Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Other

Ling Zheng

Blake H Lewis

Stephen Lee Manley

Michael Lee Federwisch

Kiyoshi James Komatsu

Vijay Mohan Deshmukh

Ravindra Kuramkote

Rachita Kothiyal

Sharad Jain

Kayuri Hasmukh Patel

Craig Anthony Johnston

Atul Ramesh Pandit

Jose Mathew

Anshul Pundir

Robert M English

Ajay Pratap Singh Kushwah

Vinod Kumar Daga

Yuval Frandzel

Roger Keith Stager

Don Alvin Trimmer

Abhishek Naidu

Hsing Yuan

Daniel Ting

Janice D'Sa

Jeffrey S Kimmel

Onkar Bhat

Hrishikesh Ashok Tapaswi

Akhil Kaushik

Steven Robert Kleiman

Durga Mahesh Arikatla

Jason Ansel Lango

David Brittain Bolen

Paul Christopher Eastham

Emmanuel Ackaouy

Srinath Krishnamachari

Suhas Prakash

Vinay Hangud

John Frederick Destefano

Paul Jardetzky

David A Grunwald

John K Edwards

Atul Goel

Ram Kesavan

Tijin George

Radek Aster

Ashish Prakash

Matthew Benjamin Amdur

Yong Cho

Rajesh Rajaraman

Timothy Clayton Bisson

Kartik Ayyar

J Christopher Wagner

Brian Mederic Quirion

Yinfung Fong

Robert Lieh-Yuan Tsai

Arun Rokade

Fang Wang

Ning Zhao

Long Yang

Ajith Balachandran

Prahlad Purohit

Ardalan Kangarlou

Ashwin Pednekar

Victor Valencia

Richard Swift

Christopher J Wagner

Robert Leih-Yuan Tsai

Techniques are provided for backing up virtual machines from a computing environment to a storage environment. A virtual machine agent is utilized to generate a snapshot of the virtual machine. Metadata comprising a snapshot identifier of the snapshot and virtual disk information of virtual disks captured by snapshot is generated at the computing environment. The metadata is retrieved and used to create a metafile that is transferred to the storage environment within which snapshots of the virtual machine are to be stored. The snapshot is retrieved from the computing environment and is packaged into a snapshot package having a protocol format used by the storage environment. The snapshot package is transferred to the storage environment.

Virtual machine backup from computing environment to storage environment

One or more techniques and/or computing devices are provided for cross-platform replication. For example, a replication relationship may be established between a first storage endpoint and a second storage endpoint, where at least one of the storage endpoints, such as the first storage endpoint, lacks or has incompatible functionality to perform and manage replication because the storage endpoints have different storage platforms that store data differently, use different control operations and interfaces, etc. Accordingly, replication destination workflow, replication source workflow, and/or a proxy representing the first storage endpoint may be implemented at the second storage endpoint comprising the replication functionality. In this way, replication, such as snapshot replication, may be implemented between the storage endpoints by the second storage endpoint using the replication destination workflow, the replication source workflow, and/or the proxy that either locally executes tasks or routes tasks to the first storage endpoint such as for data access.

Cross-platform replication

A storage appliance arranges snapshot data and snapshot metadata into different structures, and arranges the snapshot metadata to facilitate efficient snapshot manipulation, which may be for snapshot management or snapshot restore. The storage appliance receives snapshots according to a forever incremental configuration and arranges snapshot metadata into different types of records. The storage appliance stores these records in key-value stores maintained for each defined data collection (e.g., volume). The storage appliance arranges the snapshot metadata into records for inode information, records for directory information, and records that map source descriptors of data blocks to snapshot file descriptors. The storage appliance uses a locally generated snapshot identifier as a key prefix for the records to conform to a sort constrain of the key-value store, which allows the efficiency of the key-value store to be leveraged. The snapshot metadata arrangement facilitates efficient snapshot restore, file restore, and snapshot reclamation.

Snapshot metadata arrangement for efficient cloud integrated data management

Techniques are provided for orchestrating operations between a storage environment and a computing environment hosting virtual machines. A virtual machine proxy, associated with a computing environment hosting a virtual machine, is accessed by an orchestrator to identify the virtual machine and properties of the virtual machine. A storage proxy, associated with a storage environment comprising a volume within which snapshots of the virtual machine are to be stored, is accessed by the orchestrator to initialize a backup procedure. The orchestrator utilizes the virtual machine proxy to create a snapshot of the virtual machine. The orchestrator utilizes the storage proxy to back up the snapshot to the volume using the backup procedure.

Orchestrator for orchestrating operations between a computing environment hosting virtual machines and a storage environment

To replicate a source LUN to a different storage system platform, a first storage system transmits a request to replicate a LUN along with attributes for the LUN to a second storage system. The second storage system maps the attributes to attributes used and understood by the platform of the second storage system. The second storage system then creates a destination LUN based on the mapped attributes. Since the destination LUN is created with similar attributes as the source LUN, the destination LUN can store the replicated data of the source LUN while still being accessed and recognized as a LUN by the second storage system. The second storage system also stores any proprietary attributes received from the first storage system so that the proprietary attributes can be supplied to the first storage system to recover the source LUN after a data loss event.

Cross-platform replication of logical units

With a forever incremental snapshot configuration and a typical caching policy (e.g., least recently used), a storage appliance may evict stable data blocks of an older snapshot, perhaps unchanged data blocks of the snapshot baseline. If stable data blocks have been evicted, restore of a recent snapshot will suffer the time penalty of downloading the stable blocks for restoring the recent snapshot. Creating synthetic baseline snapshots and refreshing eviction data of stable data blocks can avoid eviction of stable data blocks and reduce the risk of violating a recovery time objective.

Reducing stable data eviction with synthetic baseline snapshot and eviction state refresh

Techniques are provided for incrementally restoring a virtual machine hosted by a computing environment. In response to receiving an indication that the virtual machine is to be incrementally restored, a snapshot of the virtual machine may be created while the virtual machine is shut down into an off state. The snapshot is transmitted to a storage environment as a common snapshot. The snapshot and the common snapshot are common snapshots comprising a same representation of the virtual machine. The common snapshot and a prior snapshot of the virtual machine are evaluated to identify a data difference of the virtual machine between the common snapshot and the prior snapshot. An incremental restore is performed of the virtual machine by transmitting the data difference from the storage environment to the computing environment to restore the virtual machine to a state represented by the prior snapshot.

Incremental restore of a virtual machine

Systems, methods, and machine-readable media for creating, deleting, and restoring volume snapshots in a remote data store are disclosed. A storage volume and a storage operating system are implemented in a software container. Through a user interface, a user may create a snapshot of the volume to a cloud storage. A user may also delete individual snapshots from the cloud storage. Further, deletion of a most recent snapshot may occur by awaiting deletion (though marking as deleted to the user) until a next snapshot is received. Snapshots in the cloud storage are manipulatable even after destruction of the source volume (by destruction of the container, for example). A controller outside the container is used by implementing the same API as the controller in the container had. Full restores of snapshots in the cloud are also possible even when the original container and volume have been destroyed.

Managing volume snapshots in the cloud

Techniques are provided for incremental backup to an object store. A request may be received from an application to perform a backup from a volume hosted by a node to a backup target within the object store. A set of changed files within the volume since a prior backup of the volume was performed to the backup target is identified, along with metadata associated with the set of changed files. The metadata is utilized to identify changed data blocks comprising data of the set of changed files that was modified since the prior backup. The changed data blocks are backed up to the object store.

Incremental backup to object store

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Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Ling Zheng