Patent ID: 9747357
Date: 2017-08-29
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A method for monitoring usage of one or more data units in a distributed network utilizing snapshots, comprising: configuring, by a processor, the snapshots to store a state of the distributed network at a point in time; labeling, by the processor, a snapshot as a long-lived snapshot or a short-lived snapshot; wherein the long-lived snapshot comprises a snapshot having reference counts which are updated at a creation time and a deletion time, and the short-lived snapshot comprises a regular reference-counted snapshot except having the reference counts which are not updated at the creation time and the deletion time, and further wherein the short-lived snapshots are used for the asynchronous mirroring having a recovery point objective (RPO) below a certain threshold; avoiding, by the processor, the reference counts of the one or more data units associated with each short-lived snapshot from being updated at flail the creation time and flail the deletion time of each respective short-lived snapshot; reference counting, by the processor, changes to the one or more data units associated with each long-lived snapshot each time the one or more data units are updated; performing, by the processor, a first reference count update when the snapshot is a short-lived snapshot, the first reference count update including: performing, by the processor, a second reference count update that is different than the first reference count update when the snapshot is a long-lived snapshot.