NetApp Assigned Patent

Network Appliance, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,166,257) developed by James H. Holl II and James J. Voll, Palo Alto, CA, for an "automated continuous provisioning of a data storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Methods and systems for mapping data-management requirements to the provisioning of a data storage system to conform to a set of user-defined data-management policies. A conformance engine with storage system awareness translates the set of data-management policies to a corresponding set of storage-provisioning policies and provisions the resources of the storage system thereby to conform the storage system to the data-management policies. A conformance checker continuously and automatically compares the provisioning of the storage system resources to the provisioning required to meet the data-management policies. When nonconformance is detected, the conformance engine automatically re-provisions the available resources of the storage system to conform the storage system to the data management policies."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 24, 2008 (12/019,574).