Efficiently purging non-active blocks in NVM regions using virtblock arrays

    公开(公告)号:US11249900B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-02-15

    申请号:US16174249

    申请日:2018-10-29

    Applicant: VMware, Inc.

    Abstract: Techniques for efficiently purging non-active blocks in an NVM region of an NVM device using virtblocks are provided. In one set of embodiments, a host system can maintain, in the NVM device, a pointer entry (i.e., virtblock entry) for each allocated data block of the NVM region, where page table entries of the NVM region that refer to the allocated data block include pointers to the pointer entry, and where the pointer entry includes a pointer to the allocated data block. The host system can further determine that a subset of the allocated data blocks of the NVM region are non-active blocks and can purge the non-active blocks from the NVM device to a mass storage device, where the purging comprises updating the pointer entry for each non-active block to point to a storage location of the non-active block on the mass storage device.

    EFFICIENTLY PURGING NON-ACTIVE BLOCKS IN NVM REGIONS USING POINTER ELIMINATION

    公开(公告)号:US20200133846A1

    公开(公告)日:2020-04-30

    申请号:US16174264

    申请日:2018-10-29

    Applicant: VMware, Inc.

    Abstract: Techniques for efficiently purging non-active blocks in an NVM region of an NVM device using pointer elimination are provided. In one set of embodiments, a host system can, for each level 1 (L1) page table entry of each snapshot of the NVM region, determine whether a data block of the NVM region that is pointed to by the L1 page table entry is a non-active block, and if the data block is a non-active block, remove a pointer to the data block in the L1 page table entry and reduce a reference count parameter associated with the data block by 1. If the reference count parameter has reached zero at this point, the host system purge the data block from the NVM device to the mass storage device.

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