Patent ID: 8874523

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for asynchronously replicating data onto a tape medium, comprising: at a computing device having one or more processors and memory storing programs executed by the one or more processors, wherein the computing device is associated with a distributed storage system and connected to a tape storage system: receiving a first request from a client to store an object within the tape storage system; responsive to receiving the first request: scheduling the object to be stored on the tape storage system asynchronously with respect to the first request; and during the scheduling, acknowledging, to the first client, the first request as fulfilled; wherein scheduling the object to be stored on the tape storage system asynchronously with respect to the first request includes: storing the object within a staging sub-system of the distributed storage system, wherein the staging sub-system includes a plurality of objects scheduled to be transferred to the tape storage system; transferring one or more objects from the staging sub-system to the tape storage system in accordance with a determination that a predefined condition is met, wherein the predefined condition is at least one of: the one or more objects have a storage size greater than a predefined storage size, and the one or more objects have been in the staging sub-system for a staging time greater than a predefined staging time; and for a respective transferred object, adding a reference to the object to a tape management sub-system of the tape storage system; identifying a corresponding parent object associated with the object and its metadata within a parent object management sub-system of the distributed storage system, wherein the object is a replica of the identified parent object; and updating the parent object's metadata to include the object's location within the tape storage system.