EMC IP Holding/Dell Technologies Assigned Twenty-Two Patents

Adaptor for storage device
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, a Dell Technologies company, has been assigned a patent (10,588,237) developed by Zhai, Haifang, Dong, David, Zhou, Michael Hao, Hao, Sandburg, and Chen, Sean Xu, Shanghai, China, for an “adaptor for storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques involve use of an adaptor for a storage device. The adaptor includes a baseboard arranged to support an Open Compute Project, (OCP) mezzanine card in the storage device, a connector coupled to the baseboard and arranged to connect with the storage device, and an adapting part coupled to the baseboard and including an insertion slot for receiving a first interface of the OCP mezzanine card.”

The patent application was filed on April 17, 2018 (15/954,656).

Sustaining backup service level objectives using dynamic resource allocation
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,587,686) developed by Wigmore, Ian, Westborough, MA, Smaldone, Stephen, Woodstock, CT, and Don, Arieh, Newton, MA, for a “sustaining backup service level objectives using dynamic resource allocation.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A backup engine of a first storage system receives a request to perform a backup session from the first storage system to a second storage system based on a backup service level objective,(SLO) that has been configured for the backup session. In response to the request, it is determined that a first backup resource allocated for the backup session by the first storage system cannot satisfy the SLO based on statistics of prior backup sessions in view of characteristics of the backup session to be performed. A dynamic resource allocation, (DRA) module is to dynamically perform a first DRA to modify the first backup resource to satisfy the SLO. The backup engine then initiates the backup session by transmitting backup data from the first storage system to the second storage system using the modified first backup resource.”

The patent application was filed on January 28, 2019 (16/259,819).

Presenting status of storage cluster
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,587,470) developed by Cong, Honglei, Liang, Ryan Menglei, Qian, Mark Yue, and Huang, Zhou, Shanghai, China, for “method and apparatus for presenting status of storage cluster.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Various embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method for presenting a storage cluster status, comprising: in response to a request for monitoring a first target node in a storage cluster, monitoring whether a configuration status of the first target node is changed, and in response to the configuration status of the first target node being changed, presenting changed configuration status information of the first target node to the user.”

The patent application was filed on September 21, 2016 (15/271,339).

Utilizing data access patterns to determine compression block size in data storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,585,856) developed by Bigman, Ron, Holon, Israel, for “utilizing data access patterns to determine compression block size in data storage systems.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for performing data compression in which host application data access patterns are used to determine a compression block size, which is the size of the blocks of data to which compression is applied by a data storage system. A compression block size may be set to the size of the typical data access performed by a host application on the storage data object. The performance resulting from using multiple compression block sizes may be calculated using a detected data access pattern, and the compression block size set to the size of the typical data access pattern performed by the host application in response to the performance resulting from using a compression block size equal to the typical data access performed by the host application on the storage data object exceeding the performance resulting from using the other compression block sizes.”

The patent application was filed on June 28, 2016 (15/195,258).

Caching directories in storage system
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,585,802) developed by Singh, Pranay, San Ramon, CA, Mamidi, Murthy, San Jose, CA, and Shang, Pengju, Milpitas, CA, for “method and system for caching directories in a storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”According to some embodiment, a storage system selects one or more directories within a file system as candidates for caching based on directory statistics associated with the directories, where each of the directories includes one or more file objects stored in the storage system. For each of the selected directories, the system determines whether the directory is to be cached based on a directory cache policy. The system caches the directory in a cache memory device in response to determining that the directory is to be cached.”

The patent application was filed on July 13, 2017 (15/649,570).

Configuring data storage system by analyzing and grouping activity data of multiple LUNs
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,585,605) developed by Khokhar, Muzhar S., and Reddy, Shyam, Shrewsbury, MA, for “configuring data storage system by analyzing and grouping activity data of multiple LUNs.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for configuring a new data storage system generate IOPS distribution models from activity data of an existing data storage system and use the IOPS distribution models to generate a storage configuration for the new data storage system. Such techniques assign LUNs of the existing storage system to groups based on their input-out, (I/O) characteristics and provide a storage configuration tailored to the expected IOPS distributions of each group of LUNs based on the IOPS distribution models and the activity data. The storage configurations also include RAID implementations tailored to each group of LUNs.”

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2017 (15/499,426).

Configuring data storage system based on workload skew
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,585,591) developed by Khokhar, Muzhar S., and Reddy, Shyam, Shrewsbury, MA, for “configuring a data storage system based on workload skew.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for configuring multi-tier data storage systems provide a model of skewed workload distributions in such systems and configure them by applying a received input skew value representing a prediction of system skew and the model. The technique applies the input skew value to generate a desired proportion of total system IOPS to be handled by each storage tier in the system and applies the model to convert the IOPS percentage for each storage tier into a corresponding capacity percentage. The technique then generates actual capacity for each tier by applying the percent capacity for each tier to a design target for total storage capacity in the system. Advantageously, these techniques generate storage tier configurations that are likely to be neither overdesigned nor underdesigned, and are thus likely to meet both performance requirements and cost targets.”

The patent application was filed on December 29, 2016 (15/394,134).

Fast geo recovery for elastic cloud storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,490) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Buinov, Konstantin, Kirovsk, Russia, Karpenkov, Sergey, Trusov, Maxim S., and Zakharov, Kirill, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a “fast geo recovery method for elastic cloud storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”One embodiment is related to a method for remote replication recovery, comprising: determining that a damaged data chunk at a first zone of a cloud storage system is not recoverable locally, determining one or more data fragments of the damaged data chunk that are to be recovered with remote replication recovery based on data stored at a second zone and at a third zone of the cloud storage system, wherein the damaged data chunk comprises a plurality of data fragments, recovering the one or more data fragments of the damaged data chunk with remote replication recovery based on the data stored at the second zone and at the third zone of the cloud storage system, and repairing the damaged data chunk with the recovered data fragments at the first zone.”

The patent application was filed on June 28, 2017 (15/636,470).

Restoring data from storage device to cloud
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,481) developed by LeCrone, Douglas E., Hopkinton, MA, and Quinn, Brett A., Lincoln, RI, for “restoring data from a storage device to a cloud.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Restoring data from a storage device to a cloud service includes initializing each of a plurality of flags for each of portions of the data when the data is initially recalled from the cloud service to the storage device, the flags indicating whether a corresponding portion of the data has been modified while being stored on the storage device, modifying a particular one of the flags in response to a corresponding one of the portions being modified, transferring only portions of the data having corresponding flags that have been modified to migrate, and merging the portions of the data with remaining data at the cloud service. Data that is recalled from the cloud service to the storage device may be maintained on the cloud service. The portions of data that are transferred from the storage device to the cloud service may overwrite data maintained at the cloud service.”

The patent application was filed on January 31, 2018 (15/885,008).

Data analysis in storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,419) developed by Zou, Colin Yong, Beijing, China, Yang, Xiangqing, Shanghai, China, Lv, Man, and Lin, Wei, Beijing, China, for a “data analysis in storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method of analyzing data in a storage system, a storage system, and a computer program product. The method includes: in response to detecting a request for a data analytic job, obtaining target data for the data analytic job from a first storage device of the storage system. The method also includes storing the target data into a second storage device of the storage system that is assigned for data analysis, and performing the data analytic job using a data processing device and the second storage device in the storage system.”

The patent application was filed on June 21, 2017 (15/629,659).

Processing platform configured to estimate storage performance
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,301) developed by Aharoni, Dan, Brookline, MA, Ding, Rui, Wilmington, MA, and Zhou, Mingjie, Ashland, MA, for a “processing platform configured to estimate storage system performance utilizing processor characteristics.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A processing platform is configured to communicate over a network with one or more client devices, and to receive a request from a given one of the client devices for a proposed configuration of a storage system. The processing platform identifies based at least in part on the received request at least one processor to be utilized in implementing the storage system, selects a particular one of a plurality of storage system performance models based at least in part on the identified processor, computes a performance metric for the storage system utilizing the selected storage system performance model and one or more characteristics of the identified processor, generates presentation output comprising:(i) the performance metric, and (ii) information characterizing at least a portion of the proposed configuration of the storage system, and delivers the presentation output to the given client device over the network.”

The patent application was filed on January 7, 2019 (16/241,599).

Scaling-in for geographically diverse storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,297) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, and Kurilov, Andrey, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a “scaling-in for geographically diverse storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Scaling-in of a geographically diverse data storage system is disclosed. Data chunks stored in storage devices of different zones can be convolved to conserve memory. The zone storage system can be a geographically diverse storage system. Removing a zone from the geographically diverse data storage system can risk data loss without adequate replication of data from the zone to be removed. The zone to be removed can be placed in a `read-only` state. Data chunks form the zone to be removed can be duplicated at other zones of the geographically diverse data storage system. A data chunk comprising convolved representations of data is duplicated to a zone in a manner that results in loss of geographical diversity, a corresponding chunk can be duplicated at another zone to restore geographical diversity. Validation of data can be performed prior to removal of a zone in a scaling-in event.”

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2018 (15/965,479).

Distributed copy in multi-copy replication
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,282) developed by Baruch, Leehod, Rishon Leziyon, Israel, Natanzon, Assaf, Tel Aviv, Israel, Shemer, Jehuda, Kfar Saba, Israel, Lieberman, Amit, Raanana, Israel, and Bigman, Ron, Holon, Israel, for a “distributed copy in multi-copy replication where offset and size of I/O requests to replication site is half offset and size of I/O request to production volume.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In one embodiment, a method includes replicating a production volume on a plurality of replica volume portions. Each replica volume portion is stored on a respective storage array with a respective journal. The replicating includes distributing data from a write command to a production volume across the replica volume portions using a coding scheme. A subset of replica volume portions, less than a total number of replica volume portions, includes data for a full replica volume of the production volume.”

The patent application was filed on March 30, 2016 (15/085,148).

Non-disruptive insertion of virtualized storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,579,277) developed by Shanmugam, Sadasivam, Hosur, India, Venkataraman, Srikanth, Manicka, Rajkumar, Ka, India, and Bromling, Steven Richard, Edmonton, CA, for a “non-disruptive insertion of virtualized storage appliance.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Non-disruptive insertion of a storage appliance provides virtualized storage. A first logical device of a data storage system is exposed to a first host and a second host. A data store of the first logical device is uniquely identified using a signature. After inserting the storage appliance between the first host and the data storage system, the first logical device is presented, through the storage appliance, to the first host as a second logical device. After inserting the storage appliance between the second host and the data storage system, the first logical device is presented, through the storage appliance, to the second host as the second logical device. The first and second hosts identify the second logical device and the first logical device as the same logical device using the signature. The data store may be a virtual machine file system data store used by virtual machines on the hosts.”

The patent application was filed on October 27, 2017 (15/795,424).

Data-less backups modification during checkpoint merging
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,351) developed by Bansal, Aaditya Rakesh, and Yadav, Sunil, Bangalore, India, for “system and method for data-less backups modification during checkpoint merging.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A production host includes a persistent storage for storing backup policies and a production agent that obtains a backup generation request for a virtual machine of the virtual machines, in response to the backup generation request, performs a continuity chain verification of a continuity chain associated with the virtual machine to identify a continuity state of backups associated with the virtual machine, makes a first determination, based on the continuity state of the backups associated with the virtual machine, that the backups associated with the virtual machine are in a remediable state, and, in response to the first determination, performs a remediation of the continuity chain to change the backups associated with the virtual machine to be in a continuous state, and generates a backup of the virtual machine using the backup policies while the continuity state of the backups associated with the virtual machine are in the continuous state.”

The patent application was filed on October 16, 2018 (16/161,889).

Improved application consistency in distributed environment
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,350) developed by Bansal, Aaditya Rakesh, Yadav, Sunil, Chopra, Shelesh, Acharya, Soumen, Sharma, Manish, Hebsur, Sudha Vamanraj, Hebbur, Hareej G., Bangalore, India, for “system and method for improved application consistency in a distributed environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A production host for hosting virtual machines includes a persistent storage and a production agent. The persistent storage stores virtual machine data associated with a virtual machine of the virtual machines and a virtual machine shadow copy associated with the virtual machine data. The production agent obtains a backup generation request for the virtual machine, in response to the backup generation request, generates the virtual machine shadow copy, makes a determination that the virtual machine shadow copy comprises an auto-recovery disk that comprises some data, in response to the determination, merges the virtual machine shadow copy using a parent block set storage template to obtain a backup of the virtual machine, and store the backup in backup storage. The parent block set storage template is not associated with the virtual machine shadow copy.”

The patent application was filed on October 16, 2018 (16/161,860).

Backup in virtualized environment
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,349) developed by Chopra, Shelesh, Hebbur, Hareej, Yadav, Sunil, Sharma, Manish, Hebsur, Sudha, Acharya, Soumen, Bansal, Aaditya, and Tokuri, Suman, Bangalore, India, for “system and method for backup in a virtualized environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A remote backup agent that provides data storage services to virtual machines includes a persistent storage and a processor. The persistent storage stores workflows for the virtual machines. The processor performs a first remote backup of the virtual machines based on the workflows using production agents hosted by production hosts that also host the virtual machines, obtains a workflow update, updates the workflows based on the workflow update to obtain updated workflows, and performs a second remote backup of the virtual machines based on the updated workflows using the production hosts without modifying the production agents.”

The patent application was filed on April 27, 2018 (15/964,099).

Predicting physical storage unit health
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,323) developed by Zhai, Haifang, Pan, Peter, and Luo, Norton, Shanghai, China, for a “predicting physical storage unit health.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Maintaining a data storage device having a plurality of physical storage units includes constructing a model that predicts failure of the physical storage units in the data storage device, where the model is trained using empirical data containing operational parameters of physical storage units, determining failure predictions of the physical storage units in the data storage device using the model, moving applications in the data storage device based on the failure predictions of the physical storage units in the data storage device, and maintaining the physical storage units in the data storage device according to the failure predictions of the physical storage units in the data storage device. The model may be constructed using a Random Forest Classifier model from the Scikit-Learn software package. Using empirical data containing operational parameters of physical storage units may include accessing publicly available empirical data.”

The patent application was filed on October 24, 2017 (15/791,485).

Data lifetime-aware migration
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,174) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, and Vazhenin, Maksim, Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a “data lifetime-aware migration.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Data lifetime-aware migration is presented herein. A data sorting component can generate a list of data portions that have been sorted in ascending order of respective determined probabilities that the data portions will be deleted from a source storage device during a migration of the data portions from the source storage device to a destination storage device–the migration comprising copying at least a part of the data portions from the source storage device to the destination storage device. Further, a data lifetime-aware component can iteratively migrate, based on the list in the ascending order of the respective determined probabilities, at least the part of the data portions from the source storage device to the destination storage device.”

The patent application was filed on June 15, 2018 (16/010,228).

Data management in elastic cloud storage
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,173) developed by Danilov, Mikhail, Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Skripko, Grigorii, Seattle, WA, for a “data management in an elastic cloud storage environment.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Elastic cloud storage, (ECS) systems typically divide storage nodes into geographic or topological zones and implement various concepts that enable the system to be extremely efficient in terms of capacity management. Architectures detailed herein can improve ECS and other similar systems in terms of inter-zone data transfers and remote data caching without violating core concepts of an ECS system that enable efficient capacity management.”

The patent application was filed on July 10, 2018 (16/030,976).

Multi-granular data reduction for remote data replication
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,172) developed by Ippatapu, Venkata L R, Westborough, MA, for a “multi-granular data reduction for remote data replication.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Multi-granular deduplication is performed on I/O data received at a storage system as part of replicating the I/O data to another storage system. Deduplication may be performed in an iterative fashion, for example, on blocks and smaller and smaller sub-blocks of the I/O data. Deduplication may be performed on blocks and smaller sub-blocks by comparing each block or sub-block to preceding blocks or sub-blocks, respectively, in the I/O data to determine if there is a duplicate. If a duplicate block of sub-block is determined for a block or sub-block, the block or sub-block may be replaced in the I/O data with a reference to the duplicate block or sub-block in a deduplication header for the block. A metadata structure may indicate which blocks of the I/O data have had deduplication performed thereon. The replicating storage system may use the metadata structure and deduplication block headers to restore the I/O data.”

The patent application was filed on April 20, 2018 (15/958,556).

Managing storage device
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA, has been assigned a patent (10,572,163) developed by Liu, Yousheng, Han, Geng, Dong, Jibing, Jia, Ruiyong, Gao, Jian, and Xu, Xinlei, Beijing, China, for “method and system for managing storage device.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system for managing a storage area. In one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method for managing a storage areas, comprising: obtaining a storage area in a storage system according to a predefined dividing rule, determining status regarding whether the storage area has been used, setting a status identifier for the storage area based on the use status, and managing the storage area based on the status identifier. In another embodiment, there is proposed a system for managing a storage area, comprising: one or more processors, a memory coupled to at least one processor of the one or more processors, computer program instructions stored in the memory’ which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to execute a method for managing a storage area.”

The patent application was filed on June 15, 2017 (15/623,636).