Patent ID: 9547651
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: determining programmatically a base file relationship between a destination file created by a file copy operation and a base file of a source file associated with the file copy operation, wherein determining the base file relationship includes when the source file is already associated with base file attribute data, identifying an earlier generation of the destination file created by the file copy operation as the base file, and when the source file is not associated with base file attribute data, identifying the destination file created by the file copy operation as the base file; storing the base file attribute data that includes at least the base file relationship between the destination file and the base file; determining whether to optimize a data replication operation based at least in part on the stored base file attribute data; using the stored base file attribute data to optimize the data replication operation, wherein the optimization includes determining which segments that are common to the base file and the source file have already been sent to a replication target; receiving an indication that the file copy operation has been performed; when the source file is already associated with base file attribute data, updating the base file attribute data to represent the earlier generation of the destination file as the base file for the source file; and when the source file is not associated with base file attribute data, updating the base file attribute data to represent the destination file as the base file for the source file.