IMPROVED FINGERPRINTS DATASTORE AND STALE FINGERPRINT REMOVAL IN DE-DUPLICATION ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

A storage server is coupled to a storage device that stores blocks of data, and generates a fingerprint for each data block stored on the storage device. The storage server creates a fingerprints datastore that is divided into a primary datastore and a secondary datastore. The primary datastore comprises a single entry for each unique fingerprint and the secondary datastore comprises an entry having an identical fingerprint as an entry in the primary datastore. The storage server merges entries in a changelog with the entries in the primary datastore to identify duplicate data blocks in the storage device and frees the identified duplicate data blocks in the storage device. The storage server stores the entries that correspond to the freed data blocks to a third datastore and overwrites the primary datastore with the entries from the merged data that correspond to the unique fingerprints to create an updated primary datastore.