NETWORK STORAGE SERVER WITH INTEGRATED ENCRYPTION, COMPRESSION AND DEDUPLICATION CAPABILITY

• US 20090268903A1
• Filed: 04/25/2008
• Published: 10/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Bojinov, Hristo, Subramanian, Ananthan
• Granted Patent: US 9,395,929 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 380/45
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1453 using de-duplication of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0866 for peripheral storage systems, e.g. disk cache
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/264 Remote server
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/401 Compressed data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0622 in relation to access
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0625 Power saving in storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/30 Compression, e.g. Merkle-Damgard construction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/60 Digital content management, e.g. content distribution
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0836 using tree structure or hierarchical structure
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0894 Escrow, recovery or storing of secret information, e.g. secret key escrow or cryptographic key storage
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A network storage server receives multiple write requests from a set of clients via a network and internally buffers multiple data blocks written by the write requests. At a consistency point, the storage server commits the data blocks to a nonvolatile mass storage facility. The consistency point process includes using a storage operating system in the network storage server to compress the data blocks, encrypt selected data blocks, and store the compressed and (possibly) encrypted data blocks in the nonvolatile mass storage facility. Data blocks can also be fingerprinted in parallel with compression and/or encryption, to facilitate subsequent deduplication. Data blocks can be indexed and classified according to content or attributes of the data. Encryption can be applied at different levels of logical container granularity, where a separate, unique cryptographic key is used for each encrypted data container.

Claims