Jerald W Gross

US Patent:

20060212746, Sep 21, 2006

Filed:

Mar 21, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/085898

Inventors:

Augustine Amegadzie - Warren NJ, US
James Compton - Durham NC, US
Jerald Gross - Edison NJ, US
Stephen Rago - Warren NJ, US
Christopher Stacey - Swindon, GB
Eyal Zimran - Richmond, GB

International Classification:

G06F 11/00

US Classification:

714006000

Abstract:

A hierarchical storage system is constructed from file servers and a policy engine server by building upon a file migration service. Offline attributes are added to file system inodes in a primary file server, file system parameters are added in the primary server, an offline read access method field is added to a connection database, and the primary file server is programmed to use these attributes and parameters for selecting a particular method (such as a partial read migration or a pass through read method) for read access to an offline file. In this fashion, the primary file server is provided with flexibility for selecting a particular one of a number of migration methods depending on various conditions, in order to improve the trade-off between the cost of storage and delay in file access.