Patents by Inventor Stefan Neff

Stefan Neff 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: 11194476
    Abstract: A computer-implemented method according to one embodiment includes receiving and storing historical data for historical data jobs performed within a data storage system; determining an optimal maintenance time for the data storage system, utilizing the stored historical data; determining a timing in which storage devices within the data storage system are taken offline, utilizing the optimal maintenance time and the stored historical data; and preparing the data storage system for one or more maintenance operations, utilizing the determined timing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 3, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 7, 2021
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Stefan Neff, Frank Krick, Erik Rueger
  • Publication number: 20210064250
    Abstract: A computer-implemented method according to one embodiment includes receiving and storing historical data for historical data jobs performed within a data storage system; determining an optimal maintenance time for the data storage system, utilizing the stored historical data; determining a timing in which storage devices within the data storage system are taken offline, utilizing the optimal maintenance time and the stored historical data; and preparing the data storage system for one or more maintenance operations, utilizing the determined timing.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 3, 2019
    Publication date: March 4, 2021
    Inventors: Stefan Neff, Frank Krick, Erik Rueger
  • Patent number: 9581070
    Abstract: In an uncoupling element for uncoupling vibrations of the turbocharger of an internal combustion engine from an exhaust system with a bellows, provisions are made, especially for achieving a lower stiffness with short overall length, for the bellows to be a diaphragm bellows.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 20, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2017
    Assignee: BOA Balg-und Kompensatoren-Technologie GmbH
    Inventors: Andreas Schill, Marc Pontzen, Stefan Neff
  • Patent number: 9557928
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation of data stored on at least one sequential storage media are provided. In one exemplary embodiment, active data is identified, read out, and stored in a sequential order by starting at a beginning block address of the at least one sequential storage media. At least one of a start address, an end address, and a data length of all original blocks of the active data in a backup application is defined. A new start address for each original block of active data to be written to the backup application is generated. A mapping is yielded and sent from the backup application to a sequential storage media device having the at least one sequential storage media, and the active data is read from each original block address in sequential order.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 6, 2015
    Date of Patent: January 31, 2017
    Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff
  • Publication number: 20150309748
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation of data stored on at least one sequential storage media are provided. In one exemplary embodiment, active data is identified, read out, and stored in a sequential order by starting at a beginning block address of the at least one sequential storage media. At least one of a start address, an end address, and a data length of all original blocks of the active data in a backup application is defined. A new start address for each original block of active data to be written to the backup application is generated. A mapping is yielded and sent from the backup application to a sequential storage media device having the at least one sequential storage media, and the active data is read from each original block address in sequential order.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 6, 2015
    Publication date: October 29, 2015
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils HAUSTEIN, Stefan NEFF
  • Patent number: 9104629
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation of data stored on at least one sequential storage media are provided. In one exemplary embodiment, active data stored on the at least one sequential storage media is identified. The active data is read out from a reclamation memory. The active data is stored in a sequential order by starting at a beginning block address of the at least one sequential storage media.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 29, 2010
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2015
    Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff
  • Patent number: 9009443
    Abstract: A storage management application determines that a source virtual tape requires reclamation, identifies all block addresses for active data of a source virtual tape and sorts the block addresses in an ascending order, identifies a target virtual tape which has sufficient free capacity to store the active data of said source virtual tape and the last written block address on said target virtual tape, and sends a command to the VTL-system instructing it to perform reclamation including information about said source and said target virtual tape, the sorted list of block addresses denoting active data on the source virtual tape and the starting block address on the target virtual tape. The reclamation logic references the active data host blocks of said source volume to said target virtual tape starting at said starting block address by just updating the host block to disk block mapping table.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 14, 2015
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff
  • Publication number: 20150053299
    Abstract: In an uncoupling element for uncoupling vibrations of the turbocharger of an internal combustion engine from an exhaust system with a bellows, provisions are made, especially for achieving a lower stiffness with short overall length, for the bellows to be a diaphragm bellows.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 20, 2014
    Publication date: February 26, 2015
    Inventors: Andreas SCHILL, Marc PONTZEN, Stefan NEFF
  • Patent number: 8935469
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation processing for tapes are provided. Instructions are received to perform reclamation processing on the formatted tape. Formatted tape is loaded into a tape drive for buffering active data during reclamation processing and consolidating all of the active data in capacity optimized manner on the same formatted tape. The formatted tape comprises metadata denoting active and inactive data blocks for files. The meta data of the formatted tape is read into a reclamation memory. The table is sorted and a starting block address is sorted. All active files ordered in the table starting at the starting block address are read into the reclamation memory. The files are written from the reclamation memory to the formatted tape from the starting block address and updating the table with new block addresses of the files. The meta data is updated with the updated table.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 9, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 13, 2015
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Thorsten Krause, Stefan Neff
  • Patent number: 8930617
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation processing for tapes are provided. Instructions are received to perform reclamation processing on the formatted tape. Formatted tape is loaded into a tape drive for buffering active data during reclamation processing and consolidating all of the active data in capacity optimized manner on the same formatted tape. The formatted tape comprises metadata denoting active and inactive data blocks for files. The meta data of the formatted tape is read into a reclamation memory. The table is sorted and a starting block address is sorted. All active files ordered in the table starting at the starting block address are read into the reclamation memory. The files are written from the reclamation memory to the formatted tape from the starting block address and updating the table with new block addresses of the files. The meta data is updated with the updated table.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 6, 2013
    Date of Patent: January 6, 2015
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Thorsten Krause, Stefan Neff
  • Patent number: 8478933
    Abstract: A method, computer management apparatus, and computer program product are provided for processing data stored on a sequential storage media within a computational computing environment. A block reference table and most often read blocks are loaded from a modified tape format of a sequential storage media into an internal memory of a sequential storage media device. During write command processing, a data deduplication procedure is performed using a modified block reference table. It is determined if entries from the block reference table must be deleted and responsive to this identifying and deleting host block and device block entries from the block reference table.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 11, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 2, 2013
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff, Ulf Troppens
  • Publication number: 20120265954
    Abstract: A storage management application determines that a source virtual tape requires reclamation, identifies all block addresses for active data of a source virtual tape and sorts the block addresses in an ascending order, identifies a target virtual tape which has sufficient free capacity to store the active data of said source virtual tape and the last written block address on said target virtual tape, and sends a command to the VTL-system instructing it to perform reclamation including information about said source and said target virtual tape, the sorted list of block addresses denoting active data on the source virtual tape and the starting block address on the target virtual tape. The reclamation logic references the active data host blocks of said source volume to said target virtual tape starting at said starting block address by just updating the host block to disk block mapping table.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 30, 2010
    Publication date: October 18, 2012
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff
  • Publication number: 20120179868
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation processing for tapes are provided. Instructions are received to perform reclamation processing on the formatted tape. Formatted tape is loaded into a tape drive for buffering active data during reclamation processing and consolidating all of the active data in capacity optimized manner on the same formatted tape. The formatted tape comprises metadata denoting active and inactive data blocks for files. The meta data of the formatted tape is read into a reclamation memory. The table is sorted and a starting block address is sorted. All active files ordered in the table starting at the starting block address are read into the reclamation memory. The files are written from the reclamation memory to the formatted tape from the starting block address and updating the table with new block addresses of the files. The meta data is updated with the updated table.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 9, 2012
    Publication date: July 12, 2012
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils HAUSTEIN, Thorsten KRAUSE, Stefan NEFF
  • Patent number: 8009539
    Abstract: A method and infrastructure are provided for monitoring and analyzing the storage media quality and the drive hardware performance of a media library. The media library comprises a plurality of removable storage media, a plurality of drive units for said storage media and means for moving said storage media to and from appropriate drive units. The media library is managed by a management system being connected to said media library. At least one reference medium of a known and proven quality to compare the performance of at least one of said storage media in a given drive unit with the performance of said reference medium in said given drive unit and/or to test the performance of at least one given drive unit of said media library when acting on said reference medium.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 19, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 30, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff, Ulf Troppens
  • Publication number: 20110125950
    Abstract: A method, computer management apparatus, and computer program product are provided for processing data stored on a sequential storage media within a computational computing environment. A block reference table and most often read blocks are loaded from a modified tape format of a sequential storage media into an internal memory of a sequential storage media device. During write command processing, a data deduplication procedure is performed using a modified block reference table. It is determined if entries from the block reference table must be deleted and responsive to this identifying and deleting host block and device block entries from the block reference table.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 11, 2010
    Publication date: May 26, 2011
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils HAUSTEIN, Stefan NEFF, Ulf TROPPENS
  • Publication number: 20110010495
    Abstract: Various embodiments for autonomic reclamation of data stored on at least one sequential storage media are provided. In one exemplary embodiment, active data stored on the at least one sequential storage media is identified. The active data is read out from a reclamation memory. The active data is stored in a sequential order by starting at a beginning block address of the at least one sequential storage media.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 29, 2010
    Publication date: January 13, 2011
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils HAUSTEIN, Stefan NEFF
  • Publication number: 20090059757
    Abstract: A method and infrastructure are provided for monitoring and analyzing the storage media quality and the drive hardware performance of a media library. The media library comprises a plurality of removable storage media, a plurality of drive units for said storage media and means for moving said storage media to and from appropriate drive units. The media library is managed by a management system being connected to said media library. At least one reference medium of a known and proven quality to compare the performance of at least one of said storage media in a given drive unit with the performance of said reference medium in said given drive unit and/or to test the performance of at least one given drive unit of said media library when acting on said reference medium.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 19, 2008
    Publication date: March 5, 2009
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff, Ulf Troppens
  • Publication number: 20080040723
    Abstract: The present invention relates to backup solutions in electronic computing systems and in particular to a method and respective system for managing the storage of application data on a removable storage medium and mounting the removable medium on a according driver device, wherein the application data is cached in a so-called “virtual tape system”, represented by a random-access storage medium, preferably a hard disk, before being written to removable medium or read from removable medium. In order to provide a method including an improved removable medium mount control for increasing the efficiency of removable medium driver device, it is proposed to perform the steps of: managing mount-specific meta data characteristic for removable medium operation workload tasks; predicting upcoming I/O workload based on said meta data; determining based on said calculation, if or when an incoming mount request for mounting a removable medium will be serviced.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2007
    Publication date: February 14, 2008
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff, Ulf Troppens, Josef Weingand, Daniel James Winarski, Rainer Wolafka
  • Publication number: 20080040539
    Abstract: The invention relates virtual tape systems. A method of controlling a cache controller is disclosed comprising the steps: a) when writing current application data to a logical volume resident in said random-access cache; b) maintaining surrounding cache storage location meta information—in most cases block addresses—about application data which was also written to the cache within a predetermined time surrounding of the current data, which is understood as adaptive read caching; c) when reading (recalling) the current data from tape into the cache in response to an application request; d) also reading respective surrounding application data according to the current data time surrounding from tape to cache in order to anticipate further reads to be performed later by the application.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2007
    Publication date: February 14, 2008
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Nils Haustein, Stefan Neff, Ulf Troppens, Josef Weingand