Patents by Inventor Nobuhiro Maki

Nobuhiro Maki 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: 8612703
    Abstract: The respective data fragments stored in each page assigned to the respective virtual areas of the virtual volume are copied to the logical volume, and information representing the respective copy source pages corresponding with information representing the respective virtual areas in the mapping information that indicates which storage area corresponds with which virtual area is updated to information representing the respective copy destination storage areas of the data fragments stored in the respective copy source pages and copies the updated mapping information to the logical volume which constitutes the data fragment copy destination.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 2, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 17, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Yoshiaki Eguchi
  • Patent number: 8589642
    Abstract: A computer system having a plurality of host computers and a storage system is provided which allows any one host computer to perform a global copy operation on any arbitrary or all storage areas in the storage system. To this end, storage areas provided by the disk devices are grouped into groups by allocating group numbers to a plurality of specified storage areas. The copy operation can be performed by specifying desired groups. Each of the groups is made up of sub-groups and the sub-groups are defined for each computer to assure a consistency of copy order of the sub-groups.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: November 19, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Kenichi Oyamada, Katsuhisa Miyata, Taketoshi Sakuraba
  • Patent number: 8589649
    Abstract: There is disclosed a data storage system used in a computer environment where there are plural host computers and plural storage array controllers. When a remote copy is made while assuring the order of writing across plural storage array controllers, one of the host computers gains copy information about all the storage array controllers associated with the remote copy as a representative. The representative one of the storage array controllers collects and stores copy statuses which are individually managed by the storage array controllers for which a remote copy is made. The host computer gains the copy statuses from the representative controller using an instruction to gain the copy statuses.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 13, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 19, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Masahide Sato, Katsuhisa Miyata, Kenta Ninose
  • Patent number: 8578121
    Abstract: Problem To recover data of a virtual volume to which an external volume was assigned even if an unusual status occurs in the first storage apparatus. Solution The controller of the storage apparatus, to the respective pages of the pool corresponding to the virtual volumes, assigns the internal pool volumes configured of storage devices of the storage apparatus or the external pool volumes configured of storage devices of the storage apparatus, and the management server stores the configuration information indicating the correspondence relationship between the external pool volumes assigned to the respective pages of the pool and the virtual volumes, in the case of a total functional shutdown of the storage apparatus, creates a virtual volume and a pool in the storage apparatus, associates the virtual volume with the external pool volume in accordance with the stored configuration information, provides the virtual volume to the host computer and instructs path switching.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: November 5, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Hirokazu Ikeda, Nobuhiro Maki
  • Patent number: 8572346
    Abstract: In a storage system 1, a storage apparatus A having a first pool 1430 including segments as unit storage areas and a storage apparatus B having a second pool 1430 having the same configuration are communicably connected to each other. In the storage system, an external volume identifier is associated with a logical volume 1420 included in the first pool 1430, the external volume identifier being used by a controller 1500 in the storage apparatus B to identify and manage the logical volume 1420 as an external volume 1425 that is a virtual volume in the storage apparatus B. Moreover, a volume identifier 5110 of the logical volume 1420 included in the first pool 1430 is rewritten into the external volume identifier in order to enable the storage apparatus B to utilize the logical volume 1420 created from the first pool 1430.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 20, 2009
    Date of Patent: October 29, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Yuki Naganuma, Hirokazu Ikeda, Nobuhiro Maki, Masayasu Asano, Shinichiro Kanno
  • Patent number: 8560883
    Abstract: Storage arrangements including copy information holding correspondence of copy pairs formed from first and second and from first and third logical volumes, as copy groups concerned with a sequence of write data in the computer; and path remote copy relevant information indicating, for each copy group, correspondence of: logical paths; physical paths including the first, second and third storage ports; and take-over path information concerning a relevant path between the second and third logical volumes, needed for the take-over copy pair to take-over the remote copying when failure occurs in the first storage system, and wherein when the management system receives failure information designating a certain path indicated within the take-over path information, a management system determines and displays, by referring to the path remote copy relevant information, copy groups affected by the failure of the certain path.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 9, 2012
    Date of Patent: October 15, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
  • Patent number: 8527700
    Abstract: A management computer manages the pool application information that indicates a pool application for a pool and the application condition information that indicates the condition for the pool application. The management computer calculates an excess storage capacity based on a pool usage status for the pool. The management computer specifies a pool application for the pool and the condition for the pool application based on the pool application information and the application condition information. The management computer judges whether the specified condition is satisfied even in the case in which a storage area having a storage capacity equivalent to or less than the calculated excess storage capacity is deleted from the pool. In the case in which the result of the judgment is positive, the management computer defines a capacity equivalent to or less than the excess storage capacity as an unused capacity.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 16, 2012
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Masayasu Asano, Nobuhiro Maki
  • Patent number: 8489917
    Abstract: Storage arrangements including copy information holding correspondence of copy pairs formed from first and second and from first and third logical volumes, as copy groups concerned with a sequence of write data in the computer; and path remote copy relevant information indicating, for each copy group, correspondence of: logical paths; physical paths including the first, second and third storage ports; and take-over path information concerning a relevant path between the second and third logical volumes, needed for the take-over copy pair to take-over the remote copying when failure occurs in the first storage system, and wherein when the management system receives failure information designating a certain path indicated within the take-over path information, a management system determines and displays, by referring to the path remote copy relevant information, copy groups affected by the failure of the certain path.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 9, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 16, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
  • Publication number: 20130124808
    Abstract: Storage system arrangements having status information including both copy group summary status information providing a status of a group of the plurality of copy pairs, and detailed status information detailing a status of a copy pair included in the group; and wherein said status management unit monitors the status information of said plurality of copy pairs, wherein the management computer acquires, from the storage apparatus, the copy group summary status information as summary information for a group of the plurality of copy pairs having a failure status for the group, and displays said summary information on said display, if the summary information indicates a normal status, the management computer displays the summary information only; and if the summary information indicates a failure status, the management computer displays, upon receiving selection of said summary information, detailed status information of a copy pair that belongs to the group.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 31, 2012
    Publication date: May 16, 2013
    Inventors: Hironori EMARU, Nobuhiro MAKI
  • Publication number: 20130111129
    Abstract: Data is placed in tiered storage with a suitable granularity according to application characteristics. The storage apparatus comprises a controller for managing storage areas, provided by storage media of a plurality of types of varying performance, as pools, and for assigning the storage areas in page units to a virtual volume from any tiered storage among a plurality of types of tiered storage which the pool comprises in response to a data write request from the host computer, wherein, for specific data which is managed by the host computer, the controller specifies an area with a high referencing frequency among the specific data on the basis of organization information of the specific data, and moves this area to another of the tiered storage with a higher performance than an already assigned tiered storage.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 28, 2011
    Publication date: May 2, 2013
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Yuri Hiraiwa, Kenichi Oyamada
  • Patent number: 8423746
    Abstract: A storage system having at least two storage apparatuses capable of partitioning an internal resource into logical partitions and managing the logical partitions, and which replicates data written into a primary volume of a primary storage apparatus as the replication source storage apparatus to a secondary volume of a secondary storage apparatus as the replication destination storage apparatus, including: a configuration information sending unit for sending configuration information of the logical partition, to which the primary volume belongs, to the secondary storage apparatus; and a logical partition setting unit for setting the configuration of the logical partition to which the secondary volume belongs based on the configuration information of the logical partition to which the primary volume belongs sent from the configuration information sending unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 3, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Yuki Naganuma, Hironori Emaru, Toshimichi Kishimoto, Nobuhiro Maki
  • Patent number: 8402236
    Abstract: In a management computer which manages a storage system including a main logical volume and subsidiary logical volumes, when the access volume to the main logical volume exceeds a threshold value, a subsidiary logical volume associated with a physical volume having higher input/output performance than the physical volume associated with the main logical volume is selected. When the migration time of the data stored in the physical volume corresponding to the selected subsidiary logical volume is within a prescribed time period, then data stored in the physical volume corresponding to the main logical volume is migrated to the physical volume corresponding to the selected subsidiary logical volume, and the physical volume corresponding to the selected subsidiary logical volume is associated with the main logical volume.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 24, 2009
    Date of Patent: March 19, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Wataru Okada, Nobuhiro Maki
  • Patent number: 8402534
    Abstract: The management system of the present invention is capable of efficiently discovering each apparatus coupled to a communication network. The management server 1 judges a type of an apparatus coupled to a communication network 5 on the basis of service utilization information T1, which is acquired from a discovered device or acquired from a device (an iSNS server 4, for example) having a name server function for resolving an address from a public name, and on the basis of discovery management information prepared beforehand (S1, S2). The management server 1 acquires a communication protocol in accordance with the type of the apparatus from protocol selection rules T3, and attempts authentication of the apparatus by using the communication protocol (S3).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 26, 2009
    Date of Patent: March 19, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Yusaku Nakamura, Takaki Kuroda, Takayuki Nagai, Nobuhiro Maki, Daisuke Shinohara
  • Patent number: 8397105
    Abstract: This invention provides a system including a computer and a storage-subsystem comprising at least either a first storage area for storing data sent from the computer or a second storage area to be associated with the first storage area, for storing replicated data of data stored in the first storage area. This system includes a replication processing status referral unit for referring to a replication processing status of data of the first storage area and the second storage area to be associated, and an output unit for outputting first performance information concerning data I/O stored in the first storage area, and outputting second performance information concerning data I/O stored in the second storage area together with the first performance information when the replicated data is being subject to replication processing from the first storage area to the second storage area as a result of referring to the replication processing status.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: March 12, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Jun Nakajima, Daisuke Shinohara, Yuri Hiraiwa, Nobuyuki Osaki, Nobuhiro Maki, Takayuki Nagai
  • Patent number: 8347049
    Abstract: In the storage system, a storage apparatus includes a disk device for storing write data from a host computer as a primary volume and copied data of write data as a secondary volume, and a disk controller for collecting and managing status information of a plurality of copy pairs from the disk device with a primary volume and a secondary volume as a single copy pair. The disk controller monitors the status information of the plurality of copy pairs according to the status of failure, and, upon receiving a status notification command, transfers the detailed information concerning a copy pair as the status information of the copy pair subject to a failure, and flag information showing the overall status of all other copy pairs as status information of such other copy pairs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 21, 2008
    Date of Patent: January 1, 2013
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Hironori Emaru, Nobuhiro Maki
  • Publication number: 20120331248
    Abstract: An embodiment of this invention is a storage management system including a processor and a storage device to manage a storage system having one or more copy functions. The processor locates data designated to determine a backup method. The storage device stores copy function management information on the one or more copy functions of the storage system. The processor refers to the copy function management information to ascertain the unit of copy operation of each of the one or more copy functions. The processor determines a candidate for a copy function of the storage system to be used to back up the designated data depending on the data configuration in a volume holding the designated data and the unit of copy operation of the candidate for the copy function.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 23, 2011
    Publication date: December 27, 2012
    Inventors: Misako Kono, Nobuhiro Maki, Masayasu Asano, Junichi Hara
  • Patent number: 8341455
    Abstract: A management system, which manages a host computer and a storage system, holds cluster information, specifies an active-state host computer and an inactive-state host computer based on a backup instruction specifying a virtual host identifier, determines the need for executing a replication for disaster recovery use, and when necessary, executes this replication for disaster recovery use in combination with a replication for backup use.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 20, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 25, 2012
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Masayasu Asano
  • Patent number: 8332602
    Abstract: There is disclosed a data storage system used in a computer environment where there are plural host computers and plural storage array controllers. When a remote copy is made while assuring the order of writing across plural storage array controllers, one of the host computers gains copy information about all the storage array controllers associated with the remote copy as a representative. The representative one of the storage array controllers collects and stores copy statuses which are individually managed by the storage array controllers for which a remote copy is made. The host computer gains the copy statuses from the representative controller using an instruction to gain the copy statuses.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 11, 2012
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Masahide Sato, Katsuhisa Miyata, Kenta Ninose
  • Patent number: 8332603
    Abstract: A computer system and method which stores path definition information including a storage ID, a volume ID, and validities of paths between a host computer and a first or second storage system identified by the storage ID for accessing a volume identified by the volume ID in one of the storage systems, sends an I/O request via the paths, based on the path definition information, receives information indicating the storage and volume IDs, and updates the path definition information. During initial copying from the second to the first volume, validity corresponding to a first path is set to “Invalid” and validity corresponding to a second path is set to “Valid”. After completion of initial copying, the validity corresponding to the first path included in the path definition information is changed to “Valid.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 1, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 11, 2012
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Nobuhiro Maki, Kenichi Oyamada, Kazuhiko Watanabe, Masaaki Hosouchi
  • Publication number: 20120297119
    Abstract: A method for drying workpieces includes immersing the workpieces in a liquid bath, raising the workpieces with a first holder until a central opening of the workpieces is visible above liquid surface, then using a dry second holder rod inserted through said central opening to continue raising process. Due to this, a drying portion of the workpieces is not held by a wet holding mechanism.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 8, 2012
    Publication date: November 22, 2012
    Applicant: HITACHI, LTD.
    Inventors: Masayasu ASANO, Hiroshi NASU, Masayuki YAMAMOTO, Nobuhiro MAKI