Comm Vault Systems, Inc.

Michael Frank Klose

Prasad Nara

Ganesh Haridas

Jaidev Oppath Kochunni

Karthik Suriyanarayanan

Gunassekaran A S

Sundar Narasimman

A lightweight always-on monitoring, collecting, diagnosing, and correcting utility operates in an enhanced storage manager that manages a data storage managements system. The always-on utility provides a comprehensive and pro-active approach, which is intended to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for after-the-fact diagnostics. The always-on utility also enforces so-called best practices and other heuristics, which include pro-actively activating certain database settings that are not enabled by default; manipulating certain aspects of the database to improve performance; and reporting aspects that are outside best-practice parameters to the trouble report system so that system administrators and/or developers may intervene before a catastrophic failure occurs. In some cases, the best-practice parameters represent heuristics designed by the present inventors to improve the performance and general health of the management database.

Monitoring, diagnosing, and repairing a management database in a data storage management system

A media agent is configured to perform substantially autonomously to initiate, continue, and manage information management operations such as a backup job of a certain client's primary data, manage the operations, and generate and store resultant system-level metadata from the operations, etc. The media agent is configured to do this even when out of communication with the storage manager that manages the information management system. When communications are restored, the media agent reports the relevant metadata to the storage manager. The storage manager comprises corresponding enhancements, including specialized logic for identifying the media agent as an intelligent media agent capable of some autonomous functionality, for transmitting management parameters thereto, and for seamlessly integrating the received metadata into the storage manager's associated management infrastructure such as a management database.

Information management by a media agent in the absence of communications with a storage manager

Systems and methods are disclosed for cross-system storage management for transferring data across autonomous information management systems. Data may be transferred from one information management system to another information management system without interfering with or overriding each system's autonomy. For example, a secondary copy of production data (e.g., backed up data) is transferred from a first information management system that originated the data to a component of another 'foreign' information management system. A first storage manager that manages the first information management system also manages the cross-system data transfer operation to a 'foreign' client computing device, which remains under autonomous management as a component of the foreign information management system.

Cross-system storage management for transferring data across autonomous information management systems

Offline messaging between a repository storage operation cell and one or more mobile/remote storage operation cells is disclosed. The repository cell is managed by a repository storage manager that communicates to and from the remote cell via a specially-configured media agent. The illustrative intermediary media agent is configured to: queue messages directed to the remote cell, process them according to applicable parameters (e.g., time-to-live constraints, updates, cancellations, etc.), and transmit the processed messages to the remote cell when connectivity is available. The intermediary media agent also relays messages from the remote cell to the repository, including responses by the remote to the processed messages received from the repository via the intermediary media agent.

Offline messaging between a repository storage operation cell and remote storage operation cells via an intermediary media agent

An exemplary system preserves the autonomy of two or more distinct storage management systems all the while enabling backed up data to be restored from a first storage management system (the 'local system') to a specially-configured client in a second storage management system (the 'remote system'). For example, backed up data in the local system (e.g., a secondary copy of production data) may be transferred, in a restore operation, from secondary storage in the local storage management system, which originated the data, to a client of the remote storage management system (the &#x201c;remote client&#x201d;). As a specially-configured &#x201c;restore-only client,&#x201d; the remote client is limited to receiving backed up data from the local storage management system, via restore operation(s) managed by the local storage manager. The remote client remains a full-fledged client in its home system, the remote storage management system.

Using an enhanced data agent to restore backed up data across autonomous storage management systems

Systems and methods for migrating stored backup data between disks (e.g., from an existing disk to another disk), such as a new or different disk in a magnetic storage library, without interrupting or otherwise affecting secondary copy operations (e.g., operations currently writing data to the storage library) utilizing the magnetic storage library, are described. In some embodiments, the systems and methods mark one or more mount paths as full when a running secondary copy operation associated with the mount path has completed a job (regardless of the actual current capacity or intended use of the mount path), and migrate each of the one or more data to a second disk of the data storage library when the mount path associated with the data is marked as full.

Migrating data to disk without interrupting running operations

A lightweight always-on monitoring, collecting, diagnosing, and correcting utility operates in an enhanced storage manager that manages a data storage management system. The always-on utility provides a comprehensive and pro-active approach, which is intended to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for after-the-fact diagnostics. The always-on utility also enforces so-called best practices and other heuristics, which include pro-actively activating certain database settings that are not enabled by default; manipulating certain aspects of the database to improve performance; and reporting aspects that are outside best-practice parameters to the trouble report system so that system administrators and/or developers may intervene before a catastrophic failure occurs. In some cases, the best-practice parameters represent heuristics designed by the present inventors to improve the performance and general health of the management database.

A media agent is configured to perform substantially autonomously to initiate, continue, and manage information management operations such as a backup job of a certain client's primary data, manage the operations, and generate and store resultant system-level metadata from the operations, etc. The media agent is configured to do this even when out of communication with the storage manager that manages the information management system. When communications are restored, the media agent reports the relevant metadata to the storage manager such that the storage manager may seamlessly integrate the information into its management information infrastructure.

Systems and methods for migrating stored backup data between magnetic disks (e.g., from an existing magnetic disk to another disk), such as a new or different magnetic disk in a magnetic storage library, without interrupting or otherwise affecting secondary copy operations (e.g., operations currently writing data to the storage library) utilizing the magnetic storage library, are described. In some embodiments, the systems and methods mark one or more mount paths as full when a running secondary copy operation associated with the mount path has completed a job (regardless of the actual current capacity or intended use of the mount path), and migrate each of the one or more data volumes to a second magnetic disk of the magnetic library when the mount path associated with the data volume is marked as full.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Michael Frank Klose