Inventors:
Collin Y. Park - Redwood City CA, US
Assignee:
Network Appliance, Inc, - Sunnyvale CA
International Classification:
G06F 7/00
G06F 17/00
Abstract:
A plurality of read-only, persistent point-in-time images (RPPIs) of a file system are maintained on a storage server. Each of these RPPIs is created to capture an update of the file system. The file system has at least one subset. If, for each subset of the file system, the file system has an RPPI, other than a first RPPI, having a corresponding subset identical to the first RPPI's corresponding subset, the first RPPI may be deleted, yet all updates captured by the first RPPI are still maintained by other RPPI or RPPIs.