Secure firmware capsule update using NVMe, proactively preventing and predicting storage media failures, performing proactive copy operation for spare persistent storage, NUMA-aware storage, storage allocation, electronic device, system and computer program, RAID proxy storage-device-assisted data update, RAID multi-operation command, RAID device direct communication, storage capacity expansion using mixed-capacity storage devices, generating out-of-band notifications of client activity in NAS, storage in distributed system across multiple fault domains, RAID parity update storage system, RAID parity data update system, look-aside RAID controller update, speculative block IO aggregation to reduce uneven wearing of SCMs in virtualized compute node by offloading intensive block IO/s
By Francis Pelletier
Secure firmware capsule update using NVMe storage
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,126,725) developed by Suryanarayana, Shekar Babu, and Vidyadhara, Sumanth, Bangalore, India, for “secure firmware capsule update using NVMe storage and method therefor.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method includes receiving a firmware update package at an information handling system, the package including a payload containing a first firmware image. In response to executing the firmware update package while the information handling system is under control of an operating system, identifying a non-volatile storage device, authenticating the first firmware image, and storing the first firmware image at the non-volatile storage device. In response to successfully authenticating the first firmware image, initiating a reboot of the information handling system to invoke an initialization routine. The initialization routine includes retrieving the first firmware image from the non-volatile storage device and installing the first firmware image at a first device.”
The patent application was filed on June 12, 2019 (16/438,807).
Proactively preventing and predicting storage media failures
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,126,502) developed by Chaiken, Craig Lawrence, Pflugerville, TX, and Rajan, Siva Subramaniam, Austin, TX, for “systems and methods for proactively preventing and predicting storage media failures.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method may include, during a boot of an information handling system, detecting a soft failure associated with a read request to storage media of the information handling system wherein the soft failure is not visible to an operating system of the information handling system and in response to detecting the soft failure, rewriting a sector of the storage media affected by the soft failure to correct the soft failure.”
The patent application was filed on May 23, 2019 (16/421,025).
Performing proactive copy operation for spare persistent storage
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,119,858) developed by Patel, Dharmesh M., Round Rock, TX, Chaganti, Ravikanth, Bangalore, India, and Ali, Rizwan, Cedar Park, TX, for “method and system for performing a proactive copy operation for a spare persistent storage.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “In general, the invention relates to a method for managing data. The method includes detecting a failure of a persistent storage device of a plurality of persistent storage devices, and in response to the detecting, initiating a rebuilding of data in a spare persistent storage device using proactive copy metadata, checkpoint metadata, and slice metadata, wherein the data is a copy of data that was stored in the persistent storage device.”
The patent application was filed on March 6, 2020 (16/810,947).
NUMA-aware storage
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,106,607) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, and Bolen, Austin Patrick, Austin, TX, for a “NUMA-aware storage system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A NUMA-aware storage system including a first processing subsystem coupled to a first memory subsystem, and a second processing subsystem coupled to a second memory subsystem. A first NTB subsystem connected to the first processing subsystem presents itself as a first storage device, identifies first data transfer operations directed to the first memory subsystem and, in response, claims those first data transfer operations and provides them directly to the first processing subsystem. A second NTB subsystem connected to the second processing subsystem presents itself as a second storage device, identifies second data transfer operations directed to the second memory subsystem and, in response, claims those second data transfer operations and provides them directly to the second processing subsystem. A storage controller system receives a command from either the first or second processing subsystem via the first or second NTB subsystem and, in response, transmits that command to a storage system.”
The patent application was filed on March 31, 2020 (16/836,341).
Storage allocation, electronic device, system and computer program
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,106,376) developed by Xu, Xinlei, Gao, Jian, Jia, Ruiyong, Li, Liam, Liu, Yousheng, and Gao, Hongpo, Beijing, China, for “method of storage allocation, electronic device, storage system and computer program product.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method of storage allocation, an electronic device, a storage system and a computer program product. The method of storage allocation includes: obtaining respective wear levels of a plurality of disks associated with a redundant array of independent disks (RAID). The method further includes: determining respective spare extents in disk extents of the plurality of disks based on the obtained wear levels, such that a number of spare extents in a disk is positively correlated with the wear level of the disk. The method also includes: selecting, from disk extents other than the spare extents, a predetermined number of disk extents for creating RAID extents for the RAID, the predetermined number of disk extents being from different disks of the plurality of disks. Through the embodiments of the present disclosure, a life cycle of a disk is prolonged, frequent replacement of worn disks with new disks is avoided, and data loss is reduced.”
The patent application was filed on March 6, 2020 (16/811,530).
RAID proxy storage-device-assisted data update
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,093,329) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, and Bolen, Austin Patrick, Austin, TX, for a “RAID proxy storage-device-assisted data update system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID proxy storage-device-assisted data update system includes a RAID parity data storage device and a first RAID primary data storage device without storage-device-assisted data update functionality, and a second RAID primary data storage device with storage-device-assisted data update functionality. The second RAID primary data storage device receives a command that identifies updated primary data for the first RAID primary data storage device and, in response, retrieves the updated primary data, current primary data from the first RAID primary data storage device, and current parity data from the RAID primary parity data storage device. The second RAID primary data storage device performs an XOR operation using the updated primary data, the current primary data, and the current parity data to generate updated parity data, transmits the updated primary data to the first RAID primary data storage device, and transmits the updated parity data to the RAID parity data storage device.”
The patent application was filed on March 27, 2020 (16/832,752).
RAID storage multi-operation command
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,093,180) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, and Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, for a “RAID storage multi-operation command system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID storage multi-operation command system includes a RAID storage controller device that generates a multi-operation command including a multi-operation command role and a plurality of addresses, and transmits the multi-operation command, and also includes a RAID storage device that is coupled to the RAID storage controller device. The RAID storage device receives the multi-operation command from the RAID storage controller device, and identifies a plurality of operations that are associated in a database with the multi-operation command role included in the multi-operation command. The RAID storage device then performs the plurality of operations using the plurality of addresses included in the multi-operation command, which may include retrieving first data located in a first address, retrieving second data located in a second address, performing an XOR operation on the first and second data to produce third data, and writing the third data to one or more third addresses.”
The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (16/585,296).
RAID data storage device direct communication
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,093,175) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, and Bolen, Austin Patrick, Austin, TX, for a “RAID data storage device direct communication system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID data storage device direct communication system includes a first RAID data storage device that includes a first RAID data storage device controller having a first RAID data storage device function providing a second RAID data storage device submission queue in a first RAID data storage device memory subsystem, and a second RAID data storage device that includes a second RAID data storage device controller having a second RAID data storage device function providing a second RAID data storage device completion queue in a second RAID data storage device memory subsystem. The second RAID data storage device generates a command, transmits the command directly to first RAID data storage device and in the second RAID data storage device submission queue, and receives a completion message that is associated with the command directly from the first RAID data storage device and in the second RAID data storage device completion queue.”
The patent application was filed on April 2, 2020 (16/838,224).
Storage capacity expansion using mixed-capacity storage devices
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,079,957) developed by Kamran, Lior, Rishon LeZion, Israel, and Shveidel, Vladimir, Pardes-Hana, Israel, for a “storage system capacity expansion using mixed-capacity storage devices.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage system comprises a plurality of storage devices, with the storage devices comprising a first set of storage devices each having a first capacity and a second set of storage devices each having a second capacity higher than the first capacity. The storage system is further configured to establish an extended redundant array of independent disks (RAID) group to extend existing RAID stripes of the storage devices of the first set into the storage devices of the second set, and to establish an additional RAID group for the storage devices of the second set, the additional RAID group comprising one or more additional RAID stripes for the storage devices of the second set. The storage devices of the second set are illustratively added to the storage system to expand its capacity beyond that provided by the storage devices of the first set. Other embodiments include methods and computer program products.”
The patent application was filed on November 1, 2019 (16/671,824).
Generating out-of-band notifications of client activity in NAS
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,057,466) developed by Nadel, Gil, Tel Aviv, Israel, andFine, Dina, Herzlia, Israel, for “method and system for generating out-of-band notifications of client activity in a network attached storage (NAS) device.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method, a system, and non-transitory computer readable medium for generating out-of-band notifications of client activity in a network attached storage (NAS) device are provided herein. The method may include the following steps: monitoring a file system implemented on a NAS device to derive file activity data associated with file operations originated by clients, aggregating the file activity data on a notification queue, and sending notification messages to an external server, wherein the notification messages include at least some of the aggregated file activity data updated to a time of sending the notification message. In accordance with embodiments of the present invention, file operations originated by clients are carried out uninterruptedly by the aggregating of the file activity data and the sending of the notification messages.”
The patent application was filed on December 31, 2015 (14/985,654).
Storage in distributed system across multiple fault domains
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,029,875) developed by Patel, Dharmesh M, Round Rock, TX, Ali, Rizwan, Cedar Park, TX, and Chaganti, Ravikanth, Bangalore, India, for “system and method for data storage in distributed system across multiple fault domains.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data storage system includes an accelerator pool and data silos. The accelerator pool obtains a data storage request for first data, stores a copy of the first data locally in a memory of the accelerator pool, in response to storing the copy of the first data: sends an acknowledgement to a requesting entity that generated the data storage request, and, after sending the acknowledgement, stores at least one second copy of the first data in the data silos. The acknowledgement indicates that the first data is redundantly stored in at least two different fault domains.”
The patent application was filed on September 28, 2018 (16/145,336).
RAID storage-device-assisted parity update storage system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,023,322) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, and Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, for a “RAID storage-device-assisted parity update data storage system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID storage-device-assisted parity data update system includes a first RAID primary data drive that DMA’s second primary data from a host system, and XOR’s it with first primary data to produce first interim parity data for a first data stripe. A second RAID primary data drive DMA’s fourth primary data from the host system, and XOR’s it with third primary data to produce second interim parity data for a second data stripe. A first RAID parity data drive DMAs the first interim parity data and XOR’s it with first parity data to produce second parity data for the first data stripe that overwrites the first parity data. A second RAID parity data drive DMA’s the second interim parity data and XOR’s it with third parity data to produce fourth parity data for the second data stripe that overwrites the third parity data.”
The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (16/586,551).
RAID storage-device-assisted deferred parity data update system
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,023,321) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, and Bolen, Austin Patrick, Austin, TX, for a “RAID storage-device-assisted deferred parity data update system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID storage-device-assisted deferred parity data update system includes a RAID primary data drive that retrieves second primary data via a DMA operation from host system, and XOR’s it with first primary data to produce first interim parity data, which causes a RAID storage controller device to provide an inconsistent parity stripe journal entry in the host system. The RAID primary data drive then retrieves third primary data via a DMA operation from the host system, XORs it with the second primary data and the first interim parity data to produce second interim parity data. A RAID parity data drive retrieves the second interim parity data via a DMA operation, and XORs it with first parity data to produce second parity data that it uses to overwrite the first parity data, which causes the RAID storage controller device to remove the inconsistent parity stripe journal entry from the host system.”
The patent application was filed on September 27, 2019 (16/586,451).
Look-aside RAID controller storage-device-assisted data update
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,023,313) developed by Kotzur, Gary Benedict, Austin, TX, Lynn, William Emmett, Round Rock, TX, Marks, Kevin Thomas, Georgetown, TX, Nelogal, Chandrashekar, Giannoules, James Peter, Round Rock, TX, and Bolen, Austin Patrick, Austin, TX, for a “look-aside RAID controller storage-device-assisted data update system.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A RAID storage controller storage-device-assisted data update system includes a RAID storage controller device coupled to a host system and RAID storage devices in a ‘look aside’ RAID storage controller device configuration. Based on command(s) from the RAID storage controller device, a first RAID primary data storage device may perform a first DMA operation to access first primary data stored on the host system, and write the first primary data to its first buffer subsystem. The first RAID primary data storage device may then perform a first XOR operation using the first primary data stored in its first buffer subsystem and second primary data stored in its first storage subsystem in order to produce first interim parity data, and write the first interim parity data to its second buffer subsystem. The first RAID primary data storage device may then update the second primary data with the first primary data.”
The patent application was filed on March 9, 2020 (16/813,145).
Speculative block IO aggregation to reduce uneven wearing of SCMs in virtualized compute node by offloading intensive block Ios
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX, has been assigned a patent (11,023,139) developed by Ravishankar, K. N., Prasad, Parmeshwr, and Debata, Smruti Ranjan, Bangalore, India, for a “system for speculative block IO aggregation to reduce uneven wearing of SCMs in virtualized compute node by offloading intensive block Ios.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An information handling system may include at least one processor and a non-transitory memory coupled to the at least one processor. The information handling system may be configured to implement a disk manager configured to receive a command to perform a block input/output (I/O) job at a first physical storage resource. The disk manager may, based on characteristics of the block I/O job, classify the block I/O job as an intensive write. In response to the block I/O job being classified as an intensive write, the disk manager may invoke a speculative I/O aggregator module of the disk manager. The disk manager may create a delta disk image for the first physical storage resource at a second physical storage resource, and redirect the block I/O job to the delta disk image at the second physical storage resource.”
