Patent ID: 8600998

Claim:
A system, comprising: a plurality of computing nodes having a processor and a network interface such that the nodes are operationally coupled to each other, each node processor executing instructions for managing at least a storage volume from among a plurality of storage volumes used for storing a plurality of data containers; a processor executable metadata collection module executed by the plurality of computing nodes for collecting metadata associated with the plurality of data containers, the metadata including an attribute that is associated with the plurality of data containers; and a processor executable catalog module executed by the plurality of computing nodes for pre-processing the collected metadata by extracting one or more fields and storing the pre-processed metadata in a searchable data structure for responding to a user query requesting information regarding any data container stored at any storage volume and managed by any node; wherein the searchable data structure includes a first searchable segment for storing metadata for a plurality of directory entries and a second searchable segment for storing metadata for non-directory based data containers; and wherein each entry in the second searchable segment stores a reference to a parent entry in the first searchable segment such that a storage path of each entry in the second searchable segment can be obtained from the reference to the parent entry in the first searchable segment without having to store individual storage paths for the non-directory based data containers at the second searchable segment.