Patent ID: 7882386

Claim:
A method of recovering a sparse volume in a data storage environment, the environment including a data storage system and a file server, wherein the data storage system in communication with the file server provides disk storage to the file server for storing one or more file systems, and the file server accesses the disk storage through a sparse volume, wherein the sparse volume is a thin provisioned logical volume including a plurality of slice volumes, wherein each slice volume of the plurality of slice volumes is a logical representation of disk storage in the data storage system, the method comprising the steps of: instantiating a root slice, wherein the root slice is a slice volume including a plurality of sectors, each sector of the plurality of sectors including an array of SliceMap entries, each SliceMap entry of the array of SliceMap entries indicating the slice volume provisioned under the sparse volume; instantiating a slice- 0 of a root slice volume, wherein the slice- 0 represents a first slice of the plurality of slice volumes provisioned under the sparse volume; and invoking an asynchronous recovery program to instantiate other slice volumes of the plurality of slice volumes provisioned under the sparse volume than the slice- 0 in the background unless the slice volume has already been instantiated by an I/O issued on the slice volume by a client of the file server.