Dell Assigned Eleven Patents

Software RAID/management communication system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12223212) developed by Ramaiah; Dharma Bhushan, Radhakrishnan; Vineeth, Rahiman; Shinose Abdul, Bisa; Rama Rao, Bangalore, India, Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, and Pagadala; Sumalatha, Bangalore, India, for “software RAID/management communication system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A software RAID/management communication system includes a chassis housing a software RAID subsystem coupled to a shared memory subsystem and storage devices, and a management subsystem that is coupled to the storage devices, and that is coupled to the shared memory subsystem via an MMBI connection. The management subsystem determines that at least one of the storage devices does not include a storage device memory subsystem that is configured for software RAID/management communications and, in response, transmits MCTP communications via the MMBI connection to retrieve RAID configuration information from the storage device(s) via the software RAID subsystem and the shared memory subsystem. The management subsystem then uses the RAID configuration information to perform at least one RAID management operation on at least one RAID logical storage device provided by the storage device(s).”

The patent application was filed on 2023-08-02 (18/229360).

Resilient software RAID/management communication system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12216910) developed by Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, Pagadala; Sumalatha, Bangalore, India, Naik; Sushmitha, Udupi, India, Ramaiah; Dharma Bhushan, Radhakrishnan; Vineeth, Rahiman; Shinose Abdul, and Bisa; Rama Rao, Bangalore, India, for “resilient software RAID/management communication system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A resilient software Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID)/management communication system includes a chassis housing a software RAID subsystem coupled to a plurality of storage devices that are also coupled to a management subsystem. The software RAID subsystem designates a first storage device in the plurality of storage devices as a primary storage device and a second storage device in the plurality of storage devices as a secondary storage device, and uses the respective storage device memory subsystem in the first storage device to transmit first management communications with the management subsystem. If the software RAID subsystem determines that the first storage device is unavailable, it uses the respective storage device memory subsystem in the second storage device to transmit second management communications with the management subsystem.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-07-31 (18/228240).

Direct-attached storage device software RAID boot system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12216595) developed by Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, Mirajkar; Abhijit Shashikant, and Sukumaran Nair Syamala Bai; Ajay, Bangalore, India, for a “direct-attached storage device software RAID boot system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A direct-attached storage device software RAID boot system includes a chassis housing PCIe subsystems coupled to a UEFI subsystem and a software RAID subsystem. The software RAID subsystem identifies a first PCIe subsystem that is not claimed by a UEFI driver provided by the UEFI subsystem, and determines that the first PCIe subsystem is one of a PCIe bridge device or a PCIe root device. In response, the software RAID subsystem claims the first PCIe subsystem, installs a RAID protocol on the first PCIe subsystem, attaches at least one RAID logical storage subsystem provided by at least one PCIe endpoint device in the PCIe subsystems to the first PCIe subsystem, and presents the UEFI subsystem with a PCIe controller device in the first PCIe subsystem as being connected to the at least RAID logical storage subsystem.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-07-31 (18/228055).

Direct-attached storage device software RAID hibernation system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12216945) developed by Mirajkar; Abhijit Shashikant, Khande; Abhijit Rajkumar, Bangalore, India, Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, and Sukumaran Nair Syamala Bai; Ajay, Bangalore, India, for a “direct-attached storage device software RAID hibernation system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A direct-attached storage device software RAID hibernation system includes a chassis having an operating system, a bus driver subsystem, controller devices coupled to physical storage devices, and a software RAID subsystem coupled to the operating system and the controller devices. While in a runtime mode, the software RAID subsystem presents the operating system a primary controller device as being connected to a logical storage device provided by the physical storage devices, and provides a filter subsystem in a secondary controller device that controls at least one of the physical storage devices. While in the runtime mode, the filter subsystem identifies a controller initialization request from the operating system that requests initialization of the secondary controller device and, in response, transmits a power-down prevention communication to the bus driver subsystem that is configured to prevent the bus driver subsystem from powering down the secondary controller device during a hibernation mode.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-07-31 (18/228015).

Software RAID/management trusted storage-device-based communication system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12216946) developed by Ramaiah; Dharma Bhushan, Radhakrishnan; Vineeth, Rahiman; Shinose Abdul, Bisa; Rama Rao, Bangalore, India, Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, and Pagadala; Sumalatha, Bangalore, India, for “software RAID/management trusted storage-device-based communication system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A software Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID)/management trusted storage-device-based communication system includes a chassis housing a software Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) subsystem, a storage device that is coupled to the software RAID subsystem and that includes a storage device memory subsystem, and a management subsystem that is coupled to the storage device. The management subsystem authenticates the storage device to establish management subsystem/storage device trust between the management subsystem and the storage device and, in response, uses the storage device to establish management subsystem/software RAID subsystem trust between the management subsystem and the software RAID subsystem. In response to establishing the management subsystem/storage device trust and the management subsystem/software RAID subsystem trust, the management subsystem transmits communications with the software RAID subsystem via the storage device memory subsystem in the storage device.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-07-31 (18/228538).

Direct-attached storage device software RAID crash dump system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12210776) developed by Ganigarakoppal Kantharaju; Nikhith, Hassan, India, Mirajkar; Abhijit Shashikant, and Sukumaran Nair Syamala Bai; Ajay, Bangalore, India, for a “direct-attached storage device software RAID crash dump system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A direct-attached storage device software RAID crash dump system includes a chassis housing a software RAID subsystem coupled to physical storage devices, controller devices, and a hypervisor subsystem. The software RAID subsystem presents a primary controller device to the hypervisor subsystem as being connected to a logical storage device provided by the physical storage devices. When the software RAID subsystem receives a first crash dump command from the hypervisor subsystem directed to the primary controller device and identifying a crash dump logical storage subsystem in the logical storage device, it transmits a respective second crash dump command to each of a subset of the physical storage devices that provide the crash dump logical storage subsystem via a respective controller device that couple the software RAID subsystem to that physical storage device, confirms completion of the respective second crash dump commands, and transmits a crash dump confirmation to the hypervisor subsystem.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-07-29 (18/227920).

Logical back-end device entry-based slice write destage
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12197792) developed by Pang; Lixin, Needham, and Yu; Rong, West Roxbury, MA, for a “logical back-end device entry-based slice write destage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In a storage system where Front-End (FE) tracks do not correspond to Back-End (BE) tracks on a one-to-one basis, a Logical Entry (LE) table is implemented in the BE processes to enable masking to occur on BE Logical Entry values rather than on BE tracks. An LE watch table is used to correlate LE values with BE tracks. When a RAID slice destage is initiated to move data from the FE tracks to BE tracks implementing the RAID slice, the LE watch table is used to identify a respective set of LE values that correspond to each respective RAID slice BE track. Entries of the BE mask corresponding to the LE values identified from the LE watch table are used to identify FE tracks that contain data to be included in the RAID slice destage. Metadata is retrieved for each identified FE track, and the RAID slice destage is implemented.”

The patent application was filed on 2024-01-01 (18/401645).

Fast and flexible data capacity upgrade via efficient reconfiguration
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12175094) developed by Hua; Kuolin, Natick, MA, and Gao; Kunxiu, Boxborough, MA, for “fast and flexible data capacity upgrade via efficient reconfiguration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “New drives numbering fewer than a RAID width W are added to a primary drive array of K=W+1 sequentially-ordered original drives with same-size sequentially-ordered cells, where RAID groups are sequentially ordered and distributed such that a first cell of each sequentially-ordered drive contains a RAID group member in the sequential order of the protection groups and subsequent cells of each original drive in sequence contain members in the sequential order, wrapped. The new drives are added by selecting a subset of the original drives adjacent to the new drives such that the selected new drives and original drives total W, selecting a number of sequential cell indices equal to the number of new drives, and relocating protection group members in the selected sequential cell indices on the selected original drives to the new drives such that free space is created across W cells of each of the selected cell indices.”

The patent application was filed on 2023-08-08 (18/366817).

Balanced data mirroring distribution for parallel access
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12158825) developed by Hua; Kuolin, Natick, MA, for a “balanced data mirroring distribution for parallel access.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Mirrored pairs in a RAID-1 are distributed in a balanced and deterministic way that increases data access parallelism. For a group of k+1 disks that can be represented as a matrix of disk rows indexed 0 through k, where each disk is organized into k same-size subdivisions, in columns indexed 1 through k, corresponding mirrors of data members on the first disk (row index 0) are distributed across all other disks along a matrix diagonal such that the row index is the same as the column index for each mirror. Additional mirror pairs are created and symmetrically distributed in two submatrix triangles that are defined and separated by the diagonal. The two triangles are populated with symmetrically distributed mirrors that are flipped around the matrix diagonal such that for any mirror data in one triangle, its corresponding mirror data can be found in the other triangle by swapping the row and column indices.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-05-31 (17/828077).

Drive-assisted RAID system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (12153833) developed by Corbett; Peter Frank, Lexington, MA, and Lynn; William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, for a “drive-assisted RAID system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A drive-assisted RAID storage system includes a RAID storage controller device coupled to RAID primary data storage devices each storing primary data for a stripe, and a RAID parity data storage device storing parity data for the stripe. The RAID parity data storage device receives stripe parity data update commands from the RAID storage controller device that cause it to retrieve respective interim parity data generated by each of the RAID primary data storage devices and including respective stripe update sequence identifiers. The RAID parity data storage device uses the respective interim parity data to generate updated parity data. When the respective stripe update sequence identifiers in the respective interim parity data that was used to generate the updated parity data indicate that parity update operations for the stripe are complete, the RAID parity data storage device transmits a stripe parity update completion message to the RAID storage controller device.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-07-07 (17/859194).

RAID array for validating and recovering OS boot files for uefi secure boot systems
Dell Products L.P., Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (12141288) developed by Yu; Xinghai, Beijing, China, and Zou; Colin, San Jose, CA, for a “RAID array for validating and recovering operating system boot files for uefi secure boot systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A secure boot monitoring and validation process for operating system (OS) initial installation or upgrade operations. A validated copy of OS boot files is made during OS installation. The boot files are stored in a first RAID array. A checksum comparator or OS boot file filesystem check (FSCK) component validates the boot files upon initial installation of the OS by comparison with a secure copy of the boot files, which are stored in a second RAID array. Any validation failure indicates corruption or unwanted modification of the boot file data, and an autorecovery operation using different boot partitions is attempted.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-10-26 (17/974111).