Patent ID: 8402209

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for provisioning storage space in a computer system, the method comprising: maintaining a first data structure comprising one or more entries, each entry in the first data structure corresponding to a portion of an available physical storage capacity; supporting, within each entry in the first data structure, data identifying a storage provision, data indicating the areas of the storage provision that have been written to, and a pointer to a next entry in the first data structure corresponding to a portion of the available physical storage capacity belonging to a same logical portion of a data storage volume as the portion of the available physical storage capacity corresponding to the entry, the data storage volume comprising a plurality of logical portions; and maintaining a second data structure comprising one or more entries, each entry in the second data structure corresponding to a logical portion of a data storage volume, and wherein each entry in the second data structure supports storing a pointer to an entry in the first data structure for each allocated logical portion of the data storage volume.