Patent ID: 8566290

Claim:
A method of operating a physical archive cluster, the archive cluster comprising a plurality of nodes, wherein each node comprises a processor, a data store coupled to the processor, and an application stored in the data store and executed by the processor, the method comprising: logically partitioning the archive cluster into a set of one or more namespaces, wherein a namespace comprises a collection of data objects for at least one application and has a configuration parameter associated therewith; enabling versioning at a given namespace of the set of one or more namespaces in order to manage versioning of the data objects belonging to the given namespace; for the given namespace that has been enabled for versioning, storing multiple versions of a data object, wherein each version of the multiple versions has associated therewith a time of storage attribute that uniquely identifies the version; and selectively disabling versioning for the given namespace, wherein for the given namespace that has been disabled for versioning, storing a single version of the data object.