US 11,789,900 B1
Snapshot capacity estimation
Asaf Weissman, Tel Aviv (IL); Vlad Zdornov, Tel Aviv (IL); Avi Goren, Tel Aviv (IL); and Ohad Shamir, Tel Aviv (IL)
Assigned to Vast Data Ltd., Tel Aviv (IL)
Filed by VAST DATA LTD., Tel Aviv (IL)
Filed on Mar. 30, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/657,339.
Int. Cl. G06F 16/17 (2019.01); G06F 16/11 (2019.01); G06F 16/174 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/128 (2019.01) [G06F 16/1748 (2019.01)] 23 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for determining size information related one or more snapshots related to file systems stored in a storage system, the method comprises:
(a) sampling one or more combinations of points in time and logical spaces, the logical spaces are associated with the one or more file systems to provide sampled combinations of sampled portions of file system entities (FSEs) and sampled points in time;
(b) searching for relevant snapshots that are relevant to the sampled combinations to provide relevant snapshots;
(c) determining physical sizes of the relevant snapshots; wherein a number of samples per sampled FSE is indicative of a size of the sampled FSEs; and
(d) deleting selected snapshots from storage devices of the storage system, wherein the selected snapshots are selected from the relevant snapshots according to the physical sizes;
wherein a searching of one or more relevant snapshots associated with a sampled portion of an FSE at a sampled point in time comprises:
checking whether there are one or more snapshots within a relevancy period that starts at the sampled point in time and ends at a voidance point in time of the sampled portion of the FSE;
determining that there is no relevant snapshot associated with the sampled portion of the FSE at the sampled point in time when there is no snapshot within the relevancy period;
when finding only a single snapshot within the relevancy period then determining that the single snapshot is a single relevant snapshot associated with the sampled portion of the FSE at the sampled point in time;
when finding a group of snapshots within the relevancy period then determining that the group of snapshots are a relevant group of snapshots associated with the sampled portion of the FSE at the sampled point in time.