Netapp, Inc.

Prashant Pogde

Manish M Agarwal

Embodiments of the present invention provide a novel technique for maintaining directory-based quota, for performing directory notification to a client system, and performing other such operations by efficiently finding ancestral directory associations on a server system without performing multiple accesses to data structures associated with the directory associations. Since data structures do not need to be accessed multiple times, performance of the server system can be improved.

Mechanism for performing fast directory lookup in a server system

A system and method are provided for auto-committing files of a storage system to immutable status based on a change log of file system activity. The system is configured for producing and analyzing the change log. Producing the change log involves generating change log entries associated with changes made to files of the storage system and organizing the change log entries from the oldest to newest entries. Analyzing the change log involves processing the change log beginning with the oldest entry to determine whether any entries have met the auto-commit time period, and if so, to set the files associated with such entries to immutable status. If a change log entry is found not to have met the auto-commit time period, a resting time period is determined based on the oldest change log entry, and processing of the change log proceeds after expiration of the resting time period.

Auto-committing files to immutable status based on a change log of file system activity

A new approach to support efficient management of directory quotas for a file system is proposed. The approach adopts bitmasks for files and directories in a file system, and transforms the problem of maintaining and traversing complicated file system data structures into a simple bitmask comparison and an associated lookup. It applies to files and directories under CIFS, NFS, other network file systems and local file systems and moves the costly operations of traversing the file system from file operations to administrative operation of switching the quotas on and off, which is infrequent and do not have the performance requirements of regular file operations.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Prashant Pogde