Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Sebastien Charles

Andrea D'Amato

Richard Paul Testardi

Mohit Kumar Garg

Devidas Joshi

Gautam Gopinadhan

Ernie Pistor

Stephen Wade Wolfe

John Renaud

Astolfo Rueda

Tamer Sherif Mahmoud Abdelaziz

Transportable storage devices are communicatively coupled behind one or more dedicated 'edge' data servers to take advantage of the benefits of the data servers and transportable storage devices while limiting their disadvantages. Each edge data server ingests data from one or more client devices and copies the data to one or more of the transportable storage devices for eventual transport to a cloud data center for upload to a cloud storage system. Multiple versions of a segment of data (e.g., of a file or a blob) are maintained at various points in the disclosed system and the disclosed technology ensures that the most recent version is the version ultimately stored on the cloud storage system.

Synchronizing online and offline transfer of data to cloud storage system

The disclosed technology includes a storage system with a docking station configured to serve as an interface between a host computer and a portable data pack including multiple storage drives. The docking station includes a drive-side connection interface that provides a physical and electrical coupling to each of the multiple storage drives in the portable data pack, a RAID controller, and mode selection logic for directing communications in route between the host computer and a select drive of the multiple storage drives along one of two selectable paths within the docking station, the first path permitting the host computer to interact with the select drive through the RAID controller and the second path permitting the host computer to interact with the select drive along a data channel that bypasses the RAID controller.

Docking assembly with multi-mode drive control

Transportable storage devices are communicatively coupled behind one or more dedicated 'edge' data servers to take advantage of the benefits of the data servers and transportable storage devices while limiting their disadvantages. Each edge data server ingests data from one or more client devices and copies the data to one or more of the transportable storage devices for eventual transport to a cloud data center for upload to a cloud storage system. Object identifiers of objects stored on the transportable storage devices are maintained in a namespace of the data servers after decoupling of the transportable storage devices from the data servers so that the object identifiers remain visible to client devices.

Namespace data object name persistence after decoupling of transportable storage device from data server

Growing community of inventors

Morgan Hill, CA, United States of America

Sebastien Charles