Abstract: The described technology is generally directed towards domains that data services can use to collect files of a global filesystem namespace into groups, and domains that can be used to exclude certain files or metadata. A data service (a domain patron) creates a domain, e.g., for a particular directory, and a domain manager associates files under that directory with domain membership information. The data service can relate exclusion information to the domain, e.g., to exclude part of the directory. This can be done by an exclusion domain instance, e.g., a child to a parent domain, or can be done in metadata, by having the data service (e.g., a snapshot data service) exclude certain metadata such as snapshot identifiers from a larger set of snapshot identifiers.

Abstract: The described technology is generally directed towards domains-based snapshots, where domains represent groups of files in a global filesystem namespace, and snapshots are point-in-time representations of parts of the filesystem. A snapshot data service creates a domain, e.g., for a particular directory and its files, retrieves that domain membership and uses the domain membership information to determine a snapshot-related operation, such as whether to copy-on-write a file. The domain membership information can also be used to determine the copy-on-write range of relevant snapshot identifiers, that is, which set of snapshots govern a given file or directory.

Abstract: The described technology is generally directed towards domains that data services can use to collect files of a global filesystem namespace into groups, and domains that can be used to exclude certain files or metadata. A data service (a domain patron) creates a domain, e.g., for a particular directory, and a domain manager associates files under that directory with domain membership information. The data service can relate exclusion information to the domain, e.g., to exclude part of the directory. This can be done by an exclusion domain instance, e.g., a child to a parent domain, or can be done in metadata, by having the data service (e.g., a snapshot data service) exclude certain metadata such as snapshot identifiers from a larger set of snapshot identifiers.