Importance

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Abstract

A methodology wherein two different types of locks are used by a storage manager when multiple clients wish to access a particular redundantly-stored file. Simple byte-range based mutual exclusion (or mutex) locks are granted by the storage manager for data writes/updates to the file when the file is in the fault-free state, and individual readers/writers (R/W) locks are granted by the storage manager when the file is in the degraded state. No read locks are required of clients when the file object is in the fault-free state. During the fault-free state of the file object, when exactly one client is writing to the file object, the storage manger grants that file object a whole-file lock valid over the entire file object. Each client may have a client lock manager that interacts with appropriate storage manager lock manager to request and obtain necessary locks. These various locking mechanisms reduce lock-related network traffic in a data storage system.

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First Claim