VMware Assigned Fourteen Patents

Synchronizing replicas with media errors in distributed storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,952,923) developed by Xiang, Enning, San Jose, CA, Knauft, Eric, San Francisco, CA, Renauld, Pascal, Palo Alto, CA, and Li, Xin, Fremont, CA, for a “synchronizing replicas with media errors in distributed storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and techniques are described for transferring data. A described technique includes receiving a request to transmit a data block from a first data storage device to a second data storage device. An attempt to read the data block from the first data storage device is made. A media error resulting from the attempt to read the data block from the first data storage device is detected. In response to detecting the media error, a new data block is generated and includes mismatched checksum data that causes a checksum mismatched error when the new data block is accessed. The new data block is transmitted for storage at the second data storage device in place of the data block.”

The patent application was filed on June 30, 2016 (15/199,128).

Predictive probabilistic deduplication of storage
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,940,337) developed by Wang, Wenguang, Santa Clara, CA, and Luo, Tian, Fremont, CA, for a “predictive probabilistic deduplication of storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Examples perform predictive probabilistic deduplication of storage, such as virtualized or physical disks. Incoming input/output, (I/O) commands include data, which is written to storage and tracked in a key-value store. The key-value store includes a hash of the data as the key, and a reference counter and the address of the data as the value. When a certain percentage of sampled incoming data is found to be duplicate, it is predicted that the I/O commands have become not unique, (e.g., duplicate). Based on the prediction, subsequent incoming data is not written to storage, and instead the reference counter associated with the hash of the data is incremented. In this manner, predictions on the uniqueness of future data is made based on previous data, and extraneous writes and deletions from the chunk store are avoided.”

The patent application was filed on May 31, 2015 (14/726,597).

Memory management in decentralized control plane of computing system
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,921,775) developed by Chrysanthakopoulos, Georgios, Seattle, WA, and Noordhuis, Pieter, Menlo Park, CA, for a “memory management in a decentralized control plane of a computing system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method of managing memory of a control plane for services in a computer system that includes executing a service host process of the control plane on a software platform of the computer system, the service host process including runtime software configured to manage lifecycles of objects representing the services, the objects being associated with the service host process and being marked as available, determining an amount of memory in the computer system consumed by the objects, marking a plurality of the objects as paused in response to the amount of memory consumed by the objects exceeding a threshold, storing at least a portion of a runtime context of each of the plurality of objects in storage of the computer system, and disassociating the plurality of objects from the service host process to reclaim memory consumed by the objects.”

The patent application was filed on June 28, 2016 (15/195,519).

Allocate physical data-storage costs to logical disks
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,916,092) developed by Saha, Mrityunjoy, Pannem, Hemanth Kumar, Pasupuleti, Swarnalatha, Gaurav, Kumar, Chandrashekar, Shrisha, and C, Gurusreekanth, Bangalore, India, for a “methods and systems to allocate physical data-storage costs to logical disks.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems are directed to allocating costs of storage arrays to logical disks. A fully loaded cost of storage of a storage area network, (SAN) is calculated based on capital and operational expenditures of the SAN. Data is stored in the SAN in logical groups partitioned into logical disks. The unit rates of the logical groups are calculated from the capacities and utilization of the storage arrays that form the SAN. The unit rate of a logical disk is the unit rate the logical group to which the logical disk belongs. The storage cost of each logical disk is calculated from the unit rate of the logical disk and the utilized capacity of the logical disk. Methods also calculate cost of unallocated capacities of the logical disks, storage arrays, and the SAN, in order to evaluate efficient use of the SAN storage resources.”

The patent application was filed on March 7, 2016 (15/062,235).

Replication of virtualized computing environment to computing system
with offline hosts
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,910,712) developed by Antony, Jinto, Bangalore, India, for a “replication of a virtualized computing environment to a computing system with offline hosts.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In an example, a method of replication between computing systems includes replicating virtual machine files from primary storage in a primary computing system to secondary storage in a secondary computing system. The virtual machine files implement a plurality of virtual machines in the primary computing system and a plurality of replica virtual machines in the secondary computing system. The method further includes replicating configuration data, from virtualization software in the primary computing system to secondary virtualization software installed on a host computer in the secondary computing system, through a platform management system in the host computer while the host computer is in a low-power state.”

The patent application was filed on June 15, 2015 (14/738,963).

Interfaces for space-optimized block devices
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,904,471) developed by Vaghani, Satyam B., San Jose, CA, and Aswathanarayana, Tejasvi, Malden, MA, for a “system software interfaces for space-optimized block devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Interfaces to storage devices that employ storage space optimization technologies, such as thin provisioning, are configured to enable the benefits gained from such technologies to be sustained. Such an interface may be provided in a hypervisor of a virtualized computer system to enable the hypervisor to discover features of a logical unit number, (LUN), such as whether or not the LUN is thinly provisioned, and also in a virtual machine, (VM) of the virtualized computer system to enable the VM to discover features of a virtual disk, such as whether or not the virtual disk is thinly provisioned. The discovery of these features enables the hypervisor or the VM to instruct the underlying storage device to carry out certain operations such as an operation to deallocate blocks previously allocated to a logical block device, so that the storage device can continue to benefit from storage space optimization technologies implemented therein.”

The patent application was filed on October 24, 2014 (14/523,584).

Using delta query to seed live migration
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,898,320) developed by Tarasuk-Levin, Gabriel, San Jose, CA, Dirks, Patrick William Penzias, Los Gatos, CA, Langouev, Ilia, Santa Cruz, CA, and Kolovson, Curt, Redwood City, CA, for a “using a delta query to seed live migration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Examples perform live migration of objects such as VMs from a source host to a destination host. The disclosure exposes the contents of the storage disk at the destination host, compares the storage disk of the destination host to the source host, and during migration, migrates only data which is not already stored at the destination host. The source and destination VMs have concurrent access to storage disks during migration. After migration, the destination VM executes, with exclusive access to the storage disks.”

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2015 (14/752,652).

Space efficient persistence of in-memory table
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,892,004) developed by Berinde, Radu, and Wang, Wenguang, Palo Alto, CA, for a “space efficient persistence of an in-memory table.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for efficiently storing the state of an in-memory table to persistent storage are described. In one embodiment, one or more requests to update an entry in an in-memory table with one or more values are received, wherein the in-memory table is stored in non-persistent memory. The one or more entries in the in-memory table are then updated with the one or more values and one or more recent redo log entries that correspond to the one or more entries and one or more values are generated. One or more historical entries in the table are selected and one or more historical redo log entries that correspond to the one or more historical entries are generated. The recent redo log entry and the one or more historical redo log entries are saved to a bounded redo log, wherein the bounded redo log is stored in persistent storage.”

The patent application was filed on September 18, 2015 (14/857,845).

Modifying instance catalog to perform operations
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,891,938) developed by Barry, David W., San Francisco, CA, Ren, Joanne, Zucca, Mike, and Farkas, Keith, Palo Alto, CA, for a “modifying an instance catalog to perform operations.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “The present disclosure is related to methods, systems, and machine-readable media for modifying an instance catalog to perform operation. A storage system can include a plurality of packfiles that store data. The storage system can include a plurality of streams that include a plurality of hashes that identify the plurality of packfiles. The storage system can include an instance catalog that includes an identification of the plurality of streams. The storage system can include an operation engine to perform a number of operations on the plurality of packfiles by modifying the instance catalog using the identification of the plurality of streams.”

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2015 (14/752,438).

Dynamic path selection policy for multipathing in virtualized environment
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,882,805) developed by Thankappan, Sudhish Panamthanath, and Antony, Jinto, Bangalore, India, for a “dynamic path selection policy for multipathing in a virtualized environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Particular embodiments change a current storage I/O path used by a host computer to access networked storage to an alternative storage I/O path by considering traffic load at a networked switch in the current storage I/O path. The host computer transmits a request to the networked switch in the current storage I/O path to provide network load information currently experiences by the networked switch. After receiving network load information from the networked switch, the host computer then evaluates whether the networked switch is overloaded based on the received network load information. Based on the evaluation, the host computer selects a new alternative storage I/O path to the networked storage that does not include the networked switch, and then forwards future storage I/O communications to the networked storage using the new alternative storage I/O path.”

The patent application was filed on September 30, 2013 (14/041,389).

Tracking data of virtual disk snapshots using tree data structures
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,881,040) developed by Rawat, Mayank, Sunnyvale, CA, Shukla, Ritesh, Saratoga, CA, Ding, Li, Cupertino, CA, Pashenkov, Serge, Los Altos, CA, and Ahuja, Raveesh, San Jose, CA, for a “tracking data of virtual disk snapshots using tree data structures.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “User data of different snapshots for the same virtual disk are stored in the same storage object. Similarly, metadata of different snapshots for the same virtual disk are stored in the same storage object, and log data of different snapshots for the same virtual disk are stored in the same storage object. As a result, the number of different storage objects that are managed for snapshots do not increase proportionally with the number of snapshots taken. In addition, any one of the multitude of persistent storage back-ends can be selected as the storage back-end for the storage objects according to user preference, system requirement, snapshot policy, or any other criteria. Another advantage is that the storage location of the read data can be obtained with a single read of the metadata storage object, instead of traversing metadata files of multiple snapshots.”

The patent application was filed on August 20, 2015 (14/831,808).

Non-homogeneous disk abstraction for data oriented applications
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,880,773) developed by Rajani, Vineet, Bangalore, India, and Tomar, Nagendra S., Palo Alto, CA, for a “non-homogeneous disk abstraction for data oriented applications.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “One embodiment of the system described herein facilitates a virtualized heterogeneous disk that supports differentiated storage service qualities. During operation, the system mounts a plurality of partitions of a heterogeneous disk at different mount points, each mount point corresponding to a level of quality of service, (QoS). The system then receives a write command and identifies a QoS level indication associated with the write command. Subsequently, the system selects a partition on the heterogeneous disk with performance parameters matching the identified QoS level and writes data to the selected partition. The heterogeneous disk is an abstraction of a plurality of virtualized storage devices. Furthermore, the heterogeneous disk has a single block address space, and the virtualized storage devices are allowed to have differentiated performance parameters, thereby facilitating differentiated QoS levels in the heterogeneous disk.”

The patent application was filed on March 27, 2013 (13/851,828).

Multi-level snapshot caching
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,875,184) developed by Drzewiecki, Adrian, Mountain View, CA, and Klee, Christoph, Snoqualmie, WA, for a “multi-level snapshot caching.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for processing a read request comprises intercepting a read request that includes a logical block address, (LBA) of the storage device by an IO filter driver and retrieving a disk identifier, (ID) associated with the LBA from a metadata file associated with the storage device. The method further comprises sending the LBA and the disk ID to a daemon configured to read and write to a cache. If the daemon returns cached data associated with the LBA and the disk ID, the method returns the cached data in response to the read request. If the daemon does not return cached data associated with the LBA and the disk ID, the method transmits the read request to the storage device.”

The patent application was filed on March 12, 2015 (14/645,733).

Disk storage allocation for virtual machines
VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA , has been assigned a patent (9,841,931) developed by Li, Xinhui, Beijing, China, Lu, Luke, and Liu, Deng, San Jose, CA, for a “systems and methods of disk storage allocation for virtual machines.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for allocating storage for a virtual machine includes receiving a request to allocate a block of disk storage on a physical disk to a virtual disk associated with the virtual machine. The method also includes identifying a plurality of available blocks on the physical disk, each of the plurality of available blocks defining a radial distance from a center axis of a platter of the physical disk. The method further includes determining which of the plurality of available blocks has a greatest radial distance from the center axis of the platter and, based on the determining, selecting an allocation block from the plurality of available blocks, the allocation block having the greatest radial distance from the center axis of the platter. The method also includes allocating the allocation block to the virtual machine.”

The patent application was filed on March 31, 2014 (14/231,168).