BIOLOGY

Dot Hill Systems today announced that it has been granted three new patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, including a patent that covers certain aspects of its AssuredSnap snapshot software. This brings the company's portfolio to a total of 51 patents.

 

Dot Hill’s diverse portfolio includes a growing number of patents related to the company’s innovative suite of data protection software such as AssuredSnap snapshot and AssuredCopy volume copy software. The Dot Hill suite of software solutions is a key component of the company’s AssuredSAN line of complete storage solutions for resellers.

 

The three patents achieved are:

 

U.S. Patent 7,593,973 “Method and apparatus for transferring snapshot data”

This innovation provides for an efficient transfer of snapshot data when it is deleted. Older versions of snapshot data often contain information needed to access a newer snapshot.  Dot Hill’s innovation allows for only pointers in the older version to be copied, avoiding the need to copy all of the older snapshot. Additionally, the patent covers innovations that allow snapshot data to be accessed for read functions while the pointers are being copied to the older snapshot. This results in fast deletion of snapshots and improves the performance of Dot Hill AssuredSnap’s snapshot copy features.

 

U.S. Patent 7,568,122 “Method and apparatus for identifying a faulty component on a multiple component field replaceable unit”

This patent provides a unique method for identifying and locating a failed storage device on a multi-storage device field replaceable unit (FRU). After an intelligent storage controller identifies a failed storage device, the controller writes identification data to a non-volatile storage device on the FRU. The data identifies the failed device and its location on the FRU. This invention makes it easy and faster to replace a failed storage device with a field replaceable unit (FRU), without requiring additional personnel to use debugging techniques to determine the identity or location of the failed storage device outside the system. 

 

U.S. Patent 7,606,944 “Dynamic Input/Output optimization within a storage controller”

This invention optimizes accesses to storage devices based on RAID input/output (I/O) request characteristics. A current I/O request processed by a storage controller is analyzed for relative locality to a previous I/O request and adjusted over time such that storage device accesses will be efficiently conducted with respect to sequential or random workloads. A storage device access profile is maintained for each storage device based on sequential or random locality characteristics of previous RAID I/O requests. The chunk locations of the two most recent accesses are sampled according to predetermined criteria in order to create a storage device access profile, which governs queue depth and I/O size parameters used to communicate with storage devices. By managing I/O requests to storage devices using this patent, performance of storage controllers is optimized for changing random and sequential workloads.

 

“As our patent portfolio continues to expand, it is also becoming increasingly diverse with innovations in data management services,” said Jim Kuenzel, senior vice president of Engineering for Dot Hill. “This helps us grow our customer base to incorporate a wider variety of resellers.  One of Dot Hill’s key differentiators is our ability to drive innovations that provide increased levels of value in different niches within the marketplace.”