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:
Jul. 04, 2006
Filed:
May. 22, 2002
Charles A. Milligan, Golden, CO (US);
Thomas Nelson Noland, Louisville, CO (US);
Leslie K. Hodge, Westminster, CO (US);
Charles A. Milligan, Golden, CO (US);
Thomas Nelson Noland, Louisville, CO (US);
Leslie K. Hodge, Westminster, CO (US);
Storage Technology Corporation, Louisville, CO (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for implementing structure level pointers in a data storage system are provided. With the apparatus and method, a compound pointer system is provided in which fixed level pointers are augmented with associated pointers to metadata describing lower level structures. The companion metadata describes these lower level structures in a manner independent of the actual data stored within the lower level structures. With such an enhanced compound pointer system, an instant copy mechanism can process the pointers to the underlying structures and take instant copies of much finer detail. This allows individual records of data to be represented by the pointer system without having the overhead of carrying a pointer to all the individual records. The instant copy mechanism not only copies the fixed level pointers, but resolves the companion pointers to individual subsets of a general granularity for the instances of the instant copy domains.