The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 04, 2018
Filed:
Apr. 27, 2017
Emc Ip Holding Company Llc, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Peter Puhov, Shrewsbury, MA (US);
Richard P. Ruef, Santa Cruz, CA (US);
William C. Davenport, San Diego, CA (US);
Lili Chen, Hopkinton, MA (US);
EMC IP Holding Company LLC, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Abstract
A technique for managing metadata in a data storage system designates block pointers as either sources or copies, where sources contribute to reference counts of pointed-to structures but copies do not. The technique maintains parent-child relationships between parent BPSs (block pointer sets) and child BPSs, where each BPS includes an array of block pointers. Each child BPS is created as a copy of a parent BPS and has block pointers initially designated as copies. The technique performs a metadata-merge operation to merge the block pointers of the parent BPS into those of a child BPS by promoting attributes of block pointers in the child BPS from copy to source, avoiding any need to perform reference count updates on structures pointed to by promoted block pointers.