Patent 7734643 was granted and assigned to Oracle on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method for distributively storing a data object on a data storage system includes determining a layout map ID and associating the layout map ID with the data object. The layout map ID is used in determining a layout map, and the layout map is used in determining a layout given a current configuration of the data storage system. The data object is fragmented into data fragments and parity fragments, and the data fragments and parity fragments are distributively stored on data storage system in accordance with the layout.