Patent ID: 7913051
Filing Date: 2011-03-22
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of processing content in a computer system comprising at least one host and at least one storage system that comprises a plurality of zones, each of the zones employing at least one storage resource that is not employed by any other of the plurality of zones, wherein the at least one host accesses content units stored on the at least one storage system using object identifiers and the computer system parses at least a portion of the object identifier for a content unit to determine, using a mapping, which one of the plurality of zones the content unit is allocated to for storage and which storage resource in the one of the plurality of zones in which the content unit is stored stores the content unit, the method comprising acts of: receiving a request to store a first content unit for which the at least a portion of the object identifier maps to a first zone of the plurality of zones; determining, based on the available storage capacity of the first zone, whether the first zone is available to store the first content unit, where the first zone comprises at least one first storage resource; in response to determining, based on the available storage capacity of the first zone, that the first zone is unavailable to store the first content unit, allocating, to the first zone, at least one second storage resource to increase the storage capacity of the zone; and in response to allocating the at least one second storage resource to increase the storage capacity of the zone, transferring at least some of the content stored on the at least one first storage resource to the at least one second storage resource, wherein transferring the at least some of the content to the at least one second storage resource comprises modifying the mapping to map the object identifiers for at least some content units stored on the at least one first storage resource to the at least one second storage resource, and selecting the content units whose object identifiers map to the at least one second storage resource as content units to be transferred from the at least one first storage resource to the at least one second storage resource.