Nutanix, Inc.

Vanita Prabhu

Parthasarathy Ramachandran

Bharat Kumar Beedu

Mayur Vijay Sadavarte

Monoreet Mutsuddi

Karan Gupta

Karthik Chandrasekaran

Rishi Bhardwaj

Kamalneet Singh

Balaji Janakiram

Systems for application configuration backup and restore. Techniques establish high frequency restore points of application configuration metadata. Processing commences upon receiving instructions to periodically take snapshots of application configuration metadata. To avoid incurring unnecessary costs to process snapshots of application configuration metadata when the application configuration metadata is slow-changing, the method performs a low-cost check to get the latest update time of the application configuration metadata. That time is compared to the time of the most recent snapshot of the application configuration metadata. When the time of the latest update time of the application configuration metadata is equal to the time of the most recent snapshot of the application configuration metadata, then rather than incurring the cost of generating a duplicate snapshot, the method waits for a duration without generating a new snapshot. High frequency restore points for application configuration metadata are emulated by pointing to corresponding lower frequency snapshots.

High-frequency virtual machine restore points

The disclosed systems emulate high-frequency application-consistent snapshots by forming restore point data sets based on remote site replay of I/O commands. A method embodiment commences upon identifying a primary computing site and a secondary computing site, then identifying an application to be restored from the secondary computing site after a disaster. Prior to the disaster, a group of computing entities of the application to be restored from the secondary computing site are identified. Input/output operations that are performed over any of the computing entities at the primary site are streamed to the secondary site where they are stored. An I/O map that associates a time with an indication of a last received I/O command that had been performed over a changing set of computing entities is sent to the secondary site. An agent at the secondary site accesses the I/O map and the streamed-over I/Os to construct recovery data.

Emulating high-frequency application-consistent snapshots by forming restore point data sets based on remote site replay of I/O commands

Various embodiments set forth techniques for managing and/or accessing metadata associated with a vblock, systems implementing said techniques, and computer-readable media storing instructions for performing said techniques. In some embodiments, one or more computer-readable media store instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps including receiving a request for metadata associated with a vblock; accessing a merged metadata record associated with the vblock, where the merged metadata record comprises metadata corresponding to metadata in metadata records for all but a last snapshot or a live vblock having a metadata record, and a first identifier of the last snapshot or the live vblock having a metadata record; and returning the requested metadata based on the metadata in the merged metadata record and metadata in the metadata record identified by the first identifier.

Vblock metadata management

Various embodiments set forth techniques for managing metadata associated with a vblock, In some embodiments, one or more computer-readable media store instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps including receiving a request to write data to a live vblock, wherein the request to write data is a first write request for the live vblock; accessing a merged metadata record associated with the live vblock, wherein the merged metadata record comprises metadata corresponding to metadata in metadata records for all but a last snapshot included in a set of snapshots having a metadata record; adding metadata associated with the request to write data to a metadata record for the live vblock; merging a metadata record for the last snapshot into the merged metadata record; and updating a first identifier of the merged metadata record to identify the live vblock.

Systems for high performance restore of data to storage devices. A method embodiment commences upon identifying a plurality of virtual disks to be grouped together into one or more consistency sets. Storage I/O commands for the plurality of virtual disks of the consistency sets are captured into multiple levels of backup data. On a time schedule, multiple levels of backup data for the virtual disks are cascaded by processing data from one or more higher granularity levels of backup data to one or more lower granularity levels of backup data. A restore operation can access the multiple levels of backup data to construct a restore set that is consistent to a designated point in time or to a designated state. Multiple staging areas can be maintained using lightweight snapshot data structures that each comprise a series of captured I/Os to be replayed over other datasets to generate a restore set.

Lossless data restore using multiple levels of lightweight snapshots

Forming lightweight snapshots for lossless data restore operations

Systems and methods for using snapshots to establish operable portions of computing entities on secondary sites for use on the secondary sites before the computing entity is fully transferred to the secondary site. Embodiments commence upon initiating replication of an entity from an originating site to a secondary site. While replication of the entire entity from the originating site to the secondary site is being carried out, the originating site transfers entity metadata to the secondary site. A non-replication user process queries the metadata to determine completion status and/or other characteristics of subcomponents of the entity. After determining the completion status of subcomponents of the entity, the non-replication user process operates on subcomponent data of the entity even before the data of the entity has been completely copied to the secondary site. The subcomponents may comprise certain tables of a database or certain rows of a table of a database.

Using snapshots to establish operable portions of computing entities on secondary sites for use on the secondary sites before the computing entity is fully transferred

Techniques for replay of groups of I/Os for disaster recovery. At a primary site, a plurality of primary site computing entities that are to be restored from the secondary computing site after a disaster recovery event are identified as belonging to an entity group. At the primary site, I/O commands that are performed over any of the entities of the entity group are observed and streamed to the secondary site, where they are persisted into a log. Periodically, the primary site sends the secondary site an I/O map that associates a time with an indication of the last performed I/O commands pertaining to any observed I/O commands that had been performed over any one or more of the computing entities of the entity group. Upon receiving a disaster recovery request, the most recent I/O map and the secondary site log are processed to construct a snapshot for the entity group.

Growing community of inventors

Bengaluru, India

Vanita Prabhu