Patents by Inventor James Hafner

James Hafner has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 10740182
    Abstract: A method for memory page erasure-correcting property generation in a storage array includes dividing data into multiple stripes for storage in a storage array including multiple storage devices with a topology of a hypercube of a dimension t?3. The storage devices in same hypercubes of dimension t?1 including the hypercube of dimension t have even parity. An intersection of two non-parallel planes in the hypercube topology is a line, and each point along a line is a storage device in the storage array. Erasure-correcting properties are generated for the data using three nested codes, wherein a first nested code has even parity over planes of class 0, 1 and 2, a second nested code has a first global parity, and a third nested code has a second global parity and a third global parity.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 20, 2018
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2020
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Mario Blaum, Aayush Gupta, James Hafner, Steven R. Hetzler
  • Publication number: 20190171523
    Abstract: A method for memory page erasure-correcting property generation in a storage array includes dividing data into multiple stripes for storage in a storage array including multiple storage devices with a topology of a hypercube of a dimension t?3. The storage devices in same hypercubes of dimension t?1 including the hypercube of dimension t have even parity. An intersection of two non-parallel planes in the hypercube topology is a line, and each point along a line is a storage device in the storage array. Erasure-correcting properties are generated for the data using three nested codes, wherein a first nested code has even parity over planes of class 0, 1 and 2, a second nested code has a first global parity, and a third nested code has a second global parity and a third global parity.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 20, 2018
    Publication date: June 6, 2019
    Inventors: Mario Blaum, Aayush Gupta, James Hafner, Steven R. Hetzler
  • Patent number: 10241862
    Abstract: A method for memory page erasure reconstruction in a storage array includes dividing data into multiple stripes for storage in a storage array including multiple storage devices with a topology of a hypercube of a dimension t?3. The storage devices in same hypercubes of dimension t?1 including the hypercube of dimension t have even parity. An intersection of two non-parallel planes in the hypercube topology is a line, and each point along a line is a storage device in the storage array. A reconstructor processor reconstructs erased data for erased memory pages from non-erased data in the storage array by using parities in at least three dimensions based on the hypercube topology of the storage devices.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2018
    Date of Patent: March 26, 2019
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Mario Blaum, Aayush Gupta, James Hafner, Steven R. Hetzler
  • Publication number: 20180267857
    Abstract: A method for memory page erasure reconstruction in a storage array includes dividing data into multiple stripes for storage in a storage array including multiple storage devices with a topology of a hypercube of a dimension t?3. The storage devices in same hypercubes of dimension t?1 including the hypercube of dimension t have even parity. An intersection of two non-parallel planes in the hypercube topology is a line, and each point along a line is a storage device in the storage array. A reconstructor processor reconstructs erased data for erased memory pages from non-erased data in the storage array by using parities in at least three dimensions based on the hypercube topology of the storage devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 17, 2018
    Publication date: September 20, 2018
    Inventors: Mario Blaum, Aayush Gupta, James Hafner, Steven R. Hetzler
  • Patent number: 7873878
    Abstract: A data storage method comprises storing first data in at least a first data chunk, wherein the first data chunk is a logical representation of one or more sectors on at least a first disk drive in a storage system; storing first metadata, associated with the first data, in at least a first appendix, wherein the first appendix is a logical representation of a sector region on at least the first disk drive in the storage system, and wherein the first metadata comprises first atomicity metadata (AMD) and first validity metadata (VMD) associated with the first data; and storing a copy of the first VMD for the first data in at least one low latency non-volatile storage (LLNVS) device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2007
    Date of Patent: January 18, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Wendy Belluomini, John Edward Bish, Kenneth Day, III, James Hafner, Bret S. Weber
  • Publication number: 20090083504
    Abstract: A data storage method comprises storing first data in at least a first data chunk, wherein the first data chunk is a logical representation of one or more sectors on at least a first disk drive in a storage system; storing first metadata, associated with the first data, in at least a first appendix, wherein the first appendix is a logical representation of a sector region on at least the first disk drive in the storage system, and wherein the first metadata comprises first atomicity metadata (AMD) and first validity metadata (VMD) associated with the first data; and storing a copy of the first VMD for the first data in at least one low latency non-volatile storage (LLNVS) device.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 24, 2007
    Publication date: March 26, 2009
    Inventors: Wendy Belluomini, John Edward Bish, Kenneth Day, III, James Hafner, Bret S. Weber
  • Publication number: 20070226533
    Abstract: A bladed storage servicing system comprising a RAID layout facilitates the removal of one or more functional storage devices in a tray of the bladed storage subsystem in order to service a failed storage device. Upon removal of the tray from the bladed storage subsystem, the system designates the functional storage devices on the tray as temporarily removed. The system logs writes to the removed functional storage devices so that the functional storage devices can be returned to consistency when replaced in the bladed storage subsystem. The system manages reads to the removed functional storage devices through reconstruction from active storage devices in the bladed storage subsystem. Upon reinsertion of the tray in the bladed storage subsystem, the system verifies the identities of the functional storage devices and resynchronizes the functional storage devices to ensure data consistency.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 8, 2006
    Publication date: September 27, 2007
    Inventors: James Hafner, Krishnakumar Surugucchi
  • Publication number: 20060129873
    Abstract: A fault-tolerant system for storage arrays that stored parity values both on separate disks from the data elements (horizontally aligned) and on the same disks as the data elements (vertically aligned), a so-called horizontal-vertical code or HoVer code. The fault-tolerant system has embodiments that are supported on a variety of array sizes and has significant flexibility in parameter selection. Certain embodiments can tolerate all combinations of T failed disks and, among those, some embodiments can tolerate many instances of more than T failures. The fault-tolerant system has efficient XOR-based encoding, recovery, and updating algorithms and has simple redundancy formulas.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 24, 2004
    Publication date: June 15, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: James Hafner
  • Publication number: 20060123321
    Abstract: A system (and method) for determining reconstruction formulas for partial strip reconstruction in a storage system in which a plurality of lost strips have been detected, includes using a combination of a direct reconstruction method and a sequential reconstruction method.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 22, 2004
    Publication date: June 8, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Veera Deenadhayalan, James Hafner, Krishnakumar Surugucchi
  • Publication number: 20060107091
    Abstract: A system (and method) for a recovery of data from a lost sector in a storage system, which includes a set of readable and lost sectors in a plurality of disks in the storage system, includes identifying a lost sector of at least one disk of the storage system, determining whether the data from the lost sector is capable of being recovered, and, if the data from the lost sector is capable of being recovered, generating a recovery formula for the lost sector and recovering the data from the lost sector based on the recovery formula.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 2, 2004
    Publication date: May 18, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: James Hafner, John Tomlin
  • Publication number: 20060075290
    Abstract: A system for improving a performance of a write process in an exemplary RAID system reduces a number of IOs required for a short write in a RAID algorithm by using a replicated-parity drive. Parity is stored on the parity portion of the disk drives. A replicated-parity drive comprises all the parity information. Parity information for each parity drive is co-located or mirrored on the replicated-parity portion of the disk drives for fast access during a read portion of the read-modify-write process. Consequently, the system accesses parity data with one seek, as opposed to P seeks in a conventional disk array system utilizing P parity drives.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 24, 2004
    Publication date: April 6, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Jeffrey Hartline, James Hafner, Tapas Kanungo
  • Publication number: 20060074954
    Abstract: A recovery enabling system for storage arrays is a high distance generalization of RAID-5 with optimal update complexity and near optimal storage efficiency. The recovery enabling system utilizes presets, data cells with known values that initialize the reconstruction process. The presets allow resolution of parity equations to reconstruct data when failures occur. In one embodiment, additional copies of the layout of the recovery enabling system are packed onto the same disks to minimize the effect of presets on storage efficiency without destroying the clean geometric construction of the recovery enabling system. The recovery enabling system has efficient XOR-based encoding, recovery, and updating algorithms for arbitrarily large distances, making the recovery enabling system an ideal candidate when storage-efficient reliable codes are required.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 30, 2004
    Publication date: April 6, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Jeffrey Hartline, Tapas Kanungo, James Hafner
  • Publication number: 20060074995
    Abstract: A fault-tolerant system for storage arrays has constraints on the number of data from which each redundancy value is computed. The fault-tolerant system has embodiments that are supported on small array sizes to arbitrarily large array sizes, and can tolerate a large number T of failures. Certain embodiments can tolerate many instances of more than T failures. The fault-tolerant system has efficient XOR-based encoding, recovery, and updating algorithms and has simple redundancy formulas. The fault-tolerant system has improved IO seek costs for certain multiple-element sequential host updates.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 30, 2004
    Publication date: April 6, 2006
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: James Hafner, Jeffrey Hartline, Tapas Kanungo