Pure Storage Assigned Nine Patents

Cloud assist for storage
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,164,841) developed by Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, Borowiec, Benjamin, Santa Clara, CA, Hasbani, Joseph S., and Noik, Emanuel G., Palo Alto, CA, for a “cloud assist for storage systems“.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems, methods, and computer readable storage mediums for using a cloud assist service to generate a read-only GUI to view the status of a storage system. An authorized user can login remotely to the cloud assist service to view the read-only GUI of the storage system. The read-only GUI will present a view of the status of the storage system that is similar to a local GUI available to users connecting directly to the storage system. Responses used to generate the local GUI are recorded and simulated by the cloud assist service to create a familiar read-only GUI.”

The patent application was filed on October 2, 2014 (14/504,945).

Proactive management of plurality of storage arrays in multi-array
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,162,835) developed by Borowiec, Benjamin, Santa Clara, CA, and Noonan, Terence, Vadnais Heights, MN, for a “proactive management of a plurality of storage arrays in a multi-array system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Proactive management of a plurality of storage arrays in a multi-array system, including: comparing one or more conditions of a particular storage array to conditions of other storage arrays in the multi-array system, and generating an action recommendation based on the comparison, the action recommendation specifying one or more actions for improving the conditions of the particular storage array relative to the conditions of the other storage arrays.”

The patent application was filed on December 15, 2015 (14/969,465).

Accumulating application-level statistics in storage
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,162,566) developed by Hodgson, Steven, Mountain View, CA, and Karr, Ronald, Palo Alto, CA, for an “accumulating application-level statistics in a storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Accumulating application-level statistics in a storage system that includes a plurality of block storage devices, including: identifying, from data stored on a block storage device, one or more sub-regions of the data stored on the block storage device that are associated with an application, and compiling, from statistics maintained for each of the one or more sub-regions of the stored data associated with the application, cumulative statistics for the application.”

The patent application was filed on January 9, 2017 (15/401,655).

Migrating data between volumes using virtual copy operation
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,162,523) developed by Miller, Ethan, Santa Cruz, CA, Do, Lydia, San Jose, CA, and Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, for a “migrating data between volumes using virtual copy operation.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage controller coupled to a storage array comprising one or more storage devices initiates a transformation of data from a block-based storage system resident on the storage array to a file-based storage system resident on a storage array. The storage controller identifies a plurality of data blocks to be transformed from the block-based storage system and generates metadata for a file in the file-based storage system, the metadata to associate the plurality of data blocks with the file.”

The patent application was filed on October 4, 2016 (15/284,777).

Reducing number of storage devices in storage system
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,156,998) developed by Colgrove, John, Los Altos, CA, Hayes, John, Mountain View, CA, Hong, Bo, Palo Alto, CA, Wang, Feng, Sunnyvale, CA, Miller, Ethan, Santa Cruz, CA, and Harmer, Craig, San Francisco, CA, for a “reducing a number of storage devices in a storage system that are exhibiting variable I/O response times.“

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 27, 2017 (15/418,035).

Disaster recovery at high reliability in storage cluster
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,152,397) developed by Hayes, John, and Botes, Par, Mountain View, CA, for a “disaster recovery at high reliability in a storage cluster.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage grid is provided. The storage grid includes a first cluster, a second cluster, and a third cluster. Each of the first cluster, the second cluster and the third cluster is configured to store an amount of data ranging from a portion of a copy of the data to a full copy of the data. The first cluster has a full copy of data written to the first cluster and at least a partial copy of data written to the second and third cluster. The second cluster has a full copy of data written to the second cluster, and at least a partial copy of the data written to the first and third cluster. The third cluster has a full copy of data written to the third cluster and at least a partial copy of the data written to the first and second cluster. A method of storing data is also provided.”

The patent application was filed on May 14, 2015 (14/712,761).

Ensuring fair utilization of system resources using workload based, time-independent scheduling
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,146,585) developed by Frandzel, Yuval, Foster City, CA, and Vijayasankar, Kiron, Santa Clara, CA, for an “ensuring the fair utilization of system resources using workload based, time-independent scheduling.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Ensuring the fair utilization of system resources using workload based, time-independent scheduling, including: receiving an I/O request associated with an entity, determining whether an amount of system resources required to service the I/O request is greater than an amount of available system resources in a storage system, responsive to determining that the amount of system resources required to service the I/O request is greater than the amount of available system resources in the storage system: queuing the I/O request in an entity-specific queue for the entity, detecting that additional system resources in the storage system have become available, and responsive to detecting that additional system resources in the storage system have become available, issuing an I/O request from an entity-specific queue for an entity that has a highest priority among entities with non-empty entity-specific queues.”

The patent application was filed on December 19, 2016 (15/382,888).

Page writes for triple level cell flash memory
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,141,050) developed by Kannan, Hari, and Kirkpatrick, Peter E., Mountain View, CA, for a “page writes for triple level cell flash memory.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method for page writes for triple or higher level cell flash memory is provided. The method includes receiving data in a storage system, from a client that is agnostic of page write requirements for triple or higher level cell flash memory, wherein the page write requirements specify an amount of data and a sequence of writing data for a set of pages to assure read data coherency for the set of pages. The method includes accumulating the received data, in random-access memory, (RAM) in the storage system to satisfy the page write requirements for the triple or higher level cell flash memory in the storage system. The method includes writing at least a portion of the accumulated data in accordance with the page write requirements, from the RAM to the triple level cell, or the higher level cell, flash memory in the storage system as an atomic write.”

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2017 (15/498,979).

Transactional commits with hardware assists in remote memory
Pure Storage, Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,140,149) developed by Hayes, John, Gold, Brian, Gupta, Shantanu, Lee, Robert, and Kannan, Hari, Mountain View, CA, for a “transactional commits with hardware assists in remote memory.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A method for a transactional commit in a storage unit is provided. The method includes receiving a logical record from a storage node into a transaction engine of a storage unit of the storage node and writing the logical record into a data structure of the transaction engine. The method includes writing, to a command queue of the transaction engine, an indication to perform an atomic update using the logical record and transferring each portion of the logical record from the data structure of the transaction engine to non-persistent memory of the storage unit as a committed transaction. A storage unit for a storage system is also provided.”

The patent application was filed on May 19, 2015 (14/716,543).