International Business Machines Corporation

David Gregory Van Hise

Gregory John Tevis

Eran Raichstein

Bernhard Julius Klingenberg

David Maxwell Cannon

Avishai Haim Hochberg

Michael Sternberg

Uri Wolloch

Matthew Joseph Anglin

Prasenjit Sarkar

James Patrick Smith

Mark L Yakushev

Bala Rajaraman

William Robert Haselton

Oren Wolf

Michael L Y Li

James E Gruener

Alisa Neeman

Emil R Nunez

Nathan L Williams

Zhe Xu

Steven J Davis

Gregory E McBride

Colin Scott Dawson

Michael Allen Kaczmarski

Jerry Wayne Pence

Christian Bolik

William Roy Yonker

Zhengwen He

Ofer Peretz

Robert S Elder

Yu-mei Una Hsiao

Carsten Brixius

Rosa Tesiler Plaza

Donald Monson Moxley

Frank Arthur Chodacki

Described are embodiments of an invention for prioritizing data items for backup in a computing environment. The computing environment includes a plurality of clients coupled through a network to a backup system for backing up items stored locally on the client. Each client includes a continuous data protection (CDP) module that prioritizes the order of files transmitted to the backup system for storage on one or more storage devices based on policy. The CDP module builds an initial backup list and a CDP backup list. The initial backup list includes any item that meets the criteria of the initial backup profile. The CDP backup list includes items that have been modified since the initial backup process began. The data that is the most critical to a user is often the most recently modified data. Thus, the CDP module preferentially performs a backup of items on the CDP backup list.

Prioritization of data items for backup in a computing environment

Techniques for adjusting the frequency of data backups and initiating event-driven backups in a storage system are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a self-adjusting backup frequency, known as a 'Change Rate Objective,' is defined to conduct or delay backups for one or more volumes in the storage system on the basis of an associated policy value. The Change Rate Objective may be tied to one or more business or data activity events, such as the amount and type of data changes since a last backup. The storage system may also be tailored to conduct or delay full or incremental backups on the basis of a Change Rate Objective that measures whether a full or incremental or differential backup is more appropriate. Various data or system failures, or data or business events may also be used to adjust the retention periods of continuous data protection (CDP) data and delay a rollup of CDP data.

Automated and self-adjusting data protection driven by business and data activity events

Embodiments of the present invention provide a scalable, efficient way to backup data in a block-level incremental-forever backup system such that backup and expiration of data can be achieved at the granularity of a single backup version, without having to read or move data that is stored in backup storage.

Creation and expiration of backup objects in block-level incremental-forever backup systems

One aspect of the present invention includes a configuration of a storage management system that enables the performance of deduplication activities at both the client (source) and at the server (target) locations. The location of deduplication operations can then be optimized based on system conditions or predefined policies. In one embodiment, seamless switching of deduplication activities between the client and the server is enabled by utilizing uniform deduplication process algorithms and accessing the same deduplication index (containing information on the hashed data chunks). Additionally, any data transformations on the chunks are performed subsequent to identification of the data chunks. Accordingly, with use of this storage configuration, the storage system can find and utilize matching chunks generated with either client- or server-side deduplication.

Integrated approach for deduplicating data in a distributed environment that involves a source and a target

For block level backup, a full image level backup is created of a file system from production storage at a production server to random access storage at a backup server. A mounted image is created from the full image that exposes a block level representation of the file system of the production server for read operations in a file level format. File enumeration is performed on the mounted image for files. Block level read operations are monitored while the files are being enumerated. During monitoring, blocks that are read for the read operations are marked as meta-data blocks. Blocks that are not marked as meta-data blocks are identified as data blocks. The data blocks are migrated to sequential storage, while leaving the meta-data blocks on the random access storage, wherein the data blocks form a backup image.

Block level backup and restore

Described are embodiments of an invention for optimizing a computing environment that performs data management operations such as encryption, deduplication and compression. The computing environment includes data components and a management system. The data components operate on data during the lifecycle of the data. The management system identifies all the data components in a data path, how the data components are interconnected, the data management operations performed at each data component, and how many data management operations of each type are performed at each data component. Further, the management system builds a data structure to represent the flow of data through the data path and analyzes the data structure in view of policy. After the analysis, the management system provides recommendations to optimize the computing environment through the reconfiguration of the data management operation configuration and reconfigures the data management operation configuration to optimize the computing environment.

Optimization of a computing environment in which data management operations are performed

Systems and methods for managing storage virtualization in a storage infrastructure are provided. The method comprises examining storage virtualization configurations across a data storage infrastructure having one or more data storage resources, such that configuration data associated with the storage virtualization configurations applied to the one or more data storage resources is stored in a configuration repository; analyzing the configuration data to detect storage virtualization policy inconsistencies across the data storage infrastructure; reporting potential problems associated with applying the storage virtualization configurations to said one or more data storage resources; and automatically implementing recommendations for corrective action to improve storage virtualization, in response to detecting the virtualization policy inconsistencies.

Automated correction of contentious storage virtualization configurations

A markup language document representing computing elements of a computing architecture, such as data storage elements of a data storage architecture, is constructed and analyzed. A first computing element contained by a second computing element is represented; a first tag of the document corresponding to the first computing element is nested within a second tag of the markup language document corresponding to the second computing element. A non-containing/contained relationship from the first computing element to a third computing element is also represented; a pointer tag of the document corresponding to the data access path is nested within the first tag, and references a third tag of the document corresponding to the third computing element. Get-pointer-node and get-child-node application programming interfaces for the markup language are called to traverse among containing/contained relationships. Pointer tags are followed to traverse among non-containing/contained relationships. Redundant attributes among the relationships can thus be detected.

Construction and analysis of markup language document representing computing architecture having computing elements

Described is a method, system, and computer program product for selecting a data repository within a computing environment. The data repository can exist on multiple target computing systems as a logical entity called a volume or a file system. When selecting at least one data repository, a data protection system of the computing environment analyzes the incoming data from a source computing system, in conjunction with information describing the data repositories. The data repository information, or repository characteristic information, can be stored on a repository volume table (RVT) of the data protection system. By determining a weighted selection score from the analysis of all the information available to the data protection system, the data protection system can intelligently select a data repository for storing data from the source computing system. Further, by tracking repository characteristic information on a continuous or periodic basis, the data protection system can enable emulated views of data that has been stored on the data repositories of the computing environment.

Data repository selection within a storage environment

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for restoring a restore set of files from backup objects stored in sequential backup devices. Backup objects are stored in at least one sequential backup device. A client initiates a restore request to restore a restore set of data in a volume as of a restore point-in-time. A determination is made of backup objects stored in at least one sequential backup device including the restore set of data for the restore point-in-time, wherein the determined backup objects are determined from a set of backup objects including a full volume backup and delta backups providing data in the volume at different points-in-time, and wherein extents in different backup objects providing data for blocks in the volume at different points-in-time are not stored contiguously in the sequential backup device. A determination is made of extents stored in the at least one sequential backup device for the determined backup objects. The determined extents are sorted according to an order in which they are stored in the at least one sequential backup device to generate a sort list. The extents are retrieved from the at least one sequential backup device according to the order in the sort list to access the extents sequentially from the sequential backup device in the order in which they were stored. The retrieved extents are returned to the client and the client reconstructs the restore data set from the received extents.

Restoring a restore set of files from backup objects stored in sequential backup devices

Systems and methods for managing storage virtualization in a storage infrastructure are provided. The method comprises examining storage virtualization configurations across a data storage infrastructure having one or more data storage resources, such that configuration data associated with the storage virtualization configurations applied to the one or more data storage resources is stored in a configuration repository; analyzing the configuration data to detect storage virtualization policy inconsistencies and redundancies across the data storage infrastructure; and reporting potential problems associated with applying the storage virtualization configurations to said one or more data storage resources, in response to detecting the virtualization policy inconsistencies.

Adaptation of contentious storage virtualization configurations

A method, system, and computer program product are provided for matching a storage dependent device to a storage subsystem. Storage requirements are identified for a storage dependent device that is coupled to a network. Additionally, a set of storage subsystems that are coupled to the network are identified. A determination is made as to whether at least one storage subsystem in the set of storage subsystems meets the storage requirements of the storage dependent device. An identified storage subsystem is formed by identifying the at least one storage subsystem that meets the storage requirements of the storage dependent device. Responsive to forming the identified storage subsystem, at least one storage subsystem is coupled to the storage dependent device, wherein the storage dependent device utilizes storage capabilities of the identified storage subsystem.

Dynamically matching data service capabilities to data service level objectives

Growing community of inventors

Tucson, AZ, United States of America

David Gregory Van Hise