Abstract: Personal computing device covers having stands are disclosed. A disclosed example apparatus includes a protective cover to at least partially cover a personal computing device. The cover includes a fixed panel to be thermally coupled to a chassis of the personal computing device to define a heatsink of the personal computing device, and a foldable panel to be rotatably coupled to the fixed panel via a hinge to support the personal computing device to stand at an angle from a surface.

Abstract: A method is used in balancing I/O load on data storage systems. A slice is selected from a first storage container of a storage tier. The storage tier includes a second storage container. The slice is relocated from the first storage container of the storage tier to the second storage container of the storage tier, where I/O load of the first storage container is greater than I/O load of the second storage container.

Abstract: A method is used in improving deduplication efficiency. Metadata of a data object is evaluated for determining write activity of the data object. Based on the write activity, deduplicating technique is applied to the data object.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for organizing a plurality of versions of a file in a file system. The plurality of versions of the file are stored in a data structure having a hierarchical organization that reflects relationships among the plurality of versions. Each version of the plurality of versions is assigned a name that identifies its position in the hierarchical organization. The hierarchical organization of the data structure and the descriptive naming convention used for the plurality of versions in the data structure facilitates deleting a version while retaining other versions derived from the version following the deletion of the version, and enables a staged initialization of the data structure upon system start-up.

Abstract: Methods and systems are disclosed for relocating data in a physical storage pool comprising a plurality of storage tiers having differing performance characteristics, the physical storage pool being mapped into one or more logical units, each logical unit comprising a plurality of logical slices of data storage. The methods and systems can involve receiving a relocation list, the relocation list including, for each of a plurality of logical slices, a slice identifier, a temperature value, and a current physical location, determining a destination tier for each logical slice on the relocation list, evaluating for each logical slice on the relocation list a performance gain expected to be achieved by moving the logical slice from its current physical location to a new location in the destination tier, and relocating data in a logical slice from its current physical location to the new location based on the evaluation.

Abstract: A storage processor of a data storage system includes a data relocation task scheduler that provides system limit control on the execution of data relocation requests. The data relocation task scheduler also provides fairness and concurrency limit enforcement by scheduling relocation requests from different provisioning domains, such as storage pools, in a fair manner. For example, the data relocation task scheduler includes stackable sets of pending task queues that store incoming data relocation requests. The data relocation task scheduler applies an iteration scheme to remove data relocation requests from the pending task queues thereby providing scheduling fairness among the queues and among the different provisioning domains within the data storage system.

Abstract: A storage object such as a virtual disk drive or a raw logical volume is contained in a UNIX compatible file so that the file containing the storage object can be exported using the NFS or CIFS protocol and shared among UNIX and MS Windows clients or servers. The storage object can be replicated and backed up using conventional file replication and backup facilities without disruption of client access to the storage object. For client access to data of the storage object, a software driver accesses the file containing the storage object. For example, a software driver called a virtual SCSI termination is used to access a file containing a virtual SCSI disk drive. Standard storage services use the iSCSI protocol to access the virtual SCSI termination. An IP replication or snapshot copy facility may access the file containing the virtual SCSI disk drive using a higher-level protocol.