System and method of collision management in a namespace of a storage system

摘要

In a namespace distributed across storage devices, collisions of objects stored in the namespace can occur. To manage collisions, first, a collision flag is provided in system metadata of the objects, and second, a predetermined naming convention is applied to the pathnames of collided objects within the namespace. A winner object of a collision is stored with the pathname of the actual object (e.g., “/object”) in the namespace, and the loser object is stored with a pathname derived from the actual object (e.g., “/object.collision”) and the collision flag of the loser object is set to mark the loser object within the namespace. Accordingly, winners and losers of collisions in the namespace can be identified by searching system metadata for collision flags which indicate collision losers, and associated winners can be identified based on the pathname of the losers.