Emc Corporation

Emc IP Holding Company LLC

Christian J Chuba

Christopher H Stacey

Eyal Zimran

Uday K Gupta

Walter Forrester

Xiaoye Jiang

Stephen A Fridella

Ivan Basov

Jiannan Zheng

Ravi Venkata Batchu

Christopher H E Stacey

Jerald W Gross

Mary Walker

This invention is a system and a method for operating a storage server in a data network using a new architecture. The system of operating a storage server includes a secondary storage that archives or stores a data object in transformed form such that the clients of the storage server can no longer access the data directly. The method of accessing the data object that is archived or transformed in a different form to the secondary storage includes recalling only those data blocks that are required for read or write operation.

Sparse recall and writes for archived and transformed data objects

Accordingly a method and interface allows an attribute data base used by an Information Manager to be quickly populated and accurately maintained. A single Bulk Attribute Retrieval Request triggers the primary storage device to collect object attribute information. The method allows for selective collection of objects and attributes by providing filters and attribute lists in the Requests. The Request may be used to provide an incremental scan with appropriate time stamp filtering. In addition, the size of the results can be controlled by the IM by eliminating attributes that are not of interest to the IM. The Request is advantageously issued over a FileMover interface, which is an HTTP connection, and encoded in XML, allowing the IM to easily customize the Request as desired.

Method and apparatus for performing bulk file system attribute retrieval

A protected file is retained in secondary storage for a retention period, and a corresponding stub file is retained in primary storage for the retention period. The stub file retains attributes of the file indicating a location of the file data in the secondary storage and indicting that the stub file is to be retained for the retention period. A system administrator may instruct a primary file server that a secondary file server supports retention based protection and it is desired to protect stub files corresponding to protected files that are migrated to the secondary file server. The primary file server may request the secondary file server to return a protection status of the file after migration. This enables automatic policy-based migration to both file level retention (FLR) and non-FLR retention protected secondary storage from diverse applications accessing FLR or non-FLR files in the primary storage.

Primary stub file retention and secondary retention coordination in a hierarchical storage system

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Berkeley Heights, NJ, United States of America

Christian J Chuba