G - Physics – 06 – F
Patent
G - Physics
06
F
G06F 17/30 (2006.01)
Patent
CA 2165912
The present invention provides a method for keeping a file system in a consistent state and for creating read-only copies of a file system. Changes to the file system are tightly controlled. The file system progresses from one consistent state to another. The set of self-consistent blocks on disk that is rooted by the root anode is referred to as a consistency point. To implement consistency points, new data is written to unallocated blocks on disk. A new consistency point occurs when the fsinfo block (2440) is updated by writing a new root anode for the anode file (1210) into it. Thus, as long as the root anode is not updated, the state of the file system represented on disk does not change. The present invention also creates snapshots (Figure 22) that are read-only copies of the file system. A snapshot uses no disk space when it is initially created. It is designed so that many different snap shots can be created for the same file system. Unlike prior art file systems that create a clone by duplicating the entire anode file and all of the indirect blocks, the present invention duplicates only the anode that describes the anode file. A multi-bit free-block map file (1630) is used to prevent data from being overwritten on disk.
Hitz David
Lau James
Malcolm Michael
Rakitzis Byron
Network Appliance Inc.
Network Appliance Corporation
LandOfFree
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