Patent ID: 7885970

Claim:
A method of handling a file processing request in an aggregated file system including a plurality of metadata volumes, comprising: receiving a request with respect to a file, the request identifying an absolute pathname of the file in the aggregated file system; accessing a plurality of mount entries, wherein each of the plurality of mount entries is associated with a respective one of the plurality of metadata volumes as a parent metadata volume and identifies a respective distinct child metadata volume and a relative pathname associated with the child metadata volume; identifying a target metadata volume that hosts metadata of the file among the metadata volumes in accordance with the request and the mount entries, including recursively identifying a mount entry, if any, associated with a current metadata volume, wherein the mount entry identifies a relative pathname matching a respective portion of the absolute pathname, the identified relative pathname having a size based upon a maximum number of pathname components of the relative pathname that can be handled by the identified mount entry, such that the identified relative pathname is further broken into subcomponents of sizes ranging from one pathname component to the maximum number of pathname components, at least one of the sub-components is selected using the identified mount entry based upon a number indicated in a list entry pointed to by the identified mount entry, and resetting the current metadata volume to the child metadata volume identified by the identified mount entry, until no mount entry associated with the current metadata volume is found that matches a respective portion of the absolute pathname, the target metadata volume comprising the last child metadata volume so identified; and returning information identifying the target metadata volume, hosted metadata and its associated residual pathname in response to the request to a file switch for assembling the file in response to the request.