Excluding directory trees from data service operations

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11200198-B2
Application number	US-201916265176-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 1, 2019
Priority date	Feb 1, 2019
Publication date	Dec 14, 2021
Grant date	Dec 14, 2021

Abstract

The described technology is generally directed towards domains that data services can use to collect files of a global filesystem namespace into groups, and domains that can be used to exclude certain files or metadata. A data service (a domain patron) creates a domain, e.g., for a particular directory, and a domain manager associates files under that directory with domain membership information. The data service can relate exclusion information to the domain, e.g., to exclude part of the directory. This can be done by an exclusion domain instance, e.g., a child to a parent domain, or can be done in metadata, by having the data service (e.g., a snapshot data service) exclude certain metadata such as snapshot identifiers from a larger set of snapshot identifiers.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
maintaining, by a system comprising a processor, domain membership information with a file object comprising a first domain identifier and a second domain identifier;
adding, by the system, a third domain identifier to the domain membership information, the third domain identifier representing exclusion information relative to the second domain identifier, the exclusion information identifying a subdomain that is to be excluded from the second domain identifier, wherein the third domain information identifies a file system directory in a directory tree of a partition of a namespace and is stored in a metadata of the file object, and wherein the file object is located within the file system directory;
receiving, by the system, a request from a data service to return data service data based on the domain membership information relating to the data service; and
in response to the request,
generating, by the system, the data service data comprising,
obtaining first data corresponding to the first domain identifier,
determining the exclusion information from the third domain identifier based on the metadata of the file object,
obtaining third data determined by applying the exclusion information to second data corresponding to the second domain identifier, and
in response to the third data being determined not to be null, combining the third data with the first data to determine to omit the file object from the data service data, and

returning the data service data to the data service.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
generating, by the system, an entry in a domain data structure for the third domain identifier and the data service.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
tracking, by the system, a relationship between the second domain identifier and the third domain identifier.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
linking, by the system, the third domain identifier to the second domain identifier via a parent-child relationship, wherein the second domain identifier corresponds to a parent domain identifier and the third domain identifier corresponds to a child domain identifier to the parent domain identifier.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the applying the exclusion information to the second data corresponding to the second domain identifier cancels the second data and the third data is null, and wherein the returning the data service data to the data service comprises returning the first domain identifier to the data service.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data service comprises a snapshot data service, wherein the second data corresponding to the second domain identifier comprises second metadata, and wherein the applying the exclusion information to the second data excludes part of the second metadata from the third data.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the second metadata comprises a set of snapshot identifiers, and wherein the applying the exclusion information to the second data excludes part of the second metadata from the third data by excluding at least one, and fewer than all, of the snapshot identifiers from the second metadata.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
generating, by the system, an entry in a domain data structure for the second domain identifier and the data service, and wherein the obtaining the second data corresponding to the second domain identifier comprises accessing the second data from the entry.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the obtaining the second data corresponding to the second domain identifier comprises:
accessing, by the system, the second data in a domain tree data structure based on the second domain identifier as a key to the domain tree data structure.

10. A system, comprising:
a domain manager coupled to a data service, the domain manager configured to handle domain-related requests from the data service, comprising:
a first request to associate a domain identifier with a directory tree, and in response to the first request, marking the directory tree with the domain identifier;
a second request to associate an exclusion identifier with the domain identifier that identifies a file system directory in a directory tree of a partition of a namespace that is excluded from group membership information data, and, in response to the second request, marking the directory tree with the exclusion identifier, the exclusion identifier identifying a subdomain that is to be excluded from the domain identifier; and
a third request for data corresponding to group membership information of a file object in the directory tree, and in response to the third request, the domain manager configured to apply first data corresponding to an exclusion that corresponds to the exclusion identifier to second data corresponding to the domain identifier to generate a response, and to return the response.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the second data comprises the domain identifier, and wherein the exclusion excludes the domain identifier from the response.

12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the second data comprises metadata, and wherein the exclusion excludes part of the metadata from the response.

13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the data service comprises a snapshot data service, wherein the second data comprises snapshot identifiers, and wherein the exclusion excludes at least one snapshot identifier from the response.

14. The system of claim 10 , wherein the domain manager maintains the first data and the second data in a domain data structure.

15. The system of claim 10 , wherein the domain manager maintains the first data and the second data in a B-tree.

16. The system of claim 10 , wherein the domain manager via a domain data structure tracks a relationship between the domain identifier and the exclusion identifier.

17. A non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations, the operations comprising:
receiving a request from a data service to return domain membership information of a file object;
obtaining inclusion membership information of the file object;
obtaining exclusion membership information of the file object from a domain identifier that identifies a file system directory in a directory tree of a partition of a namespace and is stored in a metadata of the file object, the exclusion membership information identifying a subdomain that is to be excluded from the inclusion membership information;
determining relationship information between the inclusion membership information and the exclusion membership information;
generating a response to the request, comprising applying, based on the relationship information, the exclusion membership information to the inclusion membership information; and
returning a response to the request.

18. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the inclusion membership information corresponds to a first domain identifier and a second domain identifier, wherein the exclusion membership information corresponds to the second domain identifier and the relationship information relates the exclusion membership information to the second domain identifier, and wherein the applying, based on the relationship information, the exclusion membership information to the inclusion membership information comprises excluding the second domain identifier from the response.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 17 ,

Assignees

• Emc Ip Holding Co Llc

Inventors

• Leis Benjamin A
• Rajawat Mayank
• Naujok Barry
• Ballal Kiran

Classifications

• G06F16/185

  Hierarchical storage management [HSM] systems, e.g. file migration or policies thereof (details of archiving G06F16/11) · CPC title

• G06F16/2246

  Trees, e.g. B+trees · CPC title

• G06F16/128 Primary

  Details of file system snapshots on the file-level, e.g. snapshot creation, administration, deletion (error detection or correction of the data by redundancy in operations or in hardware G06F11/14, G06F11/16) · CPC title

• G06F16/13

  File access structures, e.g. distributed indices (arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06) · CPC title