing resource monitoring service. The aggregator system aggregates this first set of measurements with a second set of measurements obtained from a storage resource. Using these measurements, the aggregator system generates a data segment that corresponds to a time interval of both the first set of measurements and the second set of measurements. The aggregator system stores this data segment in the storage resource and updates an index to indicate the location in the storage resource where the data segment is stored.”

The patent application was filed on October 23, 2015 (Appl. No.14/921,980).

On-demand indexing of data in input path of object storage service
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,996,961) developed by Miller, Kevin C., Datta, Ramyanshu, Wilson, Robert Devers, and Harris, Timothy Lawrence, Seattle, WA, for “on-demand indexing of data in input path of object storage service.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods are described for modifying input and output (I/O) to an object storage service by implementing one or more owner-specified functions to I/O requests. A function can implement a data manipulation, such as filtering out sensitive data before reading or writing the data. The functions can be applied prior to implementing a request method (e.g., GET or PUT) specified within the I/O request, such that the data to which the method is applied may not match the object specified within the request. For example, a user may request to obtain (e.g., GET) a data set. The data set may be passed to a function that filters sensitive data to the data set, and the GET request method may then be applied to the output of the function. In this manner, owners of objects on an object storage service are provided with greater control of objects stored or retrieved from the service.”

The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (Appl. No.16/586,818).

Remote storage gateway shadow or cache configuration
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,992,521) developed by Sorenson, III, James Christopher, Seatlle, WA, Lin, Yun, Bellevue, WA, Salyers, David Carl, Khetrapal, Ankur, and Alapati, Nishanth, Seattle, WA, for a “remote storage gateway shadow or cache configuration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage gateway serves as an interface between processes on a customer network and a service provider. The storage gateway is located on-premise with the customer processes. To customer processes, it appears that data is stored locally. However, the storage gateway interfaces with a remote storage service to store the data. For cached gateways, the primary data store is a remote data store, while frequently accessed data may be locally cached by the gateway. Reads may be satisfied from the local cache or from virtual data storage, writes are handled so as to appropriately update data blocks in the local cache and/or in virtual data storage. For shadowing gateways, the primary data store is the local data store, reads are passed through to a local data store, and writes are shadowed to virtual data storage as well as being sent to local data store.”

The patent application was filed on January 8, 2018 (Appl. No.15/864,259).

Data replication framework
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,990,609) developed by O’Neill, Brian S., Bellevue, WA, Long, Jason Shijia, Rochester Hills, MI, Shivaprakash, Archit, Bellevue, WA, and Kuznetsova, Olga I., Seattle, WA, for a “data replication framework.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Generally described, the present disclosure is directed to an eventually consistent replicated data store that uses, for its underlying storage, a computer software library that provides a high-performance embedded database for data. The replicated data store employs a plurality of hosts interconnected to one another, allowing for writes to any host and full awareness of membership across all hosts. With the data replication framework disclosed herein, various modes are allowed to be built up on top of the core system.”

The patent application was filed on August 3, 2017 (Appl. No.15/668,524).

Replication system with network failover
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,990,489) developed by Setter, Ophir, Ramat Gan, Israel, Zeyde, Roman, Afula, Israel, Weiner, Sigal, Holon, Israel, Feinberg, Leonid, Ramat Ha’Sharon, Israel, and Ehrlich, Ofir, Netanya, Israel, for a “replication system with network failover.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system and method for disk replication over a network with network failover, the method including: generating at least one write packet when a write instruction is detected from a first computing environment, where the at least one write packet includes: metadata associated with a data block, and a packet identifier, storing the at least one write packet in a cache, sending the at least one write packet from the cache to a second computing environment for storage, and determining if the at least one write packet has been successfully stored in the second computing environment.”

The patent application was filed on November 29, 2018 (Appl. No.16/204,264).

Block-storage service supporting multi-attach and health check failover mechanism
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,990,464) developed by Ping, Fan, Kenmore, WA, Boyer, Andrew, Seattle, WA, Chychykalo, Oleksandr, Mercer Island, WA, Pinkerton, James, Sammamish, WA, Wei, Danny, Kusters, Norbert Paul, Seattle, WA, Jain, Divya Ashok Kumar, Fan, Jianhua, Issaquah, WA, Veppumthara, Thomas Tarak Mathew, and Peluso, Sebastiano, Seattle, WA, for a “block-storage service supporting multi-attach and health check failover mechanism.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A block-based storage system hosts logical volumes that are implemented via multiple replicas of volume data stored on multiple resource hosts in different failure domains. Also, the block-based storage service allows multiple client computing devices to attach to a same given logical volume at the same time. In order to prevent unnecessary failovers, a primary node storing a primary replica is configured with a health check application programmatic interface, API) and a secondary node storing a secondary replica determines whether or not to initiate a failover based on the health of the primary replica.”

The patent application was filed on September 4, 2019 (Appl. No.16/560,859).

Replica pools to support volume replication in distributed storage
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,983,719) developed by Williams, Colin, Greenwood, Christopher Magee, Seattle, WA, Agarwal, Sonal, Bellevue, WA, Narayanasamy, Gautham, Redmond, WA, Robinson, Mark, Seattle, WA, Brenneman, Kristina, Renton, WA, and Ding, Linlin, Seattle, WA, for “replica pools to support volume replication in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Generally described, aspects of the present application correspond to enabling rapid duplication of data within a data volume hosted on a network storage system. The network storage system can maintain a highly distributed replica pool of the data volume, include a number of replicas duplicating data of the data volume. By providing increased parallelization, the replica pool can facilitate rapid duplication of the volume. In one configuration, each partition of a new volume is mapped to an individual replica within the replica pool, which supports population of the partition with data. Each replica can further include a set of replica partitions, such that read requests from each partition of a new volume are distributed among a number of servers to provide additional parallelization.”

The patent application was filed on March 28, 2019 (Appl. No.16/367,956).

Archiving of streaming data
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,976,949) developed by Calhoun, Jr., Robert Mcgregor, Seattle, WA, for “archiving of streaming data.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Technology is described for a durable and provably complete archival of streaming data for a potentially indefinite retention period. According to the present technology, streaming data may be prepared for storage to meet completeness and consistency requirements that may result in once-and-only-once delivery and serialization of the streaming data. In one example, a storage preparation service may archive a data stream in real-time to a first data store that provides eventual write consistency and use another data store to provide a consistent view of the data. The storage preparation service may capture metadata that satisfies the completeness requirements and may provide conflict resolution to ensure write consistency.”

The patent application was filed on July 10, 2018 (Appl. No.16/032,013).