Patent attributes
Systems and methods are provided for managing data partitions in a distributed storage system and, in particular, the routing data used by the distributed storage system to route requests to the proper caching layers, persistent storage nodes, etc. Data items may be managed in a multi-tier configuration in which they are grouped into different partitions based on their key prefixes, and partitions are grouped into different cells based on key ranges. When partitions are moved from cell-to-cell, or when cells are split, the routing data is changed accordingly. In order to ensure that the correct routing data is used throughout the distributed storage system, a change to routing data may be accompanied by a special barrier record being written to the transaction log of affected partitions.