Peter Lee Mccann

US Patent:

20200210606, Jul 2, 2020

Filed:

Dec 31, 2018

Appl. No.:

16/237128

Inventors:

- Hopkinton MA, US
Michael C. Brundage - Cary NC, US
Alan L. Taylor - Cary NC, US
Michael J. Noeth - Cary NC, US
Peter J. McCann - Mason NH, US
Steven A. Morley - Mendon MA, US

International Classification:

G06F 21/62
G06F 21/60
H04L 29/08
G06F 12/14
G06F 11/20
G06F 16/907

Abstract:

Techniques are presented for implementing a scalable approach to keeping track of the metadata validity of persistently-stored metadata for storage objects. In contrast with prior approaches, improved techniques only store a list of the invalid (or quarantined) objects rather than all objects regardless of validity of their metadata. Under normal circumstances, only a small number of storage objects are invalid at any given time, as the system generally takes steps to repair the invalid objects in the normal course of operation. Thus, the number of invalid objects tends to be small, barring some catastrophic system failure. Only a small amount of expensive privileged persistent storage is therefore needed. A health level may also be used to indicate many failures, indicative of catastrophic system failure.