US Patent 7734888 Capacity guarantees in a storage system

A file system receives a request to set a capacity guarantee for a virtual volume associated with a logical aggregation of physical storage. In response, the file system sets the capacity guarantee to indicate that the logical aggregation of physical storage is to provide a specified amount of space to the virtual volume. The amount of space provided to the virtual volume may be based, at least in part, on a guarantee type. The guarantee type may include, for example, volume, file, none, or partial.