Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Panasonic Corporation

Sarosh Cyrus Havewala

Neal Robert Christiansen

Vishal Vikram Ghotge

Ravinder S Thind

Ravisankar V Pudipeddi

Mark Joseph Zbikowski

David Allen Goebel

Christian Gregory Allred

David Matthew Kruse

Karan Mehra

Mathew George

Shiv Kumar Rajpal

Guhan Suriyanarayanan

Christophe Franck Robert

Craig Ashley Barkhouse

Daniel Chan

Yoshiho Gotoh

Garret Buban

Rajeev Y Nagar

Surendra Verma

Ran Kalach

Scott A Brender

Senthil Rajaram

Juan-Lee Pang

Hui Li

Nandagopal Kirubanandan

John D Slingwine

Paul Adrian Oltean

Andrew M Herron

David Golds

James Robert Benton

Shobana Balakrishnan

Grigory Borisovich Lyakhovitskiy

Apurva Ashwin Doshi

Matthew Stuart Garson

Matt Garson

Ankur Kasturiya

Branton Nicolas Boehm

Lane Haury

Kiran Kumar G Bangalore

Revinder S Thind

Ashley P Ventura

Tarun Ramani

Lei Shi

Dan Teodosiu

Nikolaj Skallerud Bjorner

Ahmed Hassan Mohamed

Andrea D'Amato

Vinod R Shankar

Alan M Warwick

Ping Xie

Vyacheslav Kuznetsov

Malcolm James Smith

Daniel Edward Lovinger

Bryan Stephen Matthew

Shiv Rajpal

Gregory Robert Domzalski

Thiago Sigrist

Jeremiah J Moon

Christopher F Robert

Ahmed H Microsoft Corporation Mohamed

An application running in a container is able to access files stored on disk via normal file system calls, but in a manner that remains isolated from applications and processes in other containers. In one aspect, a namespace virtualization component is coupled with a copy-on-write component. When an isolated application is accessing a file stored on disk in a read-only manner, the namespace virtualization component and copy-on-write component grant access to the file. But, if the application requests to modify the file, the copy-on-write component intercepts the I/O and effectively creates a copy of the file in a different storage location on disk. The namespace virtualization component is then responsible for hiding the true location of the copy of the file, via namespace mapping.

Storage isolation for containers

Storage virtualization techniques allow directories to be stored remotely, for example, by a cloud storage provider, but in a manner that appears to a user or application running on a local computing device as if the directories are stored locally&#x2014;even though the data of those directories may not be resident on the local computing device. That is, the contents of directories that may exist in the cloud look and behave as if they were stored locally on a computing device.

Storage virtualization for directories

An extensible file system format for portable storage media is provided. The extensible file system format includes the specification of primary and secondary directory entry types that may be custom defined. The primary and secondary directory entry types can be further classified as critical and benign directory entries. The directory entry types can define whether a cluster chain corresponding to a file can be contiguously allocated.

Extending cluster allocations in an extensible file system

Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to backups and change journals. In aspects, a change journal is read to determine changes that have occurred to objects of a file system. From these changes a data structure is created to capture path information and collect changes for each object. Where the data structure is insufficient to identify a complete path, the live file system is consulted. After the data structure is complete, a data protection engine uses the data structure to update a catalog at least to provide the capability to view the namespace of the protected objects at one or more times covered by the catalog.

File system backup using change journal

An extensible file system format for portable storage media is provided. The extensible file system format includes the specification of primary and secondary directory entry types that may be custom defined. The primary and secondary directory entry types can be further classified as critical and benign directory entries.

Extensible file system

Scalable data storage techniques are described. In one or more implementations, data is obtained by one or more computing devices that describes fault domains in a storage hierarchy and available storage resources in a data storage pool. Operational characteristics are ascertained, by the one or more computing devices, of devices associated with the available storage resources within one or more levels of the storage hierarchy. Distribution of metadata is assigned by the one or more computing devices to one or more particular data storage devices within the data storage pool based on the described fault domains and the ascertained operational characteristics of devices within one or more levels of the storage hierarchy.

Scalable data storage pools

The techniques and systems described herein determine whether or not to implement reparse behavior in association with a file or a directory access. A file system and/or a file system filter can receive, from a host system component, a request to open a file or a directory. While attempting to access the file or the directory, a reparse tag associated with an intermediate directory is encountered. The file system can then determine whether a next node, along an access path for the file or the directory to be opened, exists in the intermediate directory. That is, the file system can look beyond the reparse tag and into the intermediate directory to determine if the next node exists. Subsequently, the file system and/or the file system filter can decide whether to implement reparse behavior based on the reparse tag and whether the next node exists in the intermediate directory.

Controlling reparse behavior associated with an intermediate directory

The techniques and systems described herein reduce the amount of storage resources consumed by containers by creating placeholder files in container namespaces. The placeholder files are associated with read-only access to corresponding shared files stored in a read-only namespace. The read-only namespace can be accessible to multiple different containers. This increases the storage density for a storage unit because more containers can be executed from the same storage unit. The techniques and systems described herein further reduce the amount of storage resources consumed by containers by creating placeholder directories. The techniques and systems described herein also reduce the amount of memory storage resources consumed by containers to execute files by using a shared execution memory area.

Reducing resource consumption associated with storage and operation of containers

Improved methods and systems for granular opportunistic locking mechanisms (oplocks) are provided for increasing file caching efficiency. Oplocks can be specified with a combination of three possible granular caching intentions: read, write, and/or handle. An oplock can be specified with an identifier that indicates a client/specific caller to avoid breaking the original oplock due to an incompatibility from other requests of the same client. An atomic oplock flag is added to create operations that allow callers to request an atomic open with an oplock with a given file.

Efficient file management through granular opportunistic locking

A system in which a file system may operate on a volume in which the logical address extent of the volume is divided into multiple tiers, each tier providing storage having a distinct trait set by mapping the logical addresses of the volume to appropriate underlying storage systems. A volume system exposes the volume to the file system in a manner that the file system itself has awareness of the tiers, and is aware of the trait sets of each tier. The file system may thus store file system namespaces (such as directories and files) into the tiers as appropriate for the file system namespace. A provisioning system may also be provided and be configured to provision the volume to include such tiers, and if desired, to extend the tiers.

Heterogenic volume generation and use system

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Sarosh Cyrus Havewala