Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Embedded reference counts for file clones
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Application No.: US17119959Application Date: 2020-12-11
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Publication No.: US11494334B2Publication Date: 2022-11-08
- Inventor: Sriram Patil , Abhay Kumar Jain , Wenguang Wang , Nitin Rastogi , Pranay Singh , Richard P. Spillane
- Applicant: VMware, Inc.
- Applicant Address: US CA Palo Alto
- Assignee: VMware, Inc.
- Current Assignee: VMware, Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Palo Alto
- Main IPC: G06F17/00
- IPC: G06F17/00 ; G06F7/00 ; G06F16/11 ; G06F16/185 ; G06F16/174

Abstract:
Techniques for efficiently managing a file clone from a filesystem which supports efficient volume snapshots are provided. In some embodiments, a system may receive an instruction to remove the file clone from the filesystem. The file clone may be a point-in-time copy of metadata of an original file. The system may further—for a file map entry in a filesystem tree associated with the file clone, the file map entry indicating a data block—decrement a reference count in a reference count entry associated with the file map entry. The reference count entry may be stored in the filesystem tree according to a key and the key may comprise an identification of the original file. The system may further reclaim the data block in a storage system when the reference count is zero.
Public/Granted literature
- US20220188267A1 EMBEDDED REFERENCE COUNTS FOR FILE CLONES Public/Granted day:2022-06-16
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