Continuing its long tradition of excellence in storage innovations through its StorTrends® brand of data storage solutions, American Megatrends, Inc. (AMI) was recently granted a patent for its innovations related to hot-spare data storage technology. US Patent Number 8,479,037, titled “Distributed Hot-Spare Storage in a Storage Cluster” and awarded to AMI on July 2, 2013, outlines AMI’s approach to providing distributed hot-spare storage in a redundant storage cluster. According to the patent abstract, this method employs a portion of the unutilized space on a storage cluster as a distributed hot-spare node. Through this mechanism, a redundant storage cluster with “N” storage nodes may be contracted to a redundant array with “N-1” nodes. Additionally, thin provisioning and intelligent data placement may also be utilized to implement the distributed hot-spare storage node.

The patent abstract goes on to indicate how through repeated application of such methods and systems, the failure of multiple storage nodes within a redundant storage cluster results in the recreation of the cluster with one fewer node, but with the same level of redundancy. The value of this technology is an added layer of data protection in the event of a node failure or other disruption.

“AMI is pleased to disclose the latest of our many patents for data storage technologies. We continue to innovate in the data storage space, as AMI is deeply committed to making great strides in our storage technology portfolio to provide products featuring great innovation and performance at an affordable price,” remarked Sukha Ghosh, Vice President of Engineering for American Megatrends.