Patent ID: 9569453
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for simulating file system instances, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: identifying a file system to host a simulated file system instance, the simulated file system instance simulating an amount of data within the simulated file system instance without actually storing the amount of data within storage space; identifying configuration information for configuring the simulated file system instance, the configuration information determining a number of files in the simulated file system instance and a size distribution of the files; intercepting, by a file system driver filter, an attempt to list files within a target directory; intercepting, by the file system driver filter, a file access request that attempts to read from a specified target file within the target directory; simulating the file system instance at least in part by: generating a sparse file for the specified target file in the target directory in response to intercepting the attempt to list files within the target directory; after the file access request is intercepted, generating data to fulfill the intercepted file access request based, at least in part, on the configuration information; and fulfilling the intercepted file access request with the generated data rather than actually reading data from the file system.