Patent ID: 7296039

Claim:
A method for writing data items to persistent storage, the method comprising the steps of: maintaining, within a first node, a first queue of entries that correspond to dirty data items that need to be written to persistent storage; maintaining, within the first node, a second queue of entries that correspond to dirty data items that need to be written to persistent storage; in response to determining that a dirty data item, corresponding to a particular entry, needs to be transferred to a node other than said first node, moving said particular entry from said first queue to said second queue; selecting, at the first node, which data items to write to persistent storage based on which queue, of the first queue and the second queue, an entry for a data item resides in, wherein said selecting gives priority to data items that correspond to entries in said second queue; and writing, to persistent storage, a particular data item selected based on which queue, of the first queue and the second queue, an entry for the particular data item resides in.