Patent ID: 8738579

Claim:
A method for warmly shutting down and restoring a buffer pool having memory pages and control information associated with an information retrieval system, comprising: shutting down the buffer pool warmly by utilizing a plurality of writer threads adapted to perform write operations simultaneously, wherein each of the plurality of writer threads writes an assigned block of the memory pages to a persistent memory associated with the information retrieval system; in response to receiving a request to restore the buffer pool, restoring the buffer pool asynchronously to a buffer pool location by a plurality of reader threads in accordance with a restoration order of the control information, wherein the restoration order prioritizes restoration of a particular page based upon at least one client reference to the particular page, includes weight information indicating a relative likelihood that a particular page will be required before at least another page to order a plurality of read requests in a queue, and computes an average rating for at least one block read request based upon ratings for individual particular pages, further wherein each of the pages are latched until restoration is complete; and in response to receiving a request to access a latched page, advancing a restoring of the latched page out of the restoration order to provide an advanced out of order page, and accessing the advanced out of order page while the advanced out of order page is in the buffer pool location prior to completion of the restoring of the buffer pool.