Comm Vault Systems, Inc.

Sarath Cheriyan Joseph

Henry Wallace Dornemann

Rajesh Polimera

Rahul S Pawar

Ananda Venkatesha

Santhosh Sanakkayala

Kuldeep Kumar

Venkata Chalapathi Sucheth Ramgiri

Madhumitha Mani

Ashwin Gautamchand Sancheti

Snapshot-based disaster recovery (DR) orchestration systems and methods for virtual machine (VM) failover and failback do not require that VMs or their corresponding datastores be actively operating at the DR site before a DR orchestration job is initiated, i.e., before failover. An illustrative data storage management system deploys proprietary components at source data center(s) and at DR site(s). The proprietary components (e.g., storage manager, data agents, media agents, backup nodes, etc.) interoperate with each other and with the source and DR components to ensure that VMs will successfully failover and/or failback. DR orchestration jobs are suitable for testing VM failover scenarios ('clone testing'), for conducting planned VM failovers, and for unplanned VM failovers. DR orchestration jobs also handle failback and integration of DR-generated data into the failback site, including restoring VMs that never failed over to fully re-populate the source/failback site.

Snapshot-based disaster recovery orchestration of virtual machine failover and failback operations

An illustrative 'VM heartbeat monitoring network' of heartbeat monitor nodes monitors target VMs in a data storage management system. Accordingly, target VMs are distributed and re-distributed among illustrative worker monitor nodes according to preferences in an illustrative VM distribution logic. Worker heartbeat monitor nodes use an illustrative ping monitoring logic to transmit special-purpose heartbeat packets to respective target VMs and to track ping responses. If a target VM is ultimately confirmed failed by its worker monitor node, an illustrative master monitor node triggers an enhanced storage manager to initiate failover for the failed VM. The enhanced storage manager communicates with the heartbeat monitor nodes and also manages VM failovers and other storage management operations in the system. Special features for cloud-to-cloud failover scenarios enable a VM in a first region of a public cloud to fail over to a second region.

Heartbeat monitoring of virtual machines for initiating failover operations in a data storage management system, including operations by a master monitor node

Heartbeat monitoring of virtual machines for initiating failover operations in a data storage management system, using ping monitoring of target virtual machines

Heartbeat monitoring of virtual machines for initiating failover operations in a data storage management system, including virtual machine distribution logic

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Eatontown, NJ, United States of America

Sarath Cheriyan Joseph