VMware, Inc.
Tracking and recovering a disk allocation state

Abstract:

The subject matter described herein is generally directed towards tracking and recovering a disk allocation state. An on-disk log of operations is maintained to describe operations performed to an in-memory partial reference count map. Upon a crash of a host computing device during a checkpoint operation to an on-disk complete reference count map, the on-disk log of operations is used to undo and then redo the operations, or just redo the operations. In this manner, a disk allocation state prior to the crash is recreated in the on-disk complete reference count map with atomicity and crash consistency.