BIG DATA

Company's 97th Patent Describes Improvements to Snapshot Performance for Faster System Recovery

Dot Hill has announced innovative technology described in its latest addition to its patent portfolio - a new innovation that improves snapshot performance in storage arrays.

Generated by Dot Hill's AssuredSnap snapshot software, which is part of the company's Data Management Services (DMS) suite, snapshots are versatile and extremely useful tools for backup and data recovery operations. By reducing the number of operations required to access snapshot metadata, the invention disclosed in Dot Hill's 97^th US patent, numbered 8,751,467, improves storage controller performance when using data snapshots, which can result in faster system recovery.

Traditionally, when an application on a storage controller wants to access snapshot data from a storage system, the application first needs to retrieve the storage device's snapshot metadata. The status quo approach of accessing metadata is inefficient since it involves multiple steps of copying cache pages. Using Dot Hill's patented approach the application can use the cache page address to access the metadata. A second application is allowed to access the cache page and can also update the metadata in this approach. After the application finishes its update, cache pages are mirrored to the remote system and written back to the appropriate storage devices. This patented approach streamlines the data recovery process.

"Our customers run demanding applications that require high-performance storage with rock-solid reliability," said Ken Day, chief technology officer, Dot Hill. "Besides providing 99.999 percent data availability in all our AssuredSAN storage systems, we never stop innovating to set ourselves apart from the competition. Dot Hill's growing patent portfolio is a reflection of a world-class engineering team that develops highly differentiated storage solutions."

Dot Hill's patent portfolio builds on the extensive intellectual property behind Dot Hill AssuredSAN and AssuredSAN Pro solutions, which deliver rock-solid, wicked-fast solutions to customers and OEM partners. Dot Hill's continuous innovation benefits the company's key vertical market customers in the Media & Entertainment, Telecommunications, Oil & Gas, Big Data & Analytics and Digital Imaging sectors, that require high-performing storage to support demanding applications.