Emc IP Holding Company LLC

Dell Products Inc.

Sharath Talkad Srinivasan

Shelesh Chopra

Rahul Deo Vishwakarma

Smitha Prakash Kalburgi

Parmeshwr Prasad

Rakesh Kumar

Mahesh Rao

Shahid Paloth Parambil

Upanshu Singhal

Hemant Ramesh Gaikwad

Richard Meier

Srikanth Venkataraman

Prakash Appayya Acharya

Suraj Dayanand Vithalkar

Paloth Parambil Shahid

Mohammed Abdul Samad

Techniques described herein relate to a method for managing upgrades of backup agents in a data cluster. The method may include identifying, by a data protection manager, a backup agent upgrade event associated with a backup agent type of backup agent types and a data cluster that includes production hosts that execute virtual machines (VMs); in response to identifying the backup agent upgrade event: obtaining production host information associated with the production hosts; obtaining protection policy information associated with the production hosts; generating an upgrade schedule specifying a portion of production hosts associated with backup agent upgrades of backup agents of the backup agent type using the production host information and the protection policy information; and initiating performance of backup agent upgrades on the portion of production hosts based on the upgrade schedule.

Scheduling and prioritizing upgrades in a data cluster

Techniques described herein relate to methods and systems for managing backup operations. The method may include receiving a request to perform a first backup operation for a first virtual machine (VM); making a first determination, using a vProxy preference map, that a first vProxy is assigned to the first VM based on a backup capability associated with the first vProxy; making a second determination that the first vProxy is not available to perform the first backup operation; making a third determination, based on the second determination and using a vProxy information database, that a second vProxy is available to perform the first backup operation based on the second vProxy being associated with the same backup capability as the first vProxy; and performing the first backup operation using the second vProxy.

Predictive optimal queue length management for backup sessions using distributed proxies

According to one embodiment, a method identifies a plurality of parameters associated with one or more virtual machines to be backed up to a backup storage system and a number of available backup proxy sessions. The method further assigns each of the available backup proxy sessions to a virtual disk of the one or more virtual machines based on the plurality of parameters and the number of available backup proxy sessions. The method then initiates backup operations, wherein each assigned backup proxy session is to back up a corresponding virtual disk to which it is assigned.

Prioritizing virtual machines for backup protection at a virtual machine disk level

A method and system for virtual machine protection. Specifically, the disclosed method and system dynamically protect virtual machine state from impactful events, such as accidental virtual machine deletions and shutdowns. The disclosed method and system work to stall the fulfillment of these impactful events while instigating the backup of protected virtual machine state, and thereafter, only permit these impactful events to proceed upon completion of the backup operation.

Method and system for virtual machine protection

Techniques described herein relate to methods for managing backup and restore operations. Such a method may include performing a vProxy health analysis to obtain vProxies assigned a healthy label; performing a confidence analysis to assign a health confidence score to each separate healthy label for each vProxy of the plurality of vProxies; filtering the plurality of vProxies to obtain a set of vProxies, each having a separate health confidence score over a confidence score threshold; calculating average throughput for each vProxy in the set of vProxies; assigning an optimal label to a vProxy of the set of vProxies based on the vProxy having an average throughput over a throughput threshold; and presenting a list of optimal vProxies comprising the vProxy to an entity configuring a backup job. The entity may select the vProxy for use in the backup job in response to being presented the optimal label of the vProxy.

Systems and methods for selecting optimal proxy devices for backup and restore operations for virtual machines

A method for processing backup policy generation requests includes receiving, by a production agent manager, a backup policy generation request, in response to receiving the backup policy generation request: identifying a backup to transfer to a backup storage, wherein the backup comprises a plurality of data blocks, performing a data storage device evaluation on a set of data storage devices to obtain a set of health scores, wherein each health score of the set of health scores corresponds to a data storage device of the set of data storage devices, assigning, based on the set of health scores, a production agent to a data storage device of the set of data storage devices to generate a backup policy, and initiating, based on the backup policy, a deployment of the production agent to the data storage device.

System and method for ranking data storage devices for efficient production agent deployment

In a backup system for a virtual infrastructure, the actual number of virtual machines protected by a backup server is determined for a given instant of time, and is used to calculate the number of virtual proxies required to protect the that actual number of virtual machines, and to deploy automatically the required virtual proxies in the virtual infrastructure.

Proxy deployment based upon the actual number of protected virtual machines

Embodiments for predictive scheduling of backups in a data protection system by initiating a first backup job in a series of scheduled consecutive backup jobs, wherein a second backup job is allowed to begin only after the first backup job is finished and not active, detecting whether or not the first backup job is still active when a second job is to start, and if so, estimating an amount of additional time required to finish the first backup job. The second backup job is then rescheduled to start at least at the end of the additional time. The estimated amount of additional time is determined using a throughput to target storage device parameter. This parameter is periodically checked to determine if there is a change to the estimated amount of additional time, and if so, the estimated time is recalculated based on the changed parameter.

Predictive scheduled backup system and method

In general, embodiments relate to a managing a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) group. The embodiments include determining a minimum and maximum set of spare disks to allocate to the RAID group, wherein the RAID group comprises a plurality of active members, allocating the minimum number of spare members to the RAID group, allocating an additional spare member to the RAID group, setting a mode of the additional spare member to storage mode, enabling, after the setting, the RAID controller to store data in the plurality of active members and in the additional spare member, wherein the plurality of active members, the minimum number of spare members, and the additional spare member comprise persistent storage.

Variable sparing of disk drives in storage array

Techniques described herein relate to methods for managing backup and restore operations. The method may include obtaining a health data items associated with vProxies; performing a first clustering analysis using the health data items to apply a first vProxy health label to a first portion of the vProxies and a second vProxy health label to a second portion of the vProxies; performing a first confidence analysis to determine a separate vProxy health confidence value for the first vProxy health label assigned to each of the first portion of vProxies; ranking the first portion of vProxies based on the first confidence analysis to obtain a ranked vProxy health list; receiving a request to perform a backup and restore management operation; and providing, in response to the request, a portion of the ranked vProxy health list to an entity requesting the backup and restore management operation.

Systems and methods for selecting devices for backup and restore operations for virtual machines

Embodiments are described for enabling file level recovery (FLR) process for dynamic and VHD disks in a data storage system. For VHD disks, certain intelligence is provided to a FLR agent installed in a helper VM to discover the VHD disks in the source VM. The FLR agent detects the presence of the VHD disk in the source VM, and upon detection, performs an Instant Recover (IR) operation of the source VM. It mounts the VHD disk and contained VHD files in the source VM on the helper VM to expose the VHD files to the FLR operation, and a backup operation copies the exposed VHD files to a destination folder on a destination VM. The memory mapping to the VHD disk is maintained by the helper VM during the FLR operation.

System and method to enable file level recovery of virtual disks and dynamic disks

A method for performing a backup operation includes receiving, by a backup storage device, a backup request, and in response to the backup request: identifying a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) associated with the backup request, identifying a VM of the plurality of VMs that is in an orphaned state; and, initiating a backup for each of the plurality of VMs except the VM.

Method to detect and exclude orphaned virtual machines from backup

According to one embodiment, in response to a request to revert a virtual machine (VM) to a previously backed up consistent state, whether there are one or more existing consistent states on the VM is determined. In response to determining that there are one or more existing consistent states on the VM, a consolidation or deletion of the one or more existing consistent states is initiated based on a selection to consolidate or to delete the one or more existing consistent states. Whether the consolidation or deletion of the one or more existing consistent states was successful is determined. A recovery operation to revert the VM to the previously backed up consistent state is initiated in response to determining that the consolidation or deletion of the one or more existing consistent states was successful.

Recovery on virtual machines with existing snapshots

Embodiments are described for enabling file level recovery (FLR) process for dynamic disks in a data storage system. A source virtual machine (VM) stores data files after a data backup operation and to be restored to a destination VM using the FLR operations; a copy of the source VM is spawned and has an Instant Recover (IR) execution component performing IR operations. A helper VM is spawned using the IR operation of the source VM copy. A FLR agent installed on each of the source VM copy and the destination VM is configured to identify a disk on the source VM as being a dynamic disk, and to allow the helper VM to act as a file transfer facilitator between the source VM and the destination VM. In this way, dynamic disks on the source VM are distinguished from regular disks even when they has the same UUID.

Consolidating data across several backups to a single virtual machine (VM) at a single instance. A process stores a VM to be backed up such that each backup comprises a single VM disk (VMDK). Upon request from the backup server, the deduplication system returns the location of the VMDKs as a network file system (NFS) path for each VMDK. This path entry is exported to the hypervisor hosting a proxy VM. The entry is mounted as a data store to the hypervisor. The proxy VM uses the VMDK which is in the data store and mounts the disk. This is performed for each VMDK so that the proxy VM mounts the NFS paths that is exported from the deduplication system onto a local file system of the base VM. From the local file system, it creates the mount points to become a user-searchable drive.

Growing community of inventors

Bengaluru, India

Sharath Talkad Srinivasan