NetApp Assigned Patent

NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,261,125) developed by Thomas Rudolf Wenzel, Almere, The Netherlands, for a "global write-log device for managing write logs of nodes of a cluster storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A cluster system comprises a plurality of nodes that provides data-access service to a shared storage, each node having at least one failover partner node for taking over services of a node if the node fails. Each node may produce write logs for the shared storage and periodically send write logs at predetermined time intervals to a global device which stores write logs from each node. The global device may detect failure of a node by monitoring time intervals of when write logs are received from each node. Upon detection of a node failure, the global device may provide the write logs of the failed node to one or more partner nodes for performing the write logs on the shared storage. Write logs may be transmitted only between nodes and the global device to reduce data exchanges between nodes and conserving I/O resources of the nodes."

The patent application was filed on Oct. 21, 2011 (13/278,947).