US Patent 11520516 Optimizing performance for synchronous workloads

A synchronous write operation is decomposed into an asynchronous write operation and a separate flush operation. The payload of the write operation is sent a plurality of storage nodes hosting replicas of a virtual storage volume. The write operation is only acknowledged after the payload is stored in kernel memory in a quorum of storage nodes hosting replicas. Write operations are only flushed to persistent storage after a predetermined window of time has transpired or after a threshold number of outstanding write operations that have been acknowledged, but not yet flushed, has been reached.