Cisco Assigned Five Patents

Master data placement in distributed storage
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,327,688) developed by Tornow, Dominik Rene, and Dave, Urmil Vijay, San Jose, CA, for a “master data placement in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for managing a placement of data items on a distributed storage system. In some examples, a method can include determining a location of a master copy of a data item on a distributed storage system, the location including a data store on the distributed storage system, determining an access pattern associated with the master copy of the data item, the access pattern including originating locations of access requests received by the distributed storage system for the master copy of the data item and a respective number of access requests received from each of the originating locations, determining, based on the access pattern, a different location on the distributed storage system for storing the master copy of the data item, the different location including a different data store on the distributed storage system, and placing the master copy of the data item at the different location.”

The patent application was filed on January 13, 2020 (16/741,580).

Complete autozoning in FC SANs
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,297,009) developed by Tummala, Venu Gopal, Karnataka, India, Bharadwaj, Harsha, Varghese, Sunil John, Bangalore, India, and Menon, Pramod, Karnataka, India, for a “complete autozoning in fibre channel SANs.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An initiator emulator is implemented on a control plane of a switch fabric connected to target ports of a storage array having storage configured with logical partitions. After an initiator port of a server logs into the switch fabric and is blocked from discovering the target ports, the initiator emulator, acting as proxy for the initiator port, discovers information that indicates logical partition masking enforced at the target ports for the initiator port. The initiator emulator determines allowed (initiator (I), target (T)) (I, T) port combinations that should be allowed access via the switch fabric based on the information from the discovery. The initiator emulator configures the switch fabric with one or more zones based on the allowed (I, T) port combinations. The initiator emulator then sends to the initiator port an indication of a zone change to the switch fabric.”

The patent application was filed on April 3, 2020 (16/839,486).

Use of virtual lanes to solve credit stall on target ports in FC SAN
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,297,006) developed by Bharadwaj, Harsha, Bangalore, India, for “use of virtual lanes to solve credit stall on target ports in FC SAN.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method is performed at a switch fabric that communicates with a storage array target port. The method includes sending frames to the target port responsive to receiving buffer-to-buffer (B2B) credits that indicate a receive buffer at the target port is available for the frames. The method further includes, in response to detecting a credit stall at the target port, operating in a virtual lane mode. The operating in the virtual lane mode includes: determining whether a frame destined for the target port is a command frame or a data frame, based on the determining, marking the frame to indicate that the frame is destined for a particular virtual lane among virtual lanes of the receive buffer, and receiving from the target port a per-virtual lane B2B credit that indicates the particular virtual lane is available and, in responsive, sending the frame to that virtual lane on the target port.”

The patent application was filed on June 3, 2020 (16/891,321).

Partitioning temporal graph for distributed storage
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,281,695) developed by Narayanan, Bhalaji, Raghavendra, Arun Kumar, Nethi, Ramesh, Bangalore, India, and Simhadri, Venkata Lakshmi Narayana Mehar, Cupertino, CA, for “partitioning a temporal graph for distributed storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In one embodiment, present disclosure discloses a method for partitioning a temporal graph is described. Embodiments of the method comprises creating a plurality of storage blocks for each type of the different types of graph elements based on predefined label groups, each of the plurality of storage blocks configured to store the telemetry information generated in a corresponding predefined time-range, recreating each of the plurality of storage blocks upon expiry of a configurable rollover time, and sharding each of the plurality of storage blocks into a plurality of shards based on a configurable sharding count.”

The patent application was filed on January 24, 2020 (16/752,042).

Filesystem management for cloud object storage
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,249,899) developed by Gaonkar, Shravan, Gainesville, FL, and Vartak, Mayuresh, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “filesystem management for cloud object storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for filesystem management for cloud object storage are described. In one embodiment, a method includes writing, by a filesystem layer, a plurality of entries to a log structured file tree, including filesystem metadata and filesystem data. The method includes performing a flush operation of the entries from the filesystem layer to one or more objects in a distributed cloud object storage layer. The method includes storing the filesystem metadata and the filesystem data to the one or more objects in the distributed cloud object storage layer. The method further includes storing flush metadata generated during each flush operation, including a flush sequence number associated with each flush operation. Each object of the one or more objects in the distributed cloud object storage layer is identified by a key that identifies the flush sequence number, an object identifier, and a rebirth identifier.”

The patent application was filed on September 19, 2018 (16/135,422).