Patent ID: 8429307

Claim:
A method of operating a storage server in a data network for read or write access to data of a file, the file including multiple data blocks containing data of the file, and the file further being organized as a hierarchy of file system blocks including inodes, indirect blocks, and data blocks, the file stored in a data storage including a production file having a first data block in the hierarchy of file system blocks, the first data block being a child of the production file inode in the hierarchy of file system blocks, the method comprising the steps of: tagging one or more I/Os received from an application for read or write access to data of a file, wherein the tagging of one or more I/O is done based on the application sending the I/O request to the storage server and characteristics of the I/O; cataloging one or more tagged I/Os to create one or more co-related I/O patterns using a neural network, wherein the neural network uses the one or more tagged I/Os to create one or more I/O pattern; processing one or more I/Os by performing one or more services executed by a service manager, wherein the service manager executes one or more services communicated by a policy engine wherein the policy engine manages the services that are needed to be performed on one or more tagged I/Os; and updating the policy engine with the results of processing one or more I/Os by the service manager; wherein the processing of one or more I/Os by performing one or more services executed by the service manager comprises the steps of: executing a first phase, wherein the first phase processing builds an action bitmap wherein the action bitmap indicates one or more services to be executed; executing a second phase, wherein the second phase processing builds a token and massages the data block of the file using the token by executing one or more services indicated in the action bitmap; executing a third phase, wherein the third phase processing updates metadata for one or more I/Os and if required, writes data on the data storage; and executing a fourth phase, wherein the fourth phase processing updates the metadata of one or more services executed by the third phase.