Patent ID: 8904061

Claim:
A method for use in managing storage operations in a data storage environment, the method comprising: receiving an I/O request at a server having a server cache, the server cache containing cached data previously supplied from a storage system in communication with the server, wherein the cached data includes a first and second storage object, wherein the first and second storage objects are stored in memory spaces corresponding to different virtual machine clients and the second storage object is a pointer to the first storage object; providing logical storage space corresponding to each virtual machine client, wherein logical storage space associated with a second virtual machine is a pointer to logical space associated with a first virtual machine; at the storage system, determining that data associated with the I/O request is data that has been replicated and that the I/O request can be at least partially satisfied from the cached data; determining that the data associated with the I/O request is a pointer to non-replicated data; returning the pointer to the server cache; and storing the pointer in the server cache such that the I/O request can be satisfied by the server cache.