Emc Corporation

Stephen A Ludlum

Edith Epstein

Arod Shatil

Mechanisms and techniques allow a host computer system to control caching operations within a data storage system. In a typical implementation, the system of the invention operates within a host computer system to intercept requests for access to data stored within a data storage system that originate from applications, programs or other processes that perform (e.g., execute) on the host computer system or another computer system. Once intercepted, the host computer can examine such a request for access to data to determine if the request matches any prefetch criteria defined within a prefetch database provided by the system of the invention. As an example, prefetch criteria defined in a prefetch database can specify various requestors (e.g., applications, programs, processes, users, or the like) that can access data (e.g., specific files, databases, volumes, data types or the like) stored within the data storage system according to various data access techniques (e.g., filesystems command such as open, read, write, seek and so forth). If a request for access to data matches prefetch criteria, the host computer configured with the invention determines prefetch information for related data related to data specified in the request based on the matching prefetch criteria. The prefetch information indicates the manner (e.g., amount, permanence, etc.) in which related data is to be cached in the data storage system. The host computer also obtains storage information for the related data that indicates the location of the related data stored within the data storage system. Using the prefetch information and the storage information, the invention generates one or more prefetch commands which indicate what related data is to be cached within the data storage system and from what storage locations within the data storage system that related data is to be obtained. The prefetch command is then transmitted to the data storage system to cause the data storage system to cache the related data.

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Newton, MA, United States of America

Stephen A Ludlum