US 11,144,233 B1Granted

Efficiently managing point-in-time copies of data within a primary storage system

AssigneeEMC IP Holding Company LLC

InventorsUpanshu Singhal, Sanjeev Kumar Lohchab

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Described is a system for managing point-in-time backups (or “snapshots”) of data that are stored as part of a primary storage. As part of a data protection service, a set of snapshots may be stored on the primary storage system for efficient and immediate recovery, and a set of corresponding recovery snapshots may be stored on a secondary storage system for recovery purposes. Accordingly, the system may provide the ability to leverage the efficient storage mechanisms of the primary storage, while still maintaining the data storage efficiency (e.g. costs) of the secondary storage. Moreover, the system may manage the snapshots stored on the primary and secondary storages independently. For example, the system may fully leverage the available capacity of storage pools within the primary storage by automatically purging certain snapshots from the primary storage while still maintaining the corresponding recovery snapshots on the secondary storage.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system comprising:

one or more processors;
and
a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a plurality of instructions, which when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
store a set of point-in-time snapshots of data on a primary storage system, the data associated with a client of a data backup service;
store a recovery snapshot for each of the snapshots on a secondary storage system, the secondary storage system remote from the primary storage system;
create a most recent snapshot of the data and store the most recent snapshot on the primary storage system, in response to identifying a storage event associated with the data;
determine a limit for a total number of snapshots storable on the primary storage system has been reached based on a storage policy associated with the client;
delete an existing snapshot from the set of snapshots stored on the primary storage system based on an attribute associated with the existing snapshot, the deleting the existing snapshot from the set of snapshots includes retaining the recovery snapshot of the existing snapshot stored on the secondary storage system;
receive a request to recover the data to a particular point-in-time;
and
recover the data by restoring the most recent snapshot directly from the primary storage system, in response to the particular point-in-time being associated with the storage event.

8 more elements

A method comprising:

storing a set of point-in-time snapshots of data on a primary storage system, the data associated with a client of a data backup service;
storing a recovery snapshot for each of the snapshots on a secondary storage system, the secondary storage system remote from the primary storage system;
creating a most recent snapshot of the data and store the most recent snapshot on the primary storage system, in response to identifying a storage event associated with the data;
determining a limit for a total number of snapshots storable on the primary storage system has been reached based on a storage policy associated with the client;
deleting an existing snapshot from the set of snapshots stored on the primary storage system based on an attribute associated with the existing snapshot, the deleting the existing snapshot from the set of snapshots includes retaining the recovery snapshot of the existing snapshot stored on the secondary storage system;
receiving a request to recover the data to a particular point-in-time;
and
recovering the data by restoring the most recent snapshot directly from the primary storage system, in response to the particular point-in-time being associated with the storage event.

5 more elements

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer-readable program code embodied therein to be executed by one or more processors, the program code including instructions to:

store a set of point-in-time snapshots of data on a primary storage system, the data associated with a client of a data backup service;
store a recovery snapshot for each of the snapshots on a secondary storage system, the secondary storage system remote from the primary storage system;
create a most recent snapshot of the data and store the most recent snapshot on the primary storage system, in response to identifying a storage event associated with the data;
determine a limit for a total number of snapshots storable on the primary storage system has been reached based on a storage policy associated with the client;
delete an existing snapshot from the set of snapshots stored on the primary storage system based on an attribute associated with the existing snapshot, the deleting the existing snapshot from the set of snapshots includes retaining the recovery snapshot of the existing snapshot stored on the secondary storage system;
receive a request to recover the data to a particular point-in-time;
and
recover the data by restoring the most recent snapshot directly from the primary storage system, in response to the particular point-in-time being associated with the storage event.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 16/822,397Filed 18 Mar 2020
Granted: 12 Oct 2021
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification7 codes

G06F 3/065
Horizontal data movement in storage systems, i.e. moving data in between storage devices or systems: replication mechanisms
G06F 3/0619
Improving the reliability of storage systems: in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
G06F 3/067
Adopting a particular infrastructure: distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
G06F 11/1448
Point-in-time backing up or restoration of persistent data: management of the data involved in backup or backup restore