Riverbed Technology, Inc.

Netapp, Inc.

Nitin Parab

James E Mace

Steven McCanne

John Martin

David Tze-Si Wu

Vivasvat Keswani

In a network including WAN accelerators and segment-oriented file servers, a method comprises responding to a client request to manipulate a file via a network file protocol by receiving a first request at a first WAN accelerator, wherein the request is a request to open a file located at a file server that is a segment-oriented file server, sending a local request for the file, corresponding to the first request, from the WAN accelerator to the file server, using a segment-aware network request protocol, returning at least a portion of the requested file in the form of a representation of a data map corresponding to the at least a portion of the requested file stored on the file server and using a data map for reconstruction of the requested file.

Hybrid segment-oriented file server and WAN accelerator

Cloud storage services can be used to facilitate secondary backup and disaster data recovery without the need for specialized backup servers at the secondary location or cloud storage service. Backup data streams are transferred to a cloud storage service. In addition to the backup data streams, backup metadata is generated for each backup data stream. The backup metadata is adapted to configure a backup server to retrieve and access data in the backup data stream. The backup metadata is also transferred to the cloud storage service. To access data from the backup data stream, a recovery backup system is connected with the cloud storage service. Backup metadata is transferred from the cloud storage service to the recovery backup system. The recovery backup system is updated with the backup metadata, which configures the recovery backup system to retrieve and access data in the backup data stream.

Cloud-based disaster recovery of backup data and metadata

A log structured content addressable deduplicated data storage system may be used to store deduplicated data. Data to be stored is partitioned into data segments. Each unique data segment is associated with a label. The storage system maintains a transaction log. Mutating storage operations are initiated by storing transaction records in the transaction log. Additional transaction records are stored in the log when storage operations are completed. Upon restarting an embodiment of the data storage system, the transaction records from the transaction logs are replayed to recreate the state of the data storage system. The data storage system updates file system metadata with transaction information while a storage operation associated with the file is being processed. This transaction information serves as atomically updated transaction commit points, allowing fully internally consistent snapshots of deduplicated volumes to be taken at any time.

Log structured content addressable deduplicating storage

The cloud storage services are extended with a cloud storage service access protocol that enables users to specify a desired storage tier for each data stream. In response to receiving storage tier specifiers via the protocol, the cloud storage service performs storage operations to identify target storage devices having attributes matching those associated with the requested storage tier. The cloud storage service stores a data stream from the storage client in the identified target storage device associated with the desired storage tier. Storage tiers can be defined based on criteria including capacity costs; access latency; availability; activation state; bandwidth and/or transfer rates; and data replication. The cloud storage service protocol allows data streams to be transferred between storage tiers, storage devices to be activated or deactivated, and data streams to be prefetched and cached. The cloud storage services may charge storage clients based on storage tier use and associated operations.

Tiered storage interface

Synthetic backups are created without accessing previous backup data or retrieving backup data from a cloud storage service. A backup system provides two or more backup data sets to a cloud spanning storage interface for storage in deduplicated form as label maps and data segments in a cloud storage service. A specification defines portions of two or more previous backup data sets to be copied into the synthetic backup. Labels corresponding with the specified portions of previous backup data sets are identified and added to a new label map to create a deduplicated synthetic backup. The completed label map is transferred to the cloud storage service. To provide access to the synthetic backup, the cloud spanning storage interface reconstructs all or a portion of the synthetic backup from the new label map and the data segments created during deduplication of previous backup data sets.

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Nitin Parab