Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Matt Garson

Neal Robert Christiansen

Karan Mehra

Sarosh Cyrus Havewala

Surendra Verma

Ravinder S Thind

Shiv Kumar Rajpal

Darwin Ou-Yang

Daniel Chan

An application programming interface (API) module provides access to data, independent of filesystem implementation in a non-privileged user mode. A discovery volume having a filesystem recognizable by an operating system has cover files which prevent damage to data stored in an unrecognizable primary volume. The discovery volume also includes a data access API available for execution in a non-privileged user mode to render the primary volume accessible by operating systems which would otherwise find the primary volume unrecognizable.

Non-privileged access to data independent of filesystem implementation

A thinly provisioned storage system detects whether physical storage capacity is available when there is a request to allocate storage capacity, prior to data being written to the storage system. In particular, at the time when the file system allocates storage, such as when creating a file or performing an extending write (append) operation, allocating storage to an unallocated region of a sparse file, defragmenting a file, and the like, a storage system can verify that actual physical storage capacity is available. Thus, if there is insufficient actual physical capacity at the time when a storage allocation is attempted, then an error message can be sent and remedial action can be taken.

Managing capacity of a thinly provisioned storage system

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Matt Garson