Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Jeremy Eric Elson

Jonathan Ryan Howell

Edmund Bernard Nightingale

John R Douceur

Jacob Rubin Lorch

James Wiliamson Mickens

Galen Clyde Hunt

Danyel Aharon Fisher

Jon Howell

Bin Fan

Asim Kadav

Jie Jerry Liu

Feng Zhao

Richard F Rashid

Suman Kumar Nath

David A Maltz

David Alexander Molnar

Peter L Montgomery

Stuart Schechter

Chandrasekhar Thota

Duncan Murray Lawler

Keith Robert Kinnan

Lin Xiao

Leonidas Rigas

Wenbo He

Gong Chen

Owen Sebastian Hofmann

Jaya Bhatia

Osama Khan

James W Mickens

While connected to cloud storage, a computing device writes data and metadata to the cloud storage, indicates success of the write to an application of the computing device, and, after indicating success to the application, writes the data and metadata to local storage of the computing device. The data and metadata may be written to different areas of the local storage. The computing device may also determine that it has recovered from a crash or has connected to the cloud storage after operating disconnected and reconcile the local storage with the cloud storage. The reconciliation may be based at least on a comparison of the metadata stored in the area of the local storage with metadata received from the cloud storage. The cloud storage may store each item of data contiguously with its metadata as an expanded block.

Disconnected operation for systems utilizing cloud storage

Techniques for leveraging legacy code to deploy native-code desktop applications over a network (e.g., the Web) are described herein. These techniques include executing an application written in native code within a memory region that hardware of a computing device enforces. For instance, page-protection hardware (e.g., a memory management unit) or segmentation hardware may protect this region of memory in which the application executes. The techniques may also provide a narrow system call interface out of this memory region by dynamically enforcing system calls made by the application. Furthermore, these techniques may enable a browser of the computing device to function as an operating system for the native-code application. These techniques thus allow for execution of native-code applications on a browser of a computing device and, hence, over the Web in a resource-efficient manner and without sacrificing security of the computing device.

Executing native-code applications in a browser

The creation of an effective circuit between a sender device and a receiver device over the packet-switched network is described herein. To establish the effective circuit, the sender device sends a request to the receiver device through the packet-switched network. The request is associated with a bandwidth reservation from the receiver device for reception of a message from the sender device. The receiver device receives multiple requests from multiple sender devices and reserves bandwidth for at least one of the sender devices. The receiver device then sends a response to the at least one sender device providing clearance to send the message to the receiver device using the reserved bandwidth, the request and response establishing the effective circuit. The receiver device may also decline the requests of the other sender devices, causing the other sender devices to send other requests to other receiver devices.

Effective circuits in packet-switched networks

The subject disclosure is directed towards one or more parallel storage components for parallelizing block-level input/output associated with remote file data. Based upon a mapping scheme, the file data is partitioned into a plurality of blocks in which each may be equal in size. A translator component of the parallel storage may determine a mapping between the plurality of blocks and a plurality of storage nodes such that at least a portion of the plurality of blocks is accessible in parallel. Such a mapping, for example, may place each block in a different storage node allowing the plurality of blocks to be retrieved simultaneously and in its entirety.

Block-level access to parallel storage

A Metadata server described herein is configured to generate a metadata table optimized for data durability and recovery. In generating the metadata table, the metadata server associates each possible combination of servers with one of the indices of the table, thereby ensuring that each server participates in recovery in the event of a server failure. In addition, the metadata server may also associate one or more additional servers with each index to provide added data durability. Upon generating the metadata table, the metadata server provides the metadata table to clients or servers. Alternatively, the metadata server may provide rules and parameters to clients to enable those clients to identify servers storing data items. The clients may use these parameters and an index as inputs to the rules to determine the identities of servers storing or designated to store data items corresponding to the index.

Data layout for recovery and durability

Various techniques of using a portable electronic device for user input are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a method includes acquiring a sensor reading from an inertial measurement unit of the portable electronic device. The sensor reading contains an acceleration of the portable electronic device. The method also includes determining a position change of the portable electronic device based on the acquired sensor reading and transmitting the determined position change to a computer. The position change is usable by the computer to control a cursor position on the computer.

Using portable electronic devices for user input

A metadata server configured to maintain storage assignment mappings in non-persistent storage is described herein. The tract storage assignment mappings associate servers with storage assignments, the storage assignments representing the data stored on the servers. Responsive to a failure, the metadata server receives the storage assignments from the servers and rebuilds the storage assignment mappings from the storage assignments. The metadata server is also configured to enable clients to operate during a recovery process for a failed server by providing the storage assignment mappings to the clients during the recovery process. Also during the recovery process, the replacement server for the failed server conditionally overwrites stored data with other data received from other servers as part of the recovery process. The replacement server conditionally overwrites based on version information associated with the data and version information associated with the other data, the version information being associated with one or more versions of the storage assignment mappings.

Server failure recovery

A plurality of servers configured to receive a plurality of requests associated with a plurality of byte sequences are described herein. The requests for each byte sequence are received by a single one of the servers. Each server is further configured to serially process the requests it receives while the other servers also perform serial processing of requests in parallel with the server. Also, the requests for each byte sequence are transmitted to the single one of the servers by a plurality of clients, each client independently identifying the single one of the servers for the byte sequence based on system metadata.

Parallel serialization of request processing

A method of sorting a dataset includes incrementally receiving data from the dataset, and incrementally storing the received data as individual input data subsets as the data is received, thereby sequentially generating a plurality of filled data subsets of unsorted data. The method includes individually sorting each filled data subset of unsorted data concurrently with receiving data for a next one of the individual input data subsets, thereby sequentially generating a plurality of sorted input data subsets, and performing a merge sort on the plurality of sorted input data subsets, thereby incrementally generating a sorted version of the dataset.

Sorting a dataset of incrementally received data

Digital maps can be composed of a series of image tiles that are selected based on the context of the map to be presented. Independently hosted tiles can comprise additional details that can be added to the map. A manifest can be created that describes the layers of map details composed of such independently hosted tiles. Externally referable mechanisms can, based on the manifest and map context, select tiles, from among the independently hosted tiles, that correspond to map tiles being displayed to a user. Subsequently, the mechanisms can instruct a browser, as specified in the manifest, to combine the map tiles and the independently hosted tiles to generate a more detailed map. Alternatively, customized mechanisms can generate map detail tiles in real-time, based on an exported map context. Also, controls instantiated by the browser can render three-dimensional images based on the combined map tiles.

Adding custom content to mapping applications

The current invention is directed to embedded, wireless cloud-connector devices and systems that allow the embedded, wireless cloud-connector devices to be deployed in a variety of embedding devices, applications, and uses. The embedded, wireless, cloud-connector devices to which the current application is directed are implemented using a single integrated circuit, or set of integrated-circuit chips, and each interfaces to a device, product, or system in which the cloud-connector devices are embedded as subcomponents as well as to a communications-services provider. The cloud-connector devices provide data exchange between devices, products, and systems in which they are embedded and cloud providers that provide cloud-computing services, data-message routing, and wireless services through wireless carriers. Embedded, wireless cloud-connector devices, and the systems that interconnect and manage them, allow cloud-providers to extend the cloud-computing domain into many different types of low-cost and geographically dispersed markets and areas of use.

Embedded wireless cloud connector

Techniques for enabling client computing devices to leverage remote server pools for increasing the effectiveness of applications stored on the client computing device are described herein. In some instances, the server pools comprise a 'cloud', 'cluster' or &#x201c;data center&#x201d; that comprises hundreds or thousands of servers connected together by a network that has an extremely low latency and high bandwidth relative to the network through which the client computing device connects to the server pool. The client computing device may request that the server pool perform a certain task for an application whose canonical state resides on the client. After computation of a result of the task, a server of the server pool then provides the result to the client. By doing so, the techniques dramatically increase the amount of resources working on the request of the client and, hence, dramatically increase the speed and effectiveness of the client-side application.

Leveraging remote server pools for client applications

A system including a plurality of servers, a client, and a metadata server is described herein. The servers each store tracts of data, a plurality of the tracts comprising a byte sequence and being distributed among the plurality of servers. To locate the tracts, the metadata server generates a table that is used by the client to identify servers associated with the tracts, enabling the client to provide requests to the servers. The metadata server also enables recovery in the event of a server failure. Further, the servers construct tables of tract identifiers and locations to use in responding to the client requests.

Locator table and client library for datacenters

A client device configured to write to both a growth server and a live server replica that the growth server is replacing during a growth phase is described herein. The client device first determines the growth server designated to replace a corresponding live server replica of a set of server replicas associated with a storage index. The client device then transmits a write request associated with the storage index to the set of server replicas and to the growth server. The client device may perform the determining based on storage assignment mappings. The storage assignment mappings are provided to the client device by a metadata server while the growth server retrieves data associated with the storage index from the live server replica.

Growing community of inventors

Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Jeremy Eric Elson