Patent ID: 8621154

Claim:
A method for providing a reply cache of a storage system, comprising: organizing the reply cache into one or more microcaches, each microcache having one or more reply cache entries; allocating a microcache of the one or more microcaches to a client of the storage system, wherein the client has its own pool of reply cache entries; in response to a non-idempotent request from the client, replying to the non-idempotent request using an entry in the pool of reply cache entries, wherein the non-idempotent request is prevented from executing on the storage system, wherein the pool of reply cache entries includes an in-progress list and a least recently used (LRU) list, wherein a completed entry on the in-progress list is transferred to the LRU list, wherein the entry is complete when it is processed by the storage system; and increasing a size of the microcache allocated to the client when a number of entries on the in-progress list exceeds a threshold.