Patent ID: 8600944

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a processor, perform a method operative in a computer system having a plurality of nodes networked together in which objects are stored in a set of regions distributed across the computer system, the method comprising: providing a region map that identifies locations of the set of regions, where the region map contains copies of the regions in one of several states, the states being one of: authoritative, backup, partial and incomplete, and where an incomplete region copy stores a pending update to the region and the partial state is populated from the pending update; and using the pending update during a restore to repair a region returning to the set of regions by creating a partial (P) copy of the region, updating the partial (P) copy, and converting the partial (P) copy of the region to a backup (B) copy of the region, the partial (P) copy of the region being treated by an authoritative (A) copy of the region as a backup region for all updates; wherein the partial (P) copy is updated from the pending update in an incomplete (I) copy of the region.