Patent ID: 8224935

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for efficiently synchronizing configuration data within distributed computing systems, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: maintaining a hash tree that identifies the hierarchical structure of at least a portion of a distributed computing system, wherein the hash tree comprises: for each leaf node within the hash tree, a hash of the leaf node's value; for each non-leaf node within the hash tree, a hash of the concatenated hashes of all of the non-leaf node's children; identifying, during a reconciliation process with an additional computing device within the distributed computing system, at least one change to the hierarchical structure of the distributed computing system by: determining that a hash of a top-level node of the hash tree differs from a hash of a corresponding node of a hash tree maintained by the additional computing device; identifying, by iterating through the hash levels of the computing device's hash tree, at least one leaf node within the computing device's hash tree whose hash differs from a hash of a corresponding leaf node within the additional computing device's hash tree that has changed subsequent to a prior reconciliation process; receiving the changed leaf node's value from the additional computing device; updating the identified leaf node's value to match the changed leaf node's value.