EMC IP Holding/Dell Assigned Nineteen Patents

File layer to block layer communication for block organization in storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513739) developed by Faibish, Sorin, Newton, MA, Bassov, Ivann, Brookline, MA, Gonczi, Istvan, Berkley, MA, and Armangau, Philippe, Acton, MA, for a “file layer to block layer communication for block organization in storage.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method performed by a block-storage server, of storing data is described. The method includes (1) receiving, from a remote file server, data blocks to be written to persistent block storage managed by the block-storage server, (2) receiving, from the remote file server, metadata describing a placement of the data blocks in a filesystem managed by the remote file server, and (3) organizing the data blocks within the persistent block storage based, at least in part, on the received metadata. An apparatus, system, and computer program product for performing a similar method are also provided.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-07-31 (16/528091).

Application discovery using access pattern history
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513912) developed by Smaldone, Stephen D., Woodstock, CT, Don, Arieh, Newton, MA, and Martin, Owen, Hopedale, MA, for an “application discovery using access pattern history.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Application discovery from access patterns is disclosed. Access histories from multiple servers are collected and stored at a warehouse, which may be part of a data protection system. A time series analysis is performed on the access history to identify consistency groups and applications from the perspective of devices and storage arrays. Data protection operations such as backup operations can then be performed on the basis of devices or storage in storage arrays or other arrangements that pertain to specific consistency groups or to specific applications.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-03-20 (16/825268).

Compliance as a service for multi-cloud backup systems
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513910) developed by Natanzon, Assaf, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Saad, Yossef, Ganei Tikva, Israel, for a “compliance as a service for multi-cloud backup systems.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of a compliance service that will enable users be compliant with all regulatory, industry processes and business needs at all times. The service is available to storage and data protection systems through a set of APIs that will enable such compliance be achieved and maintained with no user intervention and without labor-intensive manual work. The service will also allow storing the configuration of the data protection policies and create alerts when compliance changes. A data backup platform may include a data protection system that integrates with such a service and provides full regulatory/industry compliance.”

The patent application was filed on 2018-04-26 (15/963826).

Gold image library management system to reduce backup storage and bandwidth utilization
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513904) developed by Malamut, Mark, Aliso Viejo, CA, and Smaldone, Stephen, Woodstock, CT, for a “Gold image library management system to reduce backup storage and bandwidth utilization.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Reducing backup data by providing a data protection target for storing content data from clients running operating system and applications, and a common data protection target (CDPT) separate from the data protection target for storing Gold image data for the operating system and applications. During backup, user content data is copied from the client to the data protection target, and Gold image data is copied to the CDPT. It is also referenced in the DP target to prevent redundant storage. During backup, the CDPT is queried to determine if the Gold image exists, and if so, the DP target does not store the Gold image data in the DP target, but uses the reference to indicate the location of the Gold image data corresponding to the backed up content data. During a restore, the restore stream is built from the DP target and CDPT to combine user content data and Gold image data.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-12-17 (17/124957).

Arranging SSD resources based on estimated endurance
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513692) developed by Dalmatov, Nickolay Alexandrovich, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for “arranging SSD resources based on estimated endurance.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A technique for managing SSDs in a data storage system generates an endurance value for each of multiple SSDs and arranges the SSDs in RAID groups based at least in part on the generated endurance values. As a result of such arranging, some RAID groups may include only SSDs with higher endurance values while other RAID groups may include only SSDs with lower endurance values. The data storage system may then run RAID groups with higher endurance values at higher speeds and may run RAID groups with lower endurance values at lower speeds.”

The patent application was filed on 2016-06-30 (15/523062).

Remote replication of snapshots taken while replication was inactive
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513900) developed by Bora, Bhaskar, Shrewsbury, MA, Halstead, Mark J., Holliston, MA, and Wilson, Jeffrey, Franklin, MA, for a “remote replication of snapshots taken while replication was inactive.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Snapshots of a first logical storage unit (LSU) (R1) on a first storage system (A1) may be taken while replication is inactive between A1 and a second storage system (A2), such that these outstanding snapshots are not replicated to a second replica LSU (R2) on A2. Upon replication becoming active, the outstanding snapshots may be replicated to R2 without disrupting or impairing the remote replication of write operations between R1 and R2 as part of standard remote replication. A process on A1 executing the replication of the outstanding snapshots from R1 to R2 may be a separate process than one or more processes on A1 executing standard remote replication including the replication of write operations from R1 to R2. The process may be given low priority on A1 so as to not impair performance of other operations, including standard remote replication and replicating outstanding write operations on A1.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-04-22 (17/237100).

Placement of metadata on storage drives in first storage enclosure of storage system
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513702) developed by Vankamamidi, Vamsi K., Hopkinton, MA, Armangau, Philippe, Acton, MA, and Cummins, Daniel E., Hudson, NH, for a “placement of metadata on data storage drives in a first storage enclosure of a data storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data storage system in which data storage space for storing data storage metadata is selectively allocated from non-volatile data storage devices contained in a first storage enclosure. The first storage enclosure is directly connected to at least one storage processor of the data storage system, and the data storage system further includes at least one secondary storage enclosure that is indirectly connected to the storage processor. Data storage metadata is generated within the data storage system, and the data storage metadata generated within the data storage system is stored into the data storage space that was selectively allocated for storing data storage metadata from the non-volatile data storage devices contained in the first storage enclosure.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-10-17 (16/655650).

Snapshot conscious internal file data modification for network-attached storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11514025) developed by Batchu, Ravi V., Cupertino, CA, for a “snapshot conscious internal file data modification for network-attached storage.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Performing snapshot conscious internal file modification for network-attached storage is presented herein. A file system can comprise a first component configured to modify, during a service request, storage for a subset of data blocks of a file—the service request not being recognized by an external entity as a change of content of the file. Further, the file system can comprise a second component configured to prevent, based on the service request, a copy of the storage from being created for servicing of a snapshot—the snapshot comprising a point-in-time copy of the file system.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-08-19 (16/544785).

Storage management, device and computer program
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513712) developed by Kang, Jianbin, Han, Geng, Dong, Jibing, and Gao, Hongpo, Beijing, China, for “method for storage management, device and computer program product.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for storage management involve: determining expected usage time of a first storage disk in a set of storage disks, at least a part of the set of storage disks being configured to form at least one redundant array of independent disks (RAID), moving data in a first storage block, associated with a first RAID in the at least one RAID, in the first storage disk to a second storage block in a second storage disk in the set of storage disks based on a determination that the expected usage time is less than a predetermined threshold value, and replacing the first storage block with the second storage block, so that the second storage block is associated with the first RAID. Based on this manner, the stability of a storage system can be improved.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-08-12 (16/991472).

Method, device and computer program for building and verifying index file
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513947) developed by Li, Haitao, Liu, Jie, Wen, Jian, and Lin, Chao, Chengdu, China, for “method, device and computer program product for building and verifying index file.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to establishing and verifying an index file. The method for establishing an index file includes: in response to receiving a data block to be stored, determining first verification information for verifying the data block and a first storage address for storing the data block. This method further includes: based on the first verification information, determining an index entry for the data block and a second storage address for storing the index entry, wherein the index entry includes the first verification information and the first storage address, and the index entry will be included in the index file. This method further includes: based on the index entry and the second storage address, determining second verification information. This method further includes: based on the second verification information and historical verification information for the index file, determining third verification information for verifying the index file.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-05-31 (16/888788).

Non-disruptive storage protocol conversion
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513731) developed by Venkatanarayanan, Prakash, Bangalore, India, Azruel, Amihay, Raanana, Israel, Sathyanarayana, Sreenivasa Honnur, Iqbal, Md Haris, Kumar, Kundan, Bangalore, India, Long, Matthew, Uxbridge, MA, and Schiff, Jean Marie, Bolton, MA, for “system and method for non-disruptive storage protocol conversion.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method, computer program product, and computing system for selecting target volumes within a storage system that are currently accessible to computing devices via first storage protocol paths via a first storage protocol for accessing via second storage protocol paths via a second storage protocol. For each of the selected target volumes, a first storage protocol identifier specific to each selected target volume may be associated with a second storage protocol identifier specific to each selected target volume. The first storage protocol paths and the second storage protocol paths may be grouped into a multipath group based upon the association between the first storage protocol identifier and the second storage protocol identifier. Access between the computing devices and the selected target volumes may be switched from the first storage protocol paths to the second storage protocol paths without application disruption and across multiple host platforms, including host-clusters.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-06-29 (16/914651).

Micro-backup generation
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513915) developed by Viveki, Pradeep, Ambaljeri, Mahantesh Murageppa, Appireddygari Venkataramana, Mahesh Reddy, Bangalore, India, for “system and method for micro-backup generation.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A backup management system for providing data integrity services to an application host that hosts an application that uses application data includes storage for storing threshold values for creating an application backup and a processor programmed to monitor: a rate of change associated with the application data, and an input-output rate of the application data, make a determination, based on the threshold values, the rate of change, and the input-output rate, that an unscheduled backup for the application is to be generated, obtain a micro-backup for the application in response to the determination, and obtain a restoration ready backup for the application using the micro-backup and at least one previously generated backup.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-04-09 (17/226180).

Storage management
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513701) developed by Shveidel, Vladimir, Pardes-Hana, Israel, and Gazit, Ronen, Tel Aviv, Israel, for “storage management system and method.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method, computer program product, and computing system for during a high IOPs period, receiving content to be written to a storage system, storing the content to a specific location within a storage device associated with the storage system, updating a temporary map to include an entry that defines the specific location of the content, and during a subsequent period, binding the content with respect to the storage device.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-05-03 (16/402682).

Prioritizing replication copy activity
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11514075) developed by Haravu, Nagasimha G., Apex, NC, Bailey, Charles C., Cary, NC, Sheelvant, Girish, Hopkinton, MA, and Seela, Nagapraveen Veeravenkata, Cary, NC, for “system and method for prioritizing replication copy activity.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method, computer program product, and computer system for triggering, by a computing device, a synchronization activity on a storage object. A request may be executed for a copy operation resulting from the synchronization activity to copy the storage object from a source to a destination when a current number of concurrent copy operations is below a maximum number of copy operations. The request for the copy operation resulting from the synchronization activity to copy the storage object from the source to the destination may be placed in a queue when the current number of concurrent copy operations is at least at the maximum number of copy operations. One or more attributes of the request in the queue may be identified. The request for the copy operation may be executed according to a replication policy based upon, at least in part, the one or more attributes of the request in the queue.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-04-29 (16/861747).

Migration of legacy data into ordered event stream
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513714) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Paduroiu, Andrei, Bellevue, WA, and Vazhenin, Maksim, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a “migration of legacy data into an ordered event stream.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Data migration from a legacy data storage system into an ordered event stream (OES) data storage system is disclosed. In contrast to conventional techniques, the disclosed subject matter can provide for migrating legacy data into a first portion of a vintage OES (VOES) and new data, intended for the legacy data storage system during the migration process, into a second portion of the VOES. The first and second portions of the VOES can then be linked at completion of the migration process. Avoiding writing new data to the legacy data storage system prior to migration enables a corresponding reduction in data access disruption. Moreover, event sequencing by separating migrated legacy events from new events can preserving event order. Scaling of vintage streams can be supported. Vintage streams can support function calls to a single VOES in contrast to the more conventional use of multiple streams.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-04-22 (17/237535).

Accessing storage space of physical data fragment in storage system
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513687) developed by LeCrone, Douglas E., Hopkinton, MA, O’Hare, Jeremy J., Westborough, MA, and Linstead, Paul A., Shrewsbury, MA, for “accessing storage space of a physical data fragment in a storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Accessing additional storage space of a storage system includes reading a physical data fragment that is an incremental subset of a physical storage unit of the storage system, accessing metadata corresponding to logical blocks stored on the physical data fragment to determine a sidebar storage portion of the physical data fragment that is unused by the logical blocks, and accessing data of the sidebar storage portion. Accessing data of the sidebar storage portion may include providing data from the sidebar storage portion to a calling process. Accessing data of the sidebar storage portion may include modifying a portion of data from the physical data fragment and writing the physical data fragment back to the physical storage device. The physical data fragment may be locked prior to reading the physical data fragment and the physical data fragment may be unlocked after writing the physical data fragment.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-10-29 (17/084191).

Storage management, electronic device, and computer program
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513913) developed by Liu, Qin, and Liao, Lanjun, Chengdu, China, for “method for storage management, electronic device, and computer program product.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method for storage management, an electronic device, and a computer program product. According to an exemplary implementation of the present disclosure, a method for storage management includes: generating, at a client, a first backup block for recovering first target data, the client backing up the first target data to a first server and backing up metadata of the first target data to a second server, and the client together with at least one other client and the second server maintaining the same backup chain which includes at least one backup block, adding the first backup block to the backup chain maintained by the client, and distributing the first backup block to the at least one other client and the second server to add the first backup block to the backup chain maintained by the at least one other client and the second server. Therefore, the storage security can be improved.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-12-14 (17/120737).

Distributed hot space in storage server
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513742) developed by Nannapaneni, Rajasekhar, Bangalore, India, and Chichakar, Ganesh, Mumbai, India, for a “distributed hot space in a data storage server.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The described technology is generally directed towards a virtualized dedicated hot spare storage device in a RAID-configured data storage system, in which the capa of the dedicated spare storage device is distributed among the physical disks underlying a RAID virtual disk. A RAID controller creates a first virtual construct comprising an array of logical block addresses that maps data reads from and writes to the virtual disk to locations in the physical disks underlying the virtual disk. When hot space storage device capa is specified, the RAID controller creates a second construct comprising another array of logical block addresses which are reserved for the distributed hot space. The virtualized dedicated hot spare storage device increases storage capa and performance by utilizing more of the storage resources of a data storage server.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-12-21 (17/128765).

Assignment of longevity ranking values of storage volume snapshots based on snapshot policies
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies, Inc. company, has been assigned a patent (11513997) developed by Keller, Itay, Tel Aviv, Israel , Webman, Erez, Petach Tikva, Israel, Milstein, Nir, and Shtarkman, Yonatan, Tel Aviv, Israel, for an “assignment of longevity ranking values of storage volume snapshots based on snapshot policies.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are provided for utilizing snapshot longevity information to manage snapshots in a snapshot-enabled storage system. A snapshot management system generates a snapshot volume tree which comprises snapshots associated with a given storage volume. The snapshot management system obtains a snapshot policy associated with the given storage volume, which comprises a snapshot creation and retention schedule that specifies retention lifespans of the snapshots. The snapshot policy is evaluated to automatically determine and assign respective longevity ranking values for the snapshots within the snapshot volume tree, wherein the longevity ranking value of a given snapshot represents a retention lifespan of the given snapshot as compared to retention lifespans of other snapshots as represented by their respective longevity ranking values. When a snapshot is deleted, the assigned longevity ranking values of the snapshots are utilized to select a snapshot to assume ownership of uniquely-written data that is owned by the deleted snapshot.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-03-18 (16/822848).