Selective compression of unstructured data

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10684993-B2
Application number	US-201615182799-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 15, 2016
Priority date	Jun 15, 2016
Publication date	Jun 16, 2020
Grant date	Jun 16, 2020

Abstract

A method for selectively compressing unstructured data includes preparing, at a host system, a data blob made up of unstructured data, for storage on a storage system. The method encodes a first portion of the data blob with a first color and a second portion of the data blob with a second color. The first color indicates that the associated portion should remain uncompressed, while the second color indicates that the associated portion should be compressed. The method transmits the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system. In response, the storage virtualization layer stores the first portion in an uncompressed format, and compresses the second portion and stores the second portion in a compressed format. A corresponding system and computer program product are also disclosed herein.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for selectively compressing unstructured data, the method comprising:
preparing, at a host system, a data binary large object (blob) for storage on a storage system, the data blob comprising unstructured data;
encoding, by the host system, a first portion of the unstructured data with a first color and a second portion of the unstructured data with a second color that is different from the first color, the first color indicating that an associated portion should remain uncompressed and the second color indicating that an associated portion should be compressed, wherein encoding the first portion and the second portion comprises replacing characters within the first portion and the second portion with codes that are indicative of the first color and the second color respectively;
transmitting the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system;
detecting, by the storage virtualization layer, the first color of the first portion and the second color of the second portion;
storing, by the storage virtualization layer, the first portion in an uncompressed format;
compressing, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion; and
storing, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion in a compressed format.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising encoding the first portion with a first color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the first portion with a first special character corresponding to the first color.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising encoding the second portion with a second color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the second portion with a second special character corresponding to the second color.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the first color and the second color indicate a data reduction technique other than compression to be used by the storage virtualization layer.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, upon retrieving the data blob stored on the storage system, retrieving the first portion and decompressing the second portion in parallel.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the first color and the second color indicate a level of compression to be used by the storage virtualization layer.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising using at least one of the first color and second color to convey, to the storage virtualization layer, temperature information associated with the data blob.

8. A computer program product for selectively compressing unstructured data, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer-usable program code embodied therein, the computer-usable program code comprising:
computer-usable program code to prepare, at a host system, a data binary large object (blob) for storage on a storage system, the data blob comprising unstructured data;
computer-usable program code to encode, at the host system, a first portion of the unstructured data with a first color and a second portion of the unstructured data with a second color that is different from the first color, the first color indicating that an associated portion should remain uncompressed and the second color indicating that an associated portion should be compressed, wherein encoding the first portion and the second portion comprises replacing characters within the first portion and the second portion with codes that are indicative of the first color and the second color respectively;
computer-usable program code to transmit the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system;
computer-usable program code to detect, by the storage virtualization layer, the first color of the first portion and the second color of the second portion;
computer-usable program code to store, on the storage system, the first portion in an uncompressed format;
computer-usable program code to compress, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion; andcomputer-usable program code to store, on the storage system, the second portion in a compressed format.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising computer-usable program code to encode the first portion with a first color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the first portion with a first special character corresponding to the first color.

10. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising computer-usable program code to encode the second portion with a second color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the second portion with a second special character corresponding to the second color.

11. The computer program product of claim 8 , wherein at least one of the first color and the second color indicate a data reduction technique other than compression to be used by the storage virtualization layer.

12. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising computer-usable program code to, upon retrieving the data blob stored on the storage system, retrieve the first portion and decompress the second portion in parallel.

13. The computer program product of claim 8 , wherein at least one of the first color and the second color indicate a level of compression to be used by the storage virtualization layer.

14. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising computer-usable program code to use at least one of the first color and second color to convey, to the storage virtualization layer, temperature information associated with the data blob.

15. A system for selectively compressing unstructured data, the system comprising:
at least one processor;
at least one memory device coupled to the at least one processor and storing instructions for execution on the at least one processor, the instructions causing the at least one processor to;
prepare, at a host system, a data binary large object (blob) for storage on a storage system, the data blob comprising unstructured data;
encode, at the host system, a first portion of the unstructured data with a first color and a second portion of the unstructured data with a second color that is different from the first color, the first color indicating that an associated portion should remain uncompressed and the second color indicating that an associated portion should be compressed, wherein encoding the first portion and the second portion comprises replacing characters within the first portion and the second portion with codes that are indicative of the first color and the second color respectively;
transmit the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system;
detect, by the storage virtualization layer, the first color of the first portion and the second color of the second portion;
store, on the storage system, the first portion in an uncompressed format;
compress, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion; and
store, on the storage system, the second portion in a compressed format.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the instructions further cause the at least one processor to encode the first portion with a first color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the first portion with a first special character corresponding to the first color, and encode the second portion with a second color by replacing at least one stock SPACE character in the second portion with a second special character corresponding to the second color.

17. The system of claim 15 , wherein the instructions further cause the

Assignees

• IBM
• Computer Task Group Inc

Inventors

• Fagiano Christophe
• Goldberg Itzhack
• Sondhi Neil
• Winarski Daniel J

Classifications

• G06F16/1744 Primary

  using compression, e.g. sparse files · CPC title

• H04L67/1097

  for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS] · CPC title