Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Emc Corporation

Stephan Doll

Gregory W Nichols

Vinit Ogale

Sri Sai Kameswara Pavan Kumar Kasturi

Keshava Prasad Subramanya

Kiran Kumar Dowluru

Hongliu Zheng

Yunan Yuan

Desmond T Lee

Calin Negreanu

Marc Todd Friedman

Corneliu I Lupu

Baskar Sridharan

Yi Meng

Michael H Krause

Vamshidhar Radha Kommineni

Gerald Francis Maffeo

Paul Luo Li

Abdelsalam Heddaya

Andrew J Lagattuta

Joseph P Mullally

William Hunter Hudson

Jared E Bobbitt

Patrick Wing Sang Lau

Matthew Jeremiah Eason

Robert Chris Hickman

John Wesley Fawcett

Jeffrey C Tanner

Matt Eason

Jiong (Justin) Chen

Edward P Johnson

Ty Lam

Robert J Smith

Some embodiments of the invention provide techniques whereby a user may perform a system reset (e.g., to address system performance and/or reliability degradation, such as which may be caused by unused applications that unnecessarily consume system resources, an attempted un-install of an application that left remnants of the application behind, and/or other causes). In some embodiments, performing a system reset replaces a first instance of an operating system on the system with a new instance of the operating system, and removes any applications installed on the system, without disturbing the user's data.

System reset

Some embodiments of the invention provide techniques for performing system reset and/or system restore operations. Some embodiments store a record of any changes performed to a data file stored on a virtual hard disk using differencing virtual disks that are captured over time. To restore the file to the state in which it existed at any particular point in time, embodiments of the invention may allow for rolling back the system to a differencing virtual disk captured at or before that time and setting aside blocks of the differencing virtual disk chain captured after that point. To perform a system reset, the system may be rolled back to the parent virtual hard disk, by setting aside all of the blocks of the differencing virtual disk chain. Some embodiments of the invention provide for separating information on the system into a plurality of entities, and maintaining a separate set of differencing virtual disks for each entity. For example, some embodiments may create an entity may be created for each of the operating system, applications and user data, and maintain differencing virtual disks for each over time.

System reset and system restore

An application programming interface (API) that leverages operating system instrumentation to provide a chain of threads and processes may alleviate some debugging complications. Specifically, the chain may start with the first thread in the process that experienced the original failure and end with the last thread upon which the first thread directly or indirectly depends. The API may aid debugging efforts by classifying all threads related or dependent upon an original failed thread into specific categories of failures, requesting further information from the originating OS concerning specific failed threads, and using that information to debug the failed application or process more thoroughly.

Failed process reporting

A method of detecting a network hang and restoring an application that communicates on a connection giving rise to the network hang. A user experience may be improved by providing the user with an option to restore the hung application without losing unsaved data or state information. The network hang may be detected when the user tries to terminate the application. The method may include determining whether the network hang is recoverable, which may involve diagnosing a type of the hang. If recoverable, a network connection reset mechanism may be triggered by instructing a network stack of the computer to terminate the network connection.

Network hang recovery

Instrumentation to find the thread or process responsible for an application failure

An incrementally-scalable file system and method. The system architecture enables file systems to be scaled by adding resources, such as additional filers and/or file servers, without requiring that the system be taken offline or being known to client applications. The system also provides for load balancing file accesses by distributing files across the various file storage resources in the system, as dictated by the relative capacities of said storage resources. The system provides one or more 'virtual' file system volumes in a manner that makes it appear to client applications that all of the file system's storage space resides on the virtual volume(s), while in reality the files may be stored on many more physical volumes on the filers and/or file servers in the system.

Scalable network file system

A virtual file system and method. The system architecture enables a plurality of underlying file systems running on various file servers to be 'virtualized' into one or more 'virtual volumes' that appear as a local file system to clients that access the virtual volumes. The system also enables the storage spaces of the underlying file systems to be aggregated into a single virtual storage space, which can be dynamically scaled by adding or removing file servers without taking any of the file systems offline and in a manner transparent to the clients. This functionality is enabled through a software &#x201c;virtualization&#x201d; filter on the client that intercepts file system requests and a virtual file system driver on each file server. The system also provides for load balancing file accesses by distributing files across the various file servers in the system, through migration of data files between servers.

Virtual file system

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Stephan Doll