StoneFly, Inc.announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company U.S. patent 7,302,500, entitled "Packet-Based Storage Processing." The patent was awarded for the technology driving StoneFly's storage virtualization engine, which is a core component of all of the company's IP SANs.

The patent is for technology developed by engineers at the company's development center in San Diego. This invention decreases latency and eliminates I/O bottlenecks, allowing communications to be classified into data or command "packets" for more efficient internal routing. The StoneFly innovation also offers a scalable way to process communication requests, taking full advantage of the available system or network bandwidth.

StoneFly's storage virtualization engine resides at the core of StoneFly StoneFusion, an IP-based, block-level provisioning appliance that centralizes storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes. StoneFusion 6.0 provides enhanced VMware and Xen support for fast integration of networked storage with virtual servers, and also includes StoneFly Reflection™ for local and campus mirroring, and StoneFly Snapshot™ for fast, efficient data recovery. StoneFusion is integrated into all StoneFly IP SANs.

The storage virtualization engine operates seamlessly behind the scenes, allowing for efficient, concurrent processing. It powers StoneFly services such as clustering, replication, mirroring (via StoneFly Reflection) and other iSCSI storage resources.

According to Mo Tahmasebi, CEO for StoneFly's parent company, DNF Corp., "This valuable invention has provided an important foundation for our IP SAN solutions since StoneFly pioneered the market for iSCSI storage," said Tahmasebi. "We will continue to leverage and build upon this technology as we further advance our product offerings."