US Patent 9720947 Backup operations in a tree-based distributed file system

Techniques for cloning, writing to, and reading from file system metadata. Cloning involves identifying a first set of pointers included in a first root node in a file system metadata tree structure that stores file system metadata in leaf nodes of the tree structure, creating a first copy of the first root node that includes the first set of pointers, creating a second copy of the first root node that includes the first set of pointers, associating the first copy with a first view, and associating the second copy with a second view. Reading generally involves traversing the tree structure towards a target leaf node that contains data to be read. Writing generally involves traversing the tree structure in the same manner, but also creating copies of any nodes to be modified if those nodes are deemed to have a different treeID than a particular root node.