Caringo awarded patent for erasure coding, replication in storage clusters

- A method of specifying replication or erasure coding by “instructions from a client, an inherent property of the object, the metadata of the object, a setting of the cluster, or by other means.”
- A method of replacing content associated with a unique identifier.
- A method of using the manifest or replicated objects in the case of a failed disk scenario.
- A method of relocating an object within a storage cluster without the need for an extra control computer or control database.
- A method of using metadata to specify the transformation from replication to erasure coding automatically based on trigger conditions.
- A method of moving an object from one cluster to another and automatically converting to the storage format used by the second cluster, dictated by default cluster settings, by user metadata of the object, or by instructions from the program initiating the move.

The value of data and the access of that data changes dynamically. This patented approach by Caringo lets users take advantage of the footprint efficiency of erasure coding and the low processing utilization and rapid access of replication without the introduction of the complexity or single point of failure associated with control computers and databases.

“Our focus for nearly a decade has been to take complexity out of storage management by offloading manual tasks to the software layer while eliminating single points of failure with our superior architecture,” said Mark Goros, Caringo CEO. “We deliver a highly reliable storage solution that’s efficient, easy to manage and can keep up with the relentless retention and access requirements faced by today’s enterprises. The awarded patent differentiates us from our competitors. Caringo Swarm lets you set the data protection based on the data’s value - and you can do this right down to the object level – all on the same cluster without any special purpose nodes.”