Emulation of transparent recall in a hierarchical storage management system
First Claim
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1. A method comprising:
- managing a primary storage facility in a hierarchical storage management (HSM) system;
relocating data from the primary storage facility to a secondary storage facility in the HSM system;
receiving, by the primary storage facility, a request from a client for only a portion of the relocated data, the portion comprising less than the entire relocated data; and
responding to the request byobtaining, by the primary storage facility, only the requested portion of the relocated data from the secondary storage facility, wherein a non-requested portion of the relocated data remains in the secondary storage facility,allocating a sparse file on disk in the primary storage facility in response to obtaining the requested portion of the relocated data,storing the requested portion of the relocated data in the primary storage facility in the sparse file, andproviding the requested portion of the relocated data to the client from the sparse file.
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Abstract
In at least one embodiment of the invention, a primary storage facility is managed in an HSM system. Data is relocated from the primary storage facility to a secondary storage facility. A request is received from a client for only a portion of the relocated data. In response to the request, the requested portion of the data is obtained from the secondary storage facility and stored in the primary storage facility as a sparse file. The requested portion of the data is then provided to the client from the sparse file.
31 Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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managing a primary storage facility in a hierarchical storage management (HSM) system; relocating data from the primary storage facility to a secondary storage facility in the HSM system; receiving, by the primary storage facility, a request from a client for only a portion of the relocated data, the portion comprising less than the entire relocated data; and responding to the request by obtaining, by the primary storage facility, only the requested portion of the relocated data from the secondary storage facility, wherein a non-requested portion of the relocated data remains in the secondary storage facility, allocating a sparse file on disk in the primary storage facility in response to obtaining the requested portion of the relocated data, storing the requested portion of the relocated data in the primary storage facility in the sparse file, and providing the requested portion of the relocated data to the client from the sparse file. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A method of operating a storage server in hierarchical storage management (HSM) system, the method comprising:
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operating the storage server to store data on behalf of a plurality of clients; using an HSM server to relocate the data from a primary storage facility managed by the storage server to a NearLine storage facility, wherein the primary storage facility includes a plurality of mass storage devices; maintaining at the storage server a stub representing the relocated data; receiving from one of the clients a request for only a portion of the relocated data, the portion comprising less than the entire relocated data; and servicing the request by reading only the requested portion of the relocated data from the NearLine storage facility, wherein a non-requested portion of the relocated data remains in the NearLine storage facility, allocating a sparse file on disk in the storage server in response to reading the requested portion of the relocated data, replacing the stub with the requested portion of the relocated data as a in the sparse file, providing the requested portion of the relocated data from the storage server to said one of the clients from the sparse file, and replacing the sparse file in the storage server with a stub representing the relocated data. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12)
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13. A storage server to operate in hierarchical storage management (HSM) system, the storage server comprising:
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a processor; a network interface through which to receive data access requests from a plurality of clients and through to provide requested data to the clients; a storage interface through which to access a plurality of mass storage devices in a primary storage facility of the HSM system, in response to requests from the clients; and a memory storing a file system to manage files stored in the primary storage facility, the memory further storing instructions for execution by the processor to cause the storage server to; relocate a file from the primary storage facility to a secondary storage facility in the HSM system, wherein the secondary storage facility is not directly managed by the storage server; and respond to a request for a portion of the relocated file from a client by allocating a sparse file on disk in the primary storage facility in response to obtaining the requested portion of the relocated data, storing only the requested portion of the relocated file in the primary storage facility in the sparse file and providing the requested portion of the relocated file from the storage server to the client from the sparse file, wherein the portion comprises less than the entire relocated file and a non-requested portion of the relocated file remains in secondary storage facility. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17)
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Specification