自动精简配置(Thin-Provisioning)技术通过按需分配存储资源,可有效提高存储利用率。然而,在应用释放申请的空间后,存储系统难以及时回收这些被释放的空间。为此,提出一种存储区域网络(SAN)环境下针对自动精简配置的空间回收方法:存储系统识别文件系统格式并监视其元数据IO;当检测到文件系统空间释放行为时,计算对应可回收的区域;在通过数据一致性分析之后,对其进行回收。针对NTFS文件系统的原型实验证明,该方法确实能够进行有效的空间回收,且对主机应用影响较小。
Thin-Provisioning serves effectively to improve storage utilization in a storage system by allocating space on demand. Nevertheless, in the environment of Storage Area Network (SAN), it is difficult to reclaim the storage released from applications on thin-provisioning storage devices. The paper presents a method to reclaim free space for most file system on a thin-provisianing storage device. The method includes recognizing the format of the file system, monitoring the modification to the metadata of the file system to determine unused storage and reclaiming the space after a test based on data consistency. The prototype experiments show that the method can indeed reclaim free space for NTFS effectively, and moreover, the impact on the business applications is greatly reduced.