Patent ID: 9141633
Filing Date: 2015-09-22
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving a backup stream from a client, the backup stream having a plurality of data streams to be stored in a backup storage system, each data stream representing a file or a directory of one or more files of a file system associated with the client, wherein each data stream is associated with an access control list (ACL) block representing an access attribute for accessing a corresponding file or a directory of files of the corresponding data stream, wherein each ACL block includes an ACL marker and its associated ACL data, wherein each ACL marker includes a predetermined signature pattern immediately followed by a type of a marker as one of a plurality of types representing a plurality of different markers, wherein the type of a marker is immediately followed by a length indicating a size of the associated ACL data, wherein the length is immediately followed by the associated ACL data, the associated ACL data having a size specified by the length; for each of the data streams, deduplicating the ACL data chunks into a plurality of deduplicated ACL data chunks by removing duplicated ones of the ACL data chunks, wherein deduplicating the ACL data chunks comprises: storing the deduplicated ACL data chunks in the storage system, including storing only references to storage locations of duplicated ACL data chunks that have been previously stored in the storage system without storing the duplicated ACL data chunks again, to reduce storage space required to store the ACL data, such that a storage space required to store the ACL data is reduced.