F5 Networks, Inc.

Symantec Operating Corporation

Ron S Vogel

Thomas K Wong

Borislav Marinov

Vladan Z Marinkovic

Margaret E Knight

Saravanan Coimbatore

Chitra Makkar

Suma Suresh

A plurality of network file manager switches interoperate to provide remote file virtualization. Copies of file data and/or metadata are maintained at a central site and at one or more remote sites. The network file manager switch at the remote site may satisfy certain client requests locally without having to contact the network file manager switch at the central site. A global namespace is maintained and is communicated to all network file manager switches.

Remote file virtualization in a switched file system

A method and apparatus for removing duplicated data in a file system utilizing the concept of storage tiers. A synthetic namespace is created via file virtualization, and is comprised of one or more file systems. Deduplication is applied at the namespace level and on all of the file systems comprising the synthetic namespace. All files in a file system in a higher storage tier whose contents are identical to at least one other file in the synthetic namespace are moved to a destination file system in a lower storage tier. For each set of duplicated files that are moved from the original servers, a single instance copy of the file is left behind as a mirror copy. Read access to a duplicated file is redirected to its mirror copy. When the first write to a duplicated file is received, the association from the duplicated file stored in the destination server to its mirror copy that is stored in the origin server is discarded. Access to the 'modified' duplicated file will then resume normally from the destination server.

File deduplication using storage tiers

A method for automatically (i.e., programmatically) determining a storage configuration for a storage system for a given application. The method may receive information on existing storage capabilities in the storage system and information regarding the software application that will use the storage system. The method may then automatically determine a storage configuration for the storage system based on the existing storage capabilities in the storage system, the information regarding the application, and application specific rules about storage configuration principles of the application. The rule may comprise priority information that specifies a priority in application of the rules, e.g., a structure or list of storage types in order of priority for different application data types.

Storage configurator for determining an optimal storage configuration for an application

Load sharing clusters in which each node is responsible for one or more non-overlapping subset(s) of the cluster namespace and will process only those requests that access file or directory objects in the partitioned namespace that the node controls while redirecting requests designated for other nodes. A non-overlapping subset may be migrated from a source node to a destination node, for example, for load sharing or hotspot mitigation. Migration typically includes maintaining a file virtualization link from the destination node to the source node to permit forwarding of requests by the destination node to the source node during migration of metadata and then migration of data from the source node. After migration is complete, the file virtualization link is broken and the destination node services requests for the non-overlapping subset from the migrated metadata and data.

Load sharing cluster file systems

A non-distruptive migration of a native volume from a source server to a destination server performed by a file switch involves converting the source native volume to a native with metadata volume. The native with metadata volume is converted to a mirrored native with metadata volume including the source server and the destination server. The destination server includes a mirror copy of the native with metadata volume. The source server is removed from the mirrored native with metadata volume. The mirror copy of the native with metadata volume on the destination server is converted to a destination native volume on the destination server.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Ron S Vogel