Vmware, Inc.

Raghavan Pichai

Asit Desai

Pradeep H Krishnamurthy

Prasanna Aithal

Mahesh Shivanagouda Hiregoudar

Prasad Rao Jangam

Srinivasa Shantharam

Bryan Branstetter

Rohan Pasalkar

Vivek Patidar

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for reclaiming one or more portions of storage resources in a computer system serving one or more virtual computing instances, where the storage resources in the computer system are organized in clusters of storage blocks. In one aspect, a method includes maintaining a respective block tracking value for each storage block that indicates whether a call to reclaim the storage block is outstanding; determining, from the block tracking values, a respective cluster priority value for each of the clusters based on a count of storage blocks in the respective cluster for which a call to reclaim is outstanding; and reclaiming a first portion of storage resources in the computer system in accordance with the cluster priority values.

Reclaiming storage resources

A distributed file system may be configured with file blocks of a first type and file blocks of a second type, from allocation units that comprise a logical volume containing the file system. File blocks of the second type may be defined from one or more file blocks of the first type. A thick file may be instantiated with a number of allocation units totaling a size greater than or equal to a specified file size of the thick file. The allocation units may be allocated to the thick file in units of file blocks of the first type or file blocks of the second type, depending on the specified file size of the thick file.

Method and system for thick files in a distributed file system

The systems described herein are configured to enhance the efficiency of memory in a host file system with respect to hosted virtual file systems. In situations when the hosted virtual file systems use smaller file block sizes than the file block sizes of the host file system. During storage of a file, a file block is assigned a block address and unmapping bits. The block address and unmapping bits are stored in a pointer block or other similar data structure associated with the file. Particularly, the block address is stored in a first address block and the unmapping bits are stored in at least one additional address block located in proximity to the block address, such that the unmap granularity of the file is not limited by the fixed size of address blocks in the system.

Granular unmapping with variable addressing in a data store

System and method for executing a file system operation for a computer system utilize a computed hash value of a file system object to access a hash block of a file system directory stored in a storage system to locate a hash slot corresponding to the computed hash value. Using at least one of a hash pointer in the hash slot and an allocation block of the file system directory, a dirent slot in a dirent block of the file system directory is located to perform an operational task on the particular dirent slot to execute the file system operation.

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Bengaluru, India

Raghavan Pichai