Dell Assigned Eighteen Patents

Techniques for performing live rebuild in storage systems that operate direct write mode
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11663080) developed by Shknevsky, Alexander, Beer-Sheva, Israel, Baruch, Oran, Tel Aviv, Israel, Vankamamidi, Vamsi K., Hopkinton, MA, Ben-David, David, Beer Sheva, Israel, and Rahamim, Maor, Ramla, Israel, for “techniques for performing live rebuild in storage systems that operate a direct write mode.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques for rebuilding data in a data storage system are provided. A method includes: (a) identifying (i) a first set of degraded Ubers that contain no portions reserved for direct writing and (ii) a second set of degraded Ubers that contain at least one portion reserved for direct writing. Direct writing is a process that writes blocks to long-term storage prior to mapping those blocks in a metadata mapping structure. An Uber is a set of adjacent stripes across a respective Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) array of the data storage system, and a degraded Uber is an Uber that includes at least one failed drive within its RAID array. The method further includes (b) initiating a rebuild of the first set of degraded Ubers, and (c) delaying a rebuild of each degraded Uber of the second set until all pending direct writes to blocks of that degraded Uber have been mapped by the metadata mapping structure.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-01-20 (17/579866).

Global deadline driven local synchronous replication I/O handling and recover
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11656782) developed by Kronrod, Svetlana, Concord, MA, and Chen, Xiangping, Sherborn, MA, for a “global deadline driven local synchronous replication i/o handling and recover.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method is provided for use in a storage system, the method comprising: receiving an I/O request at an R-node, generating a deadline for the I/O request, generating a C-node command based on the I/O request, transmitting the C-node command and the I/O request to a C-node, calculating, by the C-node, a first remaining time based on the deadline, detecting, by the C-node, whether the first remaining time meets a first threshold, when the first remaining time meets the first threshold, executing the I/O request and transmitting, from the C-node to the R-node, synchronous replication request that is associated with the C-node command, and when the first remaining time does not meet the first threshold, causing the storage system to stop performing synchronous replication and executing the C-node command.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-10-30 (16/668661).

Device-capability-based locking key management
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11650938) developed by Bisa, Rama Rao, Sobha, India, Basavarajaiah, Sushma, Bangalore, India, Khatri, Mukund P., Austin, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Round Rock, TX, Gupta, Chitrak, Karnataka, India, and Am, Manjunath, Bangalore, India, for a “device-capability-based locking key management system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A device-capability-based locking key management system includes a key management system coupled to a server device via a network. The server device includes storage devices coupled to a remote access controller device. The remote access controller device identifies each of the storage devices, and then identifies a key management profile for each of the storage devices. A first key management profile identified for at least one first storage device is different from a second key management profile identified for at least one second storage device. The remote access controller device then uses the respective key management profile identified for each of the storage devices to create a respective key management sub-client for each of the storage devices, and each respective key management sub-client communicates with the key management system to provide a locking key for its respective storage device.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-01-25 (16/258367).

Updating storage drive firmware
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11650743) developed by Rajagopalan, Vivekanandh Narayanasamy, Bangalore, India, Hia, Swee Chay, Singapore, Singapore, and Kondapi, Srikanth, Austin, TX, for “updating storage drive firmware.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Storage drives can be configured to provide a component ID. An update tool on an end user device can be configured to retrieve this component ID in response to receiving a catalog that defines available firmware updates and to use the retrieved component ID to dynamically identify which firmware update applies to a particular storage drive. The firmware update can then be installed on the storage drive. The update tool may also perform a health assessment to dynamically determine whether the storage drive’s health is sufficient to proceed with a firmware update.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-02-03 (16/780197).

System control processor power unavailability storage system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11650647) developed by Butcher, Andrew, Cedar Park, TX, and Dube, Shawn Joel, Austin, TX, for a “system control processor power unavailability data storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An SCP power unavailability data storage system includes a chassis housing a power system, a central processing system, and an SCP subsystem that are coupled together. The SCP subsystem includes a volatile SCP memory system storing data provided by the central processing system, an SCP processing system coupled to the volatile SCP memory system, and an SCP communication system that, when power is unavailable from the power system, utilizes power received via its data/power port(s) and provides that power to the volatile SCP memory system and the SCP processing system. An SCP data storage engine provided by the SCP processing system will, in response to an unavailability of power from the power system, operate using power received via the data/power port(s), retrieve data stored in the volatile SCP memory system, and transmit the data via port(s) on the SCP communication system and through a network for storage on storage device(s).”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-04 (17/492731).

Write cache management
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11650920) developed by Shatsky, Yosef, Karnei Shomron, Israel, and Tal, Doron, Geva Carmel, Israel, for a “write cache management.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage control system maintains a write cache in a non-volatile memory device of primary memory of a storage node. The write cache comprises a cyclic buffer and pointers to manage the write cache and track a tail location and head location of the write cache. The storage control system receives a write request from a host system, which comprises a data item to be written to primary storage. The received data item is written together with an associated metadata item at the head location of the write cache. The items in the write cache are arranged in a cyclic write order from the tail location to the head location. The storage control system sends an acknowledgment to the host system that the data item is successfully written to the primary storage, in response to the received data item and the associated metadata item being stored in the write cache.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-27 (17/511695).

Determining policy regions of high-speed memory of storage engine
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11650763) developed by Martin, Owen, Hopedale, MA, Dar, Shaul, Petach Tikva, Israel, and Pandya, Paras, Anand, India, for “determining policy regions of high-speed memory of a storage engine.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “IO traces on a high-speed memory that provides temporary storage for multiple storage volumes are stored in a trace buffer. IO operations on different storage volume are considered separate workloads on the high-speed memory. Periodically, the IO traces are processed to extract workload features for each workload. The workload features are stored in a feature matrix, and the workload features from multiple IO trace buffer processing operations are aggregated over time. A HDBSCAN unsupervised clustering machine learning process is used to create a set of four workload clusters and an outlier cluster. A dominant feature of each workload cluster is used to set a policy for the workload cluster. IO percentages for clusters with the same policies are used to set minimum sizes for policy regions in the high-speed memory. Histograms based on the workloads are used to determine segmentation rules specifying slot sizes for the policy regions.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-04-11 (17/717335).

Recovery flow with reduced address lock contention in content addressable storage
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11645174) developed by Kamran, Lior, Rishon LeZion, Israel, and Shveidel, Vladimir, Pardes-Hana, Israel, for a “recovery flow with reduced address lock contention in a content addressable storage system.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An apparatus in one embodiment comprises at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory, with the processing device being configured to detect a failure of at least one storage node that impacts a write cache destaging process in a distributed content addressable storage (CAS) system comprising a plurality of storage nodes each associated with one or more storage devices. Responsive to the detected failure, the processing device issues one or more write cache metadata preload commands to direct one or more other ones of the storage nodes to preload from their associated storage devices metadata characterizing one or more data pages that are subject to the write cache destaging process, thereby illustratively reducing address lock contention in the CAS system. The processing device illustratively comprises at least a portion of a distributed storage controller of the CAS system. Other embodiments include methods and computer program products.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-10-28 (16/665651).

Managing cache replacement in storage cache based on I/O access types of data stored in storage cache
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11645204) developed by Chen, Chi, Fan, Huijuan, and Dong, Hailan, Chengdu, China, for “managing cache replacement in a storage cache based on input-output access types of data stored in the storage cache.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An apparatus comprises a processing device configured to monitor a storage cache storing a plurality of cache pages to determine whether the storage cache reaches one or more designated conditions and to determine cache replacement scores for at least a subset of the cache pages, the cache replacement scores being determined based at least in part on input-output access types for data stored in the cache pages. The processing device is also configured to select, responsive to determining that the storage cache has reached at least one of the one or more designated conditions, at least one of the cache pages to move from the storage cache to a storage device based at least in part on the determined cache replacement scores. The processing device is further configured to move the selected at least one of the plurality of cache pages from the storage cache to the storage device.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-05 (17/493973).

Optimized path selection by non-latency detecting multipath hosts
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11646958) developed by Charles, Peniel, Bangalore, India, Crowley, Owen, Carrigaline, Ireland, and Marappan, Gopinath, Coimbatore, India, for an “optimized path selection by non-latency detecting multipath hosts.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Multipath hosts with the ability to detect path latency, report latency values on paths between the Latency Detecting (LD) host and a set of storage systems. The detected latency values are used by the storage system to create a data structure correlating path information with the detected latency values. When hosts without the ability to detect path latencies (non-LD hosts) connect to the storage systems, the path information about paths used by the non-LD hosts is used to determine reported latency values for paths with similar path information, to generate presumed latency values for the paths used by the non-LD hosts. Where paths used by non-LD hosts have higher latency values, the storage system sets a path attribute value, such as an ALUA state for the path, to signal non-LD hosts to preferentially use paths with lower presumed latency values.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-06 (17/495119).

Distributing read operations between emulations in storage engine
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11645012) developed by Doddaiah, Ramesh, Wu, Peng, Westborough, MA, Yu, Rong, West Roxbury, MA, Medeiros, Earl, Fall River, MA, and Yin, Peng, Southborough, MA, for “method and apparatus for distributing read operations between emulations in a storage engine.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A Random Read Miss (RRM) distribution process monitors execution parameters of first, second, and third emulations of a storage engine, and distributes newly received read operations between the emulations. The RRM distribution process assigns newly received read operations to the first emulation, unless the CPU thread usage of the first emulation or the response time of the first emulation meet a first set of criteria. The RRM distribution process secondarily assigns newly received read operations to the second emulation, unless the CPU thread usage of the second emulation or the response time of the second emulation meet a second set of criteria. The RRM distribution process assigns all other newly received newly received read operations, that are not assigned to the first emulation or to the second emulation, to the third emulation. Distribution of read IOs between the emulations enables the storage engine to increase IOPs while minimizing response time.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-01-18 (17/577489).

Remote storage object techniques
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11640241) developed by Venkatanarayanan, Prakash, Bangalore, India, Haravu, Nagasimha G., Apex, NC, Long, Matthew, Uxbridge, MA, Seela, Nagapraveen Veeravenkata, Cary, NC, and Subramanian, Hemalatha, Bangalore, India, for “remote storage object techniques.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data path connection can be established between a target of a remote source system and an initiator of a local destination system. A storage object of the remote source system exposed over such a data path connection can be mapped to a local storage object name of the local destination system. Such a remote storage object of the remote source system can be accessed as a local storage object of the local destination system using the local storage object name. Within the destination system, the local storage object name of the destination system can be used as a proxy to access the remote storage object of the remote source system. Accessing the remote storage object from the destination system can be used in several data mobility use cases, including, but not limited to, offloaded data copy across arrays, snapshot mobility and backup use-cases.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-09-21 (17/480586).

Manage storage system for startup
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11630591) developed by Kadaba Chaluvaiah, Swamy, Round Rock, TX, and Shanmugam, Murali Manohar, Cedar Park, TX, for “system and method to manage storage system for startup.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems for managing data for startup purposes in a distributed system are disclosed. The distributed system may include any number of clients operably connected to a storage system via a connection fabric. By virtue of the connection topology, any of the clients may interact with the storage system to gain access to storage resources of the storage system. When a client is provided access to storage resources by the storage system, other clients may not be able to access the storage resources of the storage system.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-06 (17/495430).

Sharing spare capacity of disks with multiple sizes to parallelize RAID rebuild
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11630596) developed by Hua, Kuolin, Natick, MA, and Gao, Kunxiu, Boxborough, MA, for a “sharing spare capacity of disks with multiple sizes to parallelize RAID rebuild.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Managed drives of a storage node with different size drives in a fixed arithmetic relationship are organized into clusters of same size drives. Every drive is configured to have M*G same-size partitions, where M is a positive integer variable defined by the arithmetic relationship and G is the RAID group size. The storage capacity of all drives can be viewed as matrices of G+1 rows and M*G columns, and each matrix is composed of submatrices of G+1 rows and G columns. Diagonal spare partitions are allocated and distributed in the same pattern over groups of G columns of all matrices, for increasing partition index values. Members of RAID groups are vertically distributed such that the members of a given RAID group reside in a single partition index of a single cluster. When a drive fails, protection group members of the failed drive are rebuilt in order on spare partitions characterized by lowest partition indices for increasing drive numbers across multiple clusters. Consequently, drive access for rebuild is parallelized and latency is reduced.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-10-13 (17/499918).

Utilizing persistent write cache as redo log
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11630773) developed by Shatsky, Yosef, Karnei Shomron, Israel, for “utilizing a persistent write cache as a redo log.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage control system receives a first write request and a second write request following the first write request. The first and second write requests comprise respective first and second data items for storage to a primary storage. First and second cache write operations are performed in parallel to write the first and second data items a persistent write cache. The first cache write operation comprises a split write operation which comprises writing a parsing header for the first data item to the write cache, and writing a payload of the first data item to the write cache. The second cache write operation comprises storing the second data item and associated metadata in the write cache, and waiting for an acknowledgment that the parsing header for the first data item has been successfully stored in the write cache before returning an acknowledgment indicating successful storage of the second data item.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-01-05 (17/569198).

Management of active-active configuration using multi-pathing software
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11625308) developed by Govindan, Balasundaram, Bangalore, India, for a “management of active-active configuration using multi-pathing software.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An apparatus comprises a host device that includes a multi-path input-output (MPIO) driver configured to control delivery of input-output (IO) operations from the host device to first and second storage systems over selected paths through a network. The MPIO driver is further configured to identify a connectivity failure between the host device and a given one of the first and second storage systems, to generate a message comprising one or more details of the connectivity failure, and to send the message to a remaining one of the first and second storage systems over at least one path of a plurality of paths between the host device and the remaining one of the storage systems. The first and second storage systems in some embodiments are arranged in an active-active configuration relative to one another, with one being designated as a non-bias and the other as a bias storage system.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-09-14 (17/474186).

Proactive monitoring and management of storage system I/O operation limits
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11620054) developed by Jung, Jaeyoo, Shrewsbury, MA, Challa, Narasimha R., Hopkinton, MA, and Mallick, Sanjib, Bangalore, India, for “proactive monitoring and management of storage system input-output operation limits.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An apparatus comprises a processing device configured to identify a number of outstanding input-output (IO) operations corresponding to at least one target of a storage system, wherein the identifying is performed periodically at designated time intervals. The processing device is further configured to determine whether the number of outstanding IO operations is trending upward and exceeds a threshold over a plurality of the designated time intervals. At least one message indicating a queue full condition is generated responsive to an affirmative determination that the number of outstanding IO operations is trending upward and an affirmative determination that the number of outstanding IO operations exceeds the threshold. The at least one message is sent to one or more host devices associated with one or more initiators corresponding to the at least one target of the storage system.”

The patent application was filed on 2022-04-21 (17/725704).

Secure data transfers using physical carriers
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11614899) developed by Salamon, Victor, and Robbins, John, Edmonton, CA, for “secure data transfers using physical carriers.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods, apparatus, and processor-readable storage media for protecting data based on a context of data movement operations are provided herein. An example computer-implemented method includes obtaining a list of carriers in response to a request to transfer data, stored on a storage system associated with a first location, to a second location, wherein each of the carriers is configured to physically move at least one mobile storage unit, scheduling at least two of the carriers to perform the transfer, transferring at least a portion of the data as data chunks from the first location to the second location, wherein each of the scheduled carriers transfers different data chunks via the corresponding at least one mobile storage unit, and transferring, over a network, at least one of: control information corresponding to the transfer and at least another portion of the data associated with the request.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-09-30 (17/490264).