Apparatus and method for managing of common storage in a storage system

An article of manufacture comprising:

• an electronically accessible medium providing instructions that, when executed by an apparatus, cause the apparatus to:
• detect that an amount of free space within a logical aggregation of physical storage is insufficient to set a space reservation for a volume associated with the logical aggregation of physical storage, wherein the logical aggregation of physical storage provides an abstraction layer between the volume and a physical storage;
• determine an amount of space-reclaimable available from at least one space-reclaimable volume associated with the logical aggregation of physical storage;
• and
• if the amount of space-reclaimable within the space-reclaimable volume associated with the logical aggregation of physical storage is sufficient to enable the space reservation, delay setting of the space reservation until a sufficient amount of space is reclaimed from the one or more space-reclaimable volumes as a delayed space reservation.

A method comprising:

• allocating space within a logical aggregation of physical storage between at least two volumes associated with the logical aggregation of physical storage, wherein the logical aggregation of physical storage provides an abstraction layer between the at least two volumes and a physical storage;
• detecting that a relative capacity of a first volume from the at least two volumes is below a minimum relative capacity level;
• and
• reclaiming space used by a second volume from the at least two volumes for the first volume if a first volume usage level within the logical aggregation of physical storage is below a predetermined minimum usage level and a second volume usage level within the logical aggregation of physical storage exceeds a predetermined maximum usage level.

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage server to maintain a hierarchical structure of data stored in an array of physical storage devices and to service read and write requests from one or more clients relating to data stored in the array of physical storage devices;
• one or more non-space-reclaimable volumes, each sharing a common pool of physical storage provided by the array of storage devices, wherein each non-space-reclaimable volume is a logical data container;
• one or more space-reclaimable volumes, each sharing the common pool of physical storage provided by the array of storage devices, wherein each space-reclaimable volume is a logical data container for temporary storage of client data;
• a logical aggregation of physical storage to provide an abstraction layer between the one or more non-space-reclaimable volumes, the one or more space-reclaimable volumes and the array of storage devices;
• and
• a storage allocation module to monitor and adjust allocation of the logical aggregation of physical storage between the non-space-reclaimable volumes and the space-reclaimable volumes.