Panzura, Inc.

Steve Hyuntae Jung

Yun Lin

John Richard Taylor

Randy Yen-pang Chou

Ravi Mulam

Shishir Mondal

Vinay Kumar Anneboina

The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for maintaining global name consistency for a distributed filesystem. Two or more cloud controllers collectively manage distributed filesystem data that is stored in one or more cloud storage systems; the cloud controllers ensure data consistency for the stored data, and each cloud controller caches portions of the distributed filesystem. During operation, a cloud controller receives a client request to perform a namespace operation upon a filesystem object. The cloud controller contacts the cloud controller that manages ('owns') the portion of the global namespace for the distributed filesystem that includes the filesystem object. This second cloud controller ensures the consistency of the filesystem object across the distributed filesystem during the namespace operation.

Maintaining global namespace consistency for a distributed filesystem

The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for sending interim notifications to clients of a distributed filesystem. Two or more cloud controllers collectively manage distributed filesystem data that is stored in one or more cloud storage systems; the cloud controllers ensure data consistency for the stored data, and each cloud controller caches portions of the distributed filesystem. During operation, a cloud controller receives a client request to perform a namespace operation upon a filesystem object. The cloud controller determines that it will need to contact at least one of another peer cloud controller or a cloud storage system to service the request, and sends an interim notification to the client to notify the client that the request is pending.

Sending interim notifications for namespace operations for a distributed filesystem

The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for managing consistency for a file in a distributed filesystem. Two or more cloud controllers collectively manage distributed filesystem data that is stored in the cloud storage systems; the cloud controllers ensure data consistency for the stored data, and each cloud controller caches portions of the distributed filesystem. During operation, a cloud controller receives from a client a request to access the file. The cloud controller determines a level of consistency that is associated with the file, and then uses this level of consistency to determine whether to communicate with a peer cloud controller when handling the request.

Managing the level of consistency for a file in a distributed filesystem

Snapshots of data and metadata associated with the data are created. The snapshot of the data is separate from the snapshot of the associated metadata. The snapshot of metadata is maintained locally in a cloud network attached storage (NAS) and globally. The snapshot of data is maintained according to an accessibility metric. Snapshot of metadata is transmitted from a backup remote site to a cloud network attached storage (NAS). A request for data corresponding to the metadata is received from the cloud NAS. The requested data is not available at the cloud NAS. The requested data is transmitted from the backup site to the cloud NAS.

Efficient cloud network attached storage

The disclosed embodiments describe interactions and synchronization techniques for global deduplication file systems. In one embodiment of the invention, a method and system implements a global deduplication file system between a plurality of interconnected systems located in different locations globally by making use of the deduplication dictionary included in metadata being periodically snapshot. In yet another embodiment of the invention, a method implements a global deduplication file system between a plurality of interconnected systems located in different locations globally and provides appropriate read/write locks.

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Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Steve Hyuntae Jung