Patent ID: 8171227

Claim:
A method for managing a flow based reply cache of a storage system having a processor and a memory, comprising: organizing, by a flow creator entity of the storage system, the flow based reply cache into one or more microcaches, each microcache having a plurality of entries; allocating, by the flow creator entity of the storage system, each microcache to a client of the storage system, such that each client has a set of entries that is not shared with other clients; determining whether a given client is active or inactive; expiring, by a scrubber engine of the storage system, entries of a microcache allocated to the given client based on a first value when the given client is determined to be active; and expiring, by the scrubber engine of the storage system, the entries of the microcache allocated to the given client based on a second value that is different from the first value when the given client is determined to be inactive, wherein the first and second values are selected such that, when the given client is determined to be active, its entries are expired earlier than when the given client is determined to be inactive.