NetApp, Inc.
Space savings reporting for storage system supporting snapshot and clones

Abstract:

A technique efficiently determines accurate storage space savings reported to a host coupled to a reference-counted storage system that employs de-duplication and compression, wherein the storage space savings relate to snapshots and/or clones supported by the storage system. The snapshot/clone may be represented as an independent volume, and embodied as a respective read-only copy (snapshot) or read-write copy (clone) of a parent volume. Metadata is illustratively organized as one or more multi-level dense trees, wherein each level of each dense tree includes volume metadata entries for storing the metadata. The metadata is illustratively embodied as mappings from LBAs of a LUN to extent keys. Space adjustment counters, such as clone space adjustment (CSA) and diverged space adjustment (DSA) counters, may be employed when determining the storage space savings. The CSA counter is equal to the sum of mapped storage space across all levels of a dense tree. The DSA counter for the clone and for the snapshot equals the total mapped storage space in the level. The storage space savings may be determined by computing a value equal to the addition of the CSA counter to the total amount of data and metadata written to the LUN minus the DSA counters and, thereafter, dividing the value by the total amount of de-duplicated and compressed data for the LUN that is physically stored.