Fragmentation control for performing deduplication operations

摘要

The techniques introduced here provide for enabling deduplication operations for a file system without significantly affecting read performance of the file system due to fragmentation of the data sets in the file system. The techniques include determining, by a storage server that hosts the file system, a level of fragmentation that would be introduced to a data set stored in the file system as a result of performing a deduplication operation on the data set. The storage server then compares the level of fragmentation with a threshold value and determines whether to perform the deduplication operation based on a result of comparing the level of fragmentation with the threshold value. The threshold value represents an acceptable level of fragmentation in the data sets of the file system.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
calculating, by a storage server, a level of fragmentation that would be introduced to a data set stored by the storage server as a result of a deduplication operation on the data set; and determining, by the storage server, whether to perform the deduplication operation based on a result of said calculating, the determining including:
calculating a number of read operations needed to access the data set after the deduplication operation,calculating a number of read operations needed to access an ideal data set, andcalculating a fragmentation index representative of the level of fragmentation based on the number of read operations needed to access the data set after the deduplication and the number of read operations needed to access the ideal data set, wherein determining whether to perform the deduplication operation is based on the fragmentation index.