Microsoft Technology Licensing Assigned Eighteen Patents

Maintenance of storage devices with multiple logical units
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,901,846) developed by Lee, Scott Chao-Chueh, Bellevue, WA, Ogus, Aaron William, Woodinville, WA, Bhattacharya, Subhasish, Matthew, Bryan Stephen, Seattle, WA, and Malayala, Srinivasan, Redmond, WA, for a “maintenance of storage devices with multiple logical units.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”The techniques described herein are configured to improve the remanufacturing process by waiting to rebuild selective data items stored on a storage device that is unavailable. A storage device is unavailable when it is taken offline and/or disconnected from a network. The storage device may be taken offline due to a failed component (e.g., an actuator arm, an actuator head, damage to the underlying storage media, etc.). The storage device comprises multiple independent logical units, where a logical unit is a uniquely addressable portion of a storage device that is visible and/or that is exposed to a host. Accordingly, the techniques described herein are configured to conserve resources by selectively rebuilding data items stored in logical units of an offline storage device that are not affected by a remanufacturing process implemented due to a failed component.”

The patent application was filed on April 2, 2018 (15/943,555).

Hash-based partitioning
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,901,796) developed by Mainali, Shane,Chalakov, Georgi M., Duvall, WA, Sah, Maneesh, Sun, Zichen, Sammamish, WA, Roberson, Michael E., Seattle, WA, Edwards, Andrew J., Bellevue, WA, Devaraju, Jegan, and Varadarajan, Krishnan, Redmond, WA, for a “hash-based partitioning system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In various embodiments, methods and systems for implementing hash-based partitioning in distributed computing systems are provided. At a high level, a distributed computing system having an underlying range-based partitioning architecture for storage may be configured as a hash-based partitioning system, for example, a hybrid range-hash table storage. An operations engine of the hash-based partitioning system receives a tenant request to provision input/output operations per second (IOPS). The tenant request comprises a requested number of IOPS. Based on the tenant request, a provisioning operation to provision IOPS in a hybrid range-hash table storage with hash-based partitioning is determined. The provisioning operation is selected from one of the following: a table creation provisioning operation, an IOPS increase provisioning operation, and an IOPS decrease provisioning operation. The selected provisioning operation is executed for a corresponding table. A user request for data is processed using the table associated with the requested number of IOPS.”

The patent application was filed on June 29, 2018 (16/024,193).

Distributed storage with automatic snapshots, user snapshots and soft delete
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,901,648) developed by Mainali, Shane Kumar, Redmond, WA, Zhang, Quan, Kenmore, WA, Rajendran, Kaviyarasan, Subramani, Sundar P., Edwards, Andrew, Sah, Maneesh, Fritz, Krisjan David, Redmond, WA, Hauss, Michael, Seattle, WA, Yan, Jianhua, Redmond, WA, and Roberson, Michael, Redmond, WA, for a “distributed data storage system with automatic snapshots, user snapshots and soft delete.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A cloud storage system includes a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable medium to store blob table management instructions for execution by the processor. The blob table management instructions are configured to manage a plurality of storage requests for a blob stored in a storage stamp as snapshots in a blob table and selectively create a user snapshot of at least one of the snapshots in the blob table. When automatic snapshots are enabled, the blob table management instructions are configured to receive a first request to overwrite the blob. If the first request does not further specify a key of the one of the snapshots in the blob table, the blob table management instructions are configured to add a new snapshot to the blob table and maintain storage of a prior snapshot of the blob for a maximum period.”

The patent application was filed on November 28, 2018 (16/202,283).

Applying log to storage segments
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,877,868) developed by Diaconu, Cristian, Kirkland, WA, Budovski, Alexander, Snohomish, WA, Saenz, Alejandro Hernandez, Kirkland, WA, Prakash, Naveen, Sammamish, WA, and Reisteter, Krystyna, Redmond, WA, for “applying a log to storage segments.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Use of a log service computing system to apply a log to storage segments in the context of there being a primary compute system that operates upon data, and secondary compute system(s) that are at the ready to be promoted to the new primary compute system should the old primary compute system fail. Rather than have each of the primary and secondary compute systems maintain their own replicated of the entire data locally, the data is separated in storage segments that are collectively distributed amongst multiple storage segment servers.”

The patent application was filed on September 21, 2018 (16/138,083).

Isolation of virtual machine I/O in multi-disk hosts
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,877,787) developed by Russinovich, Mark, Clyde Hill, WA, and Govindaraju, Naga, Redmond, WA, for “isolation of virtual machine I/O in multi-disk hosts.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and computer storage media for concurrently maintaining a spanned virtual hard drive across two or more computer-storage media and a non-spanned virtual hard drive on one of computer-storage media. The method includes storing data of the spanned virtual hard drive across the computer-storage media utilizing volume spanning. While the spanned virtual hard drive is maintained on the computer storage media, the method includes storing data of the non-spanned virtual hard drive on one of the computer-storage media.”

The patent application was filed on December 26, 2017 (15/854,531).

Merged message storage data structure
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,862,844) developed by Singh, Surendra, Bothell, WA, Harsh,, Bellevue, WA, Pan, Xiaozhong, Redmond, WA, Lan, Joshua, Seattle, WA, Govindarajan, Narasimhan, Rajeevalochanam, Jayanth Munikote, Redmond, WA, and Venkataraman, Prashanth, Redmond, WA, for a “merged message storage data structure.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data processing system, including non-volatile memory storing a plurality of messages included in a group discussion among a plurality of users. The non-volatile memory may further store metadata including an ordering of the messages. The data processing system may further include a processor configured to, for a first message storage data structure and a second message storage data structure, each associated with a first user of the plurality of users, determine that the one or more messages of the first message storage data structure and the second message storage data structure are contiguous in the ordering. The processor may generate a merged message storage data structure including each message included in the first message storage data structure and the second message storage data structure. The processor may generate a receipt based on the merged message storage data structure and transmit the receipt to a second user.”

The patent application was filed on March 12, 2019 (16/351,395).

Active key rolling for sensitive data protection
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,860,724) developed by Pearson, Malcolm Eric, Kirkland, WA, and Acar, Tolga, Sammamish, WA, for an “active key rolling for sensitive data protection.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In aspects of active key rolling for sensitive data protection, a data security system includes memory storage implemented as a data store to maintain a batch of sensitive data instruments each encrypted with a previous encryption key. A data encryption service can receive a request from a client device for data in a sensitive data instrument from the batch of the sensitive data instruments. The data encryption service can decrypt the sensitive data instrument with the previous encryption key making the requested data in the sensitive data instrument available for access by the client device. The data encryption service can then re-encrypt the sensitive data instrument with a new encryption key effective to update the encryption of the sensitive data instrument, the updated encryption being triggered based on the request for the data and the decryption of the sensitive data instrument.”

The patent application was filed on June 13, 2017 (15/621,562).

Long-running storage manageability operation management
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,860,402) developed by Hembram, Shyama Prasad, Bothell, WA, and Franco, Gustavo Rafael, Duvall, WA, for a “long-running storage manageability operation management.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Serving resources. A method includes sending a message to a client indicating that the client should attempt to obtain status information for one or more asynchronous read/write operations on a datastore, requested by the client but not yet completed, at a later time. A request is received from the client for status information about the asynchronous, read/write, storage operations on the datastore. A message is sent to the client indicating that the asynchronous read/write operations are in progress and that the client should attempt to obtain status information for the asynchronous read/write operations on the datastore at a later time. Requests are received from the client for status information about the operations until the asynchronous read/write operations are complete, after which, an indication is provided to the client indicating that the asynchronous read/write operations have been completed.”

The patent application was filed on October 18, 2018 (16/164,174).

Hybrid powering off of storage component memory cells
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,852,807) developed by Lee, Yongjoon, Snoqualmie, WA, for “hybrid powering off of storage component memory cells.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A storage component includes multiple nonvolatile memory cells and a storage controller that manages the storage of data in and the retrieval of data from the memory cells. A computing device includes or is coupled to the storage component. A processor of the computing device provides a processor power enable signal to the storage component, allowing the processor to turn on and off power to the memory cells as the processor deems appropriate. The storage controller provides a storage controller power enable signal that allows the storage controller to turn on and off power to the memory cells as the storage controller deems appropriate. These power enable signals are inputs to a combinatorial logic component that allows the storage controller to have power to the memory cells turned off even though the processor may deem that power to the memory cells is to be turned on.”

The patent application was filed on February 1, 2018 (15/886,665).

Data migration to cloud computing
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,846,262) developed by Yap, Joe Keng, Thangaraju, Mahadevan, Sammamish, WA, Livingston, Sean L., Bothell, WA, Cannerozzi, Roberta, Bellevue, WA, Moussa, Ghania, Issaquah, WA, Estrin, Ron Shimon, Bellevue, WA, Lin, Yu-Ting, Bourdages, Simon, Redmond, WA, Nguyen, Trung Duc, Bellevue, WA, Cai, Wenyu, Koehne, Zachary Adam, Simek, Patrick J., Gulati, Sukhvinder Singh, and Canning, Ben, Redmond, WA, for a “data migration to a cloud computing system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A cloud-based migration system exposes a source-independent application programming interface for receiving data to be migrated. The data is uploaded and stored as a single entity in a cloud-based storage system. A migration system then accesses the migration package and begins migrating the data to its destination, from the cloud-based storage system.”

The patent application was filed on January 7, 2019 (16/241,262).

Constructing virtual motherboards and virtual storage
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,841,234) developed by Mickens, James Wiliamson, Bellevue, WA, and Farasat, Ali Raza, Sammamish, WA, for “constructing virtual motherboards and virtual storage devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Described herein are various technologies pertaining to a computing system architecture that facilitates construction of virtual motherboards and virtual storage devices. A computing system includes a plurality of computing nodes and a plurality of storage nodes, where the computing nodes are disaggregated from the storage nodes. The computing nodes include respective system on chip modules. The computing nodes and the storage nodes are communicatively coupled by way of a full bisection bandwidth network, where each storage node is allocated network bandwidth that at least matches the maximum input/output speed of the storage node. Responsive to receipt of a client request, computing nodes are allocated to the client and exposed to an application of the client as a motherboard. Likewise, storage nodes are allocated to the client and exposed to the application of the client as a larger storage device.”

The patent application was filed on December 26, 2016 (15/390,557).

Storing service items in association with views
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,838,972) developed by Sinha, Amit K., Bellevue, WA, Balasubramanian, Kavitha, Redmond, WA, Kozlowski, Dawid, Issaquah, WA, Borysenko, Michael I., Redmond, WA, and Wells, Stephen Thomas, Seattle, WA, for “storing service items in association with views.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems, methods, and software are described herein to support view-based storage. A service application that provides a user interface to a service receives data communicated by the service and identifies at least a service item to present in at least one of various views rendered in the user interface. The service application then identifies with which of the views to associate the service item and stores the service item in association with an identified view or views.”

The patent application was filed on March 13, 2014 (14/210,109).

Including personal relationship metadata within duplicated resources shared across partitioned storage
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,838,819) developed by Tennoe, Jorgen, Solonko, Kateryna, Pereira, Vando, Olsen, Runar Bergheim, Hult, Simon, and Kvalheim, Bard, Oslo, Norway, for “including personal relationship metadata within duplicated resources shared across partitioned storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A server system comprising: a respective storage area for each of a plurality of respective parties including a first party and a second party, and a manager function for managing the storage. Each of at least some of the storage areas stores a primary instance of one or more data resources of the respective party. The manager function is configured so as, in response to the second party forming a relationship with one of the resources of the first party, to establish a secondary copy of that one of the resources of the first party in the respective storage area of the second party. In the secondary copy, the manager function also includes personal metadata describing one or more attributes of the relationship between the second party and the resource.”

The patent application was filed on January 18, 2017 (15/409,451).

Cloud storage distributed file
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,831,720) developed by Mainali, Shane Kumar, Duvall, WA, Marquardt, Thomas Leo, Newcastle, WA, Sun, Zichen, Sammamish, WA, Chalakov, Georgi, Duvall, WA, Sah, Maneesh, Sammamish, WA, Manii, Esfandiar, Kirkland, WA, Pant, Saurabh, Bellevue, WA, Kaban, Dana Yulian, Seattle, WA, Ahwal, Saher B., Chen, Jun, Zhou, Da, Singh, Amit Pratap, Gu, Junhua, Redmond, WA, Zhang, Shaoyu, Shanghai, China, and Chen, Wei, Redmond, WA, for a “cloud storage distributed file system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for providing file system functions on a cloud storage system based on blob storage. A cloud storage system comprises storage clusters, and each storage cluster comprises a plurality of storage nodes (each including a partition layer that stores data in blobs organized within containers, and a stream layer for streaming blob data), a hierarchical namespace service for implementing file system functions on the data stored in the blobs and, a front end layer for processing user requests to access and manage data stored on the blobs. The file system functions include flat namespace functions and hierarchical namespace functions. Further, the front end layer accesses the partition layer to access the blobs based on addresses of blobs and accesses the hierarchical namespace service to identify the blobs.”

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2018 (16/019,311).

Securely storing data in storage system
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,826,689) developed by Oliver, David Charles, Wang, Ming-wei, Bellevue, WA, Xue, Mingquan, Holder, Christopher Paul, Redmond, WA, Winter, Daniel Keith, Monroe, WA, and Manek, Parul, Redmond, WA, for “securely storing data in a data storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data file is encrypted with a file-specific encryption key and sent to a remote data storage system. The file-specific encryption key is encrypted with a master key. The encrypted file-specific encryption key and the master key are both stored remotely from the encrypted file and they are stored remotely from one another.”

The patent application was filed on July 16, 2018 (16/036,035).

Distributed transactions in cloud storage with hierarchical namespace
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,498) developed by Chalakov, Georgi, Mainali, Shane Kumar, Duvall, WA, Marquardt, Thomas Leo, Newcastle, WA, Sun, Zichen, Sah, Maneesh, Sammamish, WA, Chen, Wei, Redmond, WA, Kaban, Dana Yulian, Seattle, WA, Ahwal, Saher B., Redmond, WA, Zhang, Shaoyu, Zhang, Jingchao, Shanghai, China, Zhang, Quan, Chen, Jun, Redmond, WA, Manii, Esfandiar, Kirkland, WA, Pant, Saurabh, Bellevue, WA, Zhou, Da, Singh, Amit Pratap, and Gu, Junhua, Redmond, WA, for “distributed transactions in cloud storage with hierarchical namespace.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and programs provide for executing distributed transactions in a cloud storage system with a hierarchical namespace. One method includes receiving a request with operations to be executed atomically. Further, nodes are identified for executing the operations, each node having a respective clock and having at least part of a transactions table for controlling updates to entities. Each clock is one of a loosely-synchronized, a strictly-synchronized clock, a logical, or a physical clock. Additionally, the nodes process the operations, which includes setting a commit timestamp (CS) to a value of the clock in the node if the node is a first node in the processing. One node coordinates the transactions, and may be one of the nodes executing transactions. If the clock in the node is less than a current value of the CS, the node waits for the clock to reach the current value of the CS and the CS is updated. The transactions table is updated based on the value of the CS, the atomic execution is committed utilizing the final value of the CS, and a status is returned.”

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2018 (16/018,553).

Programming model for performant computing in document-oriented storage services
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,312) developed by Shukla, Dharma, Gajendran, Madhan, Bellevue, WA, and Bradley, Quetzalcoatl, Monroe, WA, for a “programming model for performant computing in document-oriented storage services.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Object-oriented application languages often provide resources to applications for accessing objects stored in the volatile application memory region, and, separately, for packaging objects for persistent storage and network transport by serialization and deserialization involving a storage format. However, this design creates discrepancies between the application language and storage format, and depends on affirmative serialization and deserialization by the application. Presented herein are techniques for providing object access to objects involving persisting the objects as documents in a document store, where such persistence occurs automatically upon object creation and updating, and where such objects are stored in a language format integral to the application language (e.g., when a JavaScript application creates an object, the objects are automatically stored as documents of the document store in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format). This design enables various advantages in efficiency, flexibility, and seamless interaction between the application and the objects.”

The patent application was filed on March 14, 2013 (13/827,917).

Data partitioning in distributed storage
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,817,197) developed by Devaraju, Jegan, Seela, Pradeep, Redmond, WA, Tsai, Yi-Fan, Bellevue, WA, Lou, Yongfu, Redmond, WA, Lange, Kristopher T., Seattle, WA, Zhang, Pei, Sah, Maneesh, Sammamish, WA, and Mainali, Shane K., Duvall, WA, for a “data partitioning in a distributed storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed storage system includes multiple partitions. A block received for storage is striped across the partitions if it meets predetermined criteria. Multiple tables are maintained for indexing the blocks and the subblocks of blocks that are partitioned. The tables for the subblocks and the tables for the corresponding blocks of the subblocks are updated to include metadata for the subblocks for retrieving the subblocks in response to a request for a corresponding stored block.”

The patent application was filed on February 19, 2019 (16/279,797).