Microsoft Assigned Three Patents

Scalable queues on scalable structured storage system
Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (8,769,134) developed by Bradley Gene Calder, Bellevue, WA, Niranjan Nilakantan, Redmond, WA, and Padmanabha Chakravarthy Uddaraju, Bellevue, WA, for “scalable queues on a scalable structured storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A cloud computing platform contains a structured storage subsystem the provides scalable queues. The cloud computing platform monitors message throughput for the scalable queues and automatically increases or decreases subqueues that provide the operational functionality for each scalable queue. A visibility start time and cloud computing platform time are maintained for each message to provide an approximate first-in-first-out order for messages within each subqueue. A message in a subqueue may be available for processing when the current cloud computing time is greater than the visibility start of the message.”

The patent application was filed on May 15, 2012 (13/471,706).

Storage topology manager
Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (8,751,711) developed by three co-inventors for a “storage topology manager.”

The co-inventors are Alan Warwick, Bellevue, WA, Andrea D’Amato, Kirkland, WA, and Sai Sudhir Anantha Padmanaban, Redmond, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Defining a storage topology of a distributed computing system including a set of machine nodes. A method includes dynamically receiving from a number of nodes in the distributed computing system information about storage devices. Each node sends information about storage devices connected to that particular node. The information is sent dynamically from each node as conditions related to storage change and as a result of conditions related to storage changing. From the received information, the method includes dynamically constructing a storage topology representation of the distributed computed system.”

The patent application was filed on Dec. 17, 2010 (12/972,010).

Distributed storage
Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (8,768,971) developed by four co-inventors for “distributed data storage.”

The co-inventors are Johnson T. Apacible, Mercer Island, WA, Cezary Marcjan, Mark A. Nikiel and Michael W. Thomas, Redmond, WA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In one example, data may be divided into blocks, and the blocks may be stored in various storage resources. Data to be stored may be provided to a data divider. The data divider may divide the data into blocks. Redundancy may be introduced into the blocks to allow the original data to be reconstructed at some point in the future, even if fewer than all of the original blocks are available. The blocks may be sent to a data shuffler, which may shuffle the blocks, and may provide a key that describes how to reconstruct the original data from the blocks. The key may be provided to the owner of the data. When the original data is to be retrieved, the key may be provided to a reassembler, which retrieves the blocks from the various storage resources and reconstructs the data using the key.“

The patent application was filed on March 12, 2009 (12/403,350).