Patent ID: 9152349
Filing Date: 2015-10-06
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for managing data in a thin provisioning environment, comprising: providing at least one first device having a first table of information that maps sections of the first device to allocated sections of physical storage space of at least one storage area among a plurality of storage areas; providing at least one second device, the second device being a logical device and including a thin device of the thin provisioning environment that presents storage space to one or more requesting devices as being available for input/output (I/O) operations even though no physical storage space has been initially committed for the I/O operations, wherein the thin device is not mapped directly to the physical storage space, and wherein the thin device includes a second table of information that: (i) maps sections of the thin device to the sections of the first device that are then mapped, using the first table of information, to the allocated sections of the physical storage space of the at least one storage area and (ii) identifies unallocated sections of the physical storage space of the plurality of storage areas and presents the unallocated sections of the physical storage space as available for I/O operations to any of the one or more requesting devices; evaluating characteristics of data associated with at least one of the sections of the first device; moving the data associated with the at least one of the sections of the first device from the physical storage space of the at least one storage area to the physical storage space of another of the plurality of storage areas according to a policy and based on the characteristics of the data; and updating the first table of information of the first device and the second table of information of the thin device according to the movement of the data among the physical storage space of the plurality of storage areas.