NetApp Assigned Seventeen Patents

Migrating data between heterogeneous storage platforms
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,832,269) developed by Prakash Usgaonkar, Ameya, Old Goa, India, for a “methods for migrating data between heterogeneous storage platforms and devices thereof.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method, non-transitory computer readable medium, and storage controller computing device that establishes an application interface and a source interface to a programmable switch. A flow table of the programmable switch is updated to insert routing actions associated with the application and source interfaces. Next, when an application request received from an application is locally serviceable is determined. When the determination indicates the application request is not locally serviceable, a migration request for data associated with the application request is sent to the programmable switch from the source interface and a destination address of a source storage server is used. Additionally, a migration response to the migration request including the data from the source storage server is received from the source interface. The data is then stored locally in a destination storage server and thereby is migrated from the source storage server.”

The patent application was filed on October 16, 2014 (14/515,615).

Data migration preserving storage efficiency
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,832,260) developed by Bare, II, Keith, and Curley, Jonathan, Pittsburgh, PA, for a “data migration preserving storage efficiency.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Technology is disclosed for a data migration process for a storage server that preserves storage efficiency information. The storage server receives an indication of a group of two or more files and selects among the two or more files a reference file and one or more selected files. The storage server initiates a first migration operation to copy or move the reference file from a source storage server to a destination storage server. The storage server initiates one or more additional migration operations to copy or move the selected files from the source storage server to the destination storage server. At least one of the additional migration operations include a step of transmitting to the destination storage server data blocks of the selected files that are not shared between the reference file and the selected files, but avoid transmitting to the destination storage server the blocks shared with the reference file.”

The patent application was filed on September 23, 2014 (14/494,450).

Cluster scale synchronization of producer consumer file access via multi-protocol nodes
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,331) developed by Govind, Subin, San Jose, CA, for a “cluster scale synchronization of producer consumer file access via multi-protocol nodes.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In a storage cluster, a producer and a consumer can be remote from each other and have different capabilities. For example, a consumer may be running on a computing node, hereinafter (node) that operates faster than a node hosting a producer. In addition, network conditions can impact communications to/from the producer and/or the consumer. This environment allows the possibility of a consumer violating sequential access constraints of a file when a producer is writing to the file. This can lead to the consumer reading incorrect data. A file system can ensure compliance with serialization of a concurrently accessed file by obtaining a lock on a subsequent file range before releasing a currently held write lock.”

The patent application was filed on May 4, 2015 (14/703,745).

Deduplicated host cache flush to remote storage
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,273) developed by Bk, Girish Kumar, and Makkar, Gaurav, Bangalore, India, for a “deduplicated host cache flush to remote storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In addition to caching I/O operations at a host, at least some data management can migrate to the host. With host side caching, data sharing or deduplication can be implemented with the cached writes before those writes are supplied to front end storage elements. When a host cache flush to distributed storage trigger is detected, the host deduplicates the cached writes. The host aggregates data based on the deduplication into a ‘change set file’, (i.e., a file that includes the aggregation of unique data from the cached writes). The host supplies the change set file to the distributed storage system. The host then sends commands to the distributed storage system. Each of the commands identifies a part of the change set file to be used for a target of the cached writes.”

The patent application was filed on July 30, 2015 (14/814,053).

Using predictive cache statistics in storage system
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,269) developed by McKean, Brian D., Longmont, CO, and Humlicek, Donald R., Wichita, KS, for “methods and systems for using predictive cache statistics in a storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Method and systems for a storage system are provided. Simulated cache blocks of a cache system are tracked using cache metadata while performing a workload having a plurality of storage operations. The cache metadata is segmented, each segment corresponding to a cache size. Predictive statistics are determined for each cache size using a corresponding segment of the cache metadata. The predictive statistics are used to determine an amount of data that is written for each cache size within certain duration. The process then determines if each cache size provides an endurance level after executing a certain number of write operations, where the endurance level indicates a desired life-cycle for each cache size.”

The patent application was filed on July 29, 2014 (14/445,354).

Maintaining communications sessions among nodes in storage cluster system
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,238) developed by Mu, Paul Yuedong, Sundararajan, Manoj, and Ngan, Paul, Sunnyvale, CA, for “techniques for maintaining communications sessions among nodes in a storage cluster system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Various embodiments are generally directed to techniques for preparing to respond to failures in performing a data access command to modify client device data in a storage cluster system. An apparatus may include a processor component of a first node coupled to a first storage device, an access component to perform a command on the first storage device, a replication component to exchange a replica of the command with the second node via a communications session formed between the first and second nodes to enable at least a partially parallel performance of the command by the first and second nodes, and a multipath component to change a state of the communications session from inactive to active to enable the exchange of the replica based on an indication of a failure within a third node that precludes performance of the command by the third node. Other embodiments are described and claimed.”

The patent application was filed on August 29, 2014 (14/473,779).

Resynchronization with compliance data preservation
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,237) developed by Ramasubramaniam, Vaiapuri, Karnataka, India, Ramajeyam, Balamurugan, Chennai, India, Ansari, Aftab Ahman, Gangadharaiah, Akshatha, Bangalore, India, and Madaan, Raman, Saharanpur, India, for a “resynchronization with compliance data preservation.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “One or more techniques and/or computing devices are provided for implementing resynchronization operations. For example, a disaster recovery relationship may be established between a source storage volume, hosted by a source storage node, and a destination storage volume hosted by a destination storage node, such that data is replicated from the source storage volume to the destination storage volume for disaster recovery purposes. If the disaster recovery relationship breaks, then new compliance data, locked down into a write once read many state, may be created at the destination storage volume. A resynchronization operation may be performed to reestablish the disaster recovery relationship, while preserving the new compliance data so that a compliance policy is not violated. For example, cloned storage volumes, copying compliance data to source storage volumes before resynchronization, and/or moving compliance data to local volumes may be used to implement resynchronization operations while preserving compliance data.”

The patent application was filed on September 25, 2015 (14/865,542).

Online backup to object service using bulk export
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,233) developed by Binford, Charles, Wichita, KS, Segura, Theresa, Boulder, CO, and Hetrick, William, Wichita, KS, for an “online backup to an object service using bulk export.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for improving storage system performance by maintaining data integrity during bulk export to a cloud system is provided. A backup host reads a selected volume from the storage system via an I/O channel. The storage system remains online during bulk export and tracks I/O to the selected volume in a tracking log. The backup host compresses, encrypts, and calculates a checksum for each data block of the volume before writing a corresponding data object to export devices and sending a checksum data object to the cloud system. The devices are shipped to the cloud system, which imports the data objects and calculates a checksum for each. The storage system compares the imported checksums with the checksums in the checksum data object, and adds data blocks to the tracking log when errors are detected. An incremental backup is performed based on the contents of the tracking log.”

The patent application was filed on January 29, 2016 (15/010,101).

Restoration of erasure-coded data via data shuttle in distributed storage
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,221) developed by Slik, David, Burnaby, CA, Chan, Ronnie Lon Hei, and Kumaran, Vishnu Vardhan Chandra, Sunnyvale, CA, for a “restoration of erasure-coded data via data shuttle in distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments use data shuttle devices to restore erasure-coded data in a distributed storage environment. In some embodiments, a first data shuttle is communicatively coupled to a first node of the storage environment. On the data shuttle, first restoration data is generated from a first erasure-coded data portion stored on the first node. The first data shuttle or a second data shuttle is communicatively coupled to a second node of the storage environment. On the data shuttle at the second node, second restoration data is generated from a second erasure-coded data portion stored on the second node. Subsequent to transporting the first or second data shuttle from at least one of the other nodes to a third node, a third erasure-coded data portion is restored at the third node. The third erasure-coded data portion is generated via an erasure-coding process from one or more of the first or second restoration data.”

The patent application was filed on April 5, 2016 (15/090,924).

Drive wear-out prediction based on workload and risk tolerance
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,107) developed by Blount, Joseph, Wichita, KS, for a “drive wear-out prediction based on workload and risk tolerance.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for optimizing the estimation and management of wear and replacement for an array of storage devices in a storage system is disclosed. An input/output workload is monitored over part of a service period for the array. An expected wear rate is determined, based on the workload and an endurance of the storage devices. A target wear rate is calculated for the service period and each of one or more contingency periods, based on the expected wear rate and a specified risk tolerance for each period. In response to determining that the expected wear rate exceeds the target wear rate calculated for at least one of the service period and the contingency period(s), an adjusted wear rate is calculated for the array of storage devices to match the target wear rate. A replacement schedule is generated for the array based on the adjusted wear rate.”

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2016 (15/142,923).

Recovery of trapped storage space in extent store
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,103) developed by Pundir, Anshul, Sunnyvale, CA, Zheng, Ling, Saratoga, CA, and Bolen, David Brittain, Durham, NC, for a “technique for recovery of trapped storage space in an extent store.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A technique enables recovery of storage space trapped in an extent store from overlapping write requests associated with metadata describing volume logical storage addresses for data in the extent store. The metadata is organized as metadata entries in a multi-level dense tree metadata structure. When a level of the dense tree is full, the metadata entries of the level are merged with a next lower level of the dense tree in accordance with a dense tree merge operation. The technique may be invoked during the merge operation to process the metadata entries associated with the overlapping write requests involved in the merge operation. Processing of the overlapping write requests during the merge operation may partially overwrite extents which, in turn, may result in logical storage space being trapped in the extent store. The technique may perform read-modify-write, (RMW) operations on the partially overwritten extents to recapture that trapped space.”

The patent application was filed on January 5, 2016 (14/988,435).

Maintaining data block maps of clones of storage objects
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,096) developed by Raj, Bipul, and Sharma, Alok, Bangalore, India, for “maintaining data block maps of clones of storage objects.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Described herein is a system and method for retaining deduplication of data blocks of a resulting storage object, (e.g., a flexible volume) from a split operation of a clone of a base storage object. The clone may comprise data blocks that are shared with at least one data block of the base storage object and at least one data block that is not shared with at least one data block of the base storage object. The data blocks of the clone that are shared with the base storage object may be indicated to receive a write allocation that may comprise assigning a new pointer to an indicated data block. Each data block may comprise a plurality of pointers comprising a virtual address pointer and a physical address pointer. As such, data blocks of the clone comprising the same virtual address pointer may be assigned a single physical address pointer. Thus, a new physical address pointer is assigned or allocated once to a given virtual address pointer of data blocks of a clone.”

The patent application was filed on November 26, 2015 (14/952,947).

Dynamic transitioning of protection information in array systems
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,094) developed by Jibbe, Mahmoud K., Binford, Charles D., Wichita, KS, and Sun, Wei, Boulder, CO, for a “dynamic transitioning of protection information in array systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system, method, and computer program product is described for providing dynamic enabling and/or disabling of protection information, (PI) in array systems during operation. A storage system receives a request to transition a volume from PI disabled to PI enabled during regular operation. The storage system synchronizes and purges the cache associated with the target volume. The storage system initiates an immediate availability format, (IAF-PI) process to initialize PI for the associated data blocks of the volume’s storage devices. The storage system continues receiving I/O requests as the IAF-PI process sweeps through the storage devices. The storage system inserts and checks PI for the write data as it is written to the storage devices. The storage system inserts PI for requested data above the IAF-PI boundary and checks PI for requested data below the IAF-PI boundary. The transition remains an online process that avoids downtime.”

The patent application was filed on June 23, 2015 (14/746,938).

Solid state device parity caching in hybrid storage array
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,092) developed by McKean, Brian D., Longmont, CO, and Ummadi, Sandeep Kumar R., Boulder, CO, for a “solid state device parity caching in a hybrid storage array.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage manager can reduce the overhead of parity based fault tolerance by leveraging the access performance of SSDs for the parities. Since reading a parity value can be considered a small read operation, the reading of parity from an SSD is an effectively ‘free’ operation due to the substantially greater SSD read performance. With reading parity being an effectively free operation, placing parity on SSDs eliminates the parity read operations, in terms of time) from the parity based fault tolerance overhead. A storage manager can selectively place parity on SSDs from HDDs based on a criterion or criteria, which can relate to frequency of access to the data corresponding to the parity. The caching criterion can be defined to ensure the reduced overhead gained by reading parity values from a SSD outweighs any costs, (e.g., SSD write endurance).”

The patent application was filed on February 20, 2015 (14/627,825).

Policy-based data tiering using cloud architecture
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,091) developed by Venkatesan, Vivek, Morrisville, NC, Lam, Alvin, Vancouver, Canada, Ganesh, Varun, Cary, NC, and Vairavanathan, Emalayan, Vancouver, Canada, for a “policy-based data tiering using a cloud architecture.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage platform computing apparatus obtains a lifecycle management policy and configuration information for a cloud repository identified in the lifecycle management policy. The configuration information includes at least one access parameter for the cloud repository. The lifecycle management policy is applied to determine when an object is required to be replicated to the cloud repository in response to a received write request. A request to store the object in the cloud repository is generated, when the object is determined to be required to be stored in the cloud repository, wherein the request includes the access parameter. The request is sent to the cloud repository using a representational state transfer, (REST) interface associated with the cloud repository.”

The patent application was filed on February 20, 2015 (14/627,034).

Optimized read access to shared data via monitoring of mirroring operations
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,830,088) developed by Chandrashekar, Girish, Bangalore, India, for an “optimized read access to shared data via monitoring of mirroring operations.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method and system for optimized read access to shared data via monitoring of mirroring operations are described. A data storage system performs operations that include one controller in a dual-controller host storage appliance in an asymmetric active/active configuration receiving a request from the host for data on a logical unit number owned by the partner controller. The receiving controller, which has a mirror cache of the partner controller’s memory for failure recovery, accesses the mirror cache using a data structure that was populated during previous mirror operations. If the data is found in the mirror cache, it is read from the cache and returned to the requesting host without having to contact the partner controller for the data.”

The patent application was filed on September 22, 2014 (14/493,094).

Access management techniques for storage networks
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,819,738) developed by Kalman, Dean, Cary, NC, Sunday, Joseph R., Apex, NC, and Lalsangi, Raj, Cary, NC, for an “access management techniques for storage networks.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Improved access management techniques for storage networks are described. In one embodiment, for example, an apparatus may comprise a processor circuit and an access control component for execution by the processor circuit to select a set of hosts for which to enable access to a logical storage volume of a network storage cluster, select, from among a plurality of nodes of the network storage cluster, a set of nodes via which to enable access to the logical storage volume by the set of hosts, and generate a storage configuration object comprising a parameter identifying the set of nodes. Other embodiments are described and claimed.”

The patent application was filed on January 24, 2014 (14/163,067).