A storage layer may be configured to over-provision logical storage resources to objects. The storage layer may provision the resources in response to, inter alia, a request to open and/or create a zero-length file. The storage layer may be further configured to store data of the objects in a contextual format configured to associate the data with respective logical identifiers. The storage layer may determine an actual, storage size of the object based on the associations stored on the stored associations. Storage clients may rely on the storage layer to determine the size of the object and, as such, may defer and/or eliminate updates to persistent metadata.