Patent ID: 7904420

Claim:
A method for identification and verification of common cluster files and/or directories residing on nodes in a cluster, the method comprising: compiling a first list of all files stored on all nodes of the cluster, wherein a file name concatenated to a complete directory path concatenated to a node number for each file constitutes a primary key for the first list; compiling a second list of primary keys from the first list by removing the node number from each primary key; sorting the second list by primary key; compiling a third list of unique primary keys from the second list together with a primary key count representing the number of items in the first list for each unique primary key; sorting the third list by primary key count; compiling a fourth list of unique primary keys from the third list of unique primary keys by discarding any entry from the third list in which the primary key count is equal to the number of nodes in the cluster; compiling a fifth list of unique primary keys from the fourth list of unique primary keys by discarding any entry from the fourth list in which the primary key count is less than or equal to a predetermined threshold indicative of the population of unique files; and storing the fifth list on a computer readable medium.