Network informed policy creation for optimizing backup operations in a data protection system

A computer-implemented method of optimizing a backup operation for a data protection system having a data source and a data destination, comprising:

• first accessing a production network implementing a backup program of the data protection system and executing the backup operation that comprises a plurality of stages including taking a snapshot of a block device, transferring the snapshot to secondary storage, and tiering backup data from secondary storage to other storage;
• second accessing an out-of-band network comprising network devices managing network connectivity for the production network, and wherein the network devices are dual-homed to provide access to the production network and the out-of-band network;
• collecting network traffic information including network bandwidth, and a network uplink speed using a management interface of the out-of-band network;
• determining a size of a dataset to be saved in the destination to derive a dataset size;
• determining an available bandwidth between the source and destination, wherein the available bandwidth is calculated as a difference of the network uplink speed and an incoming and outgoing bandwidth;
• and
• determining a best time to perform a data transfer from the source to the destination by dividing the dataset size by the available bandwidth, wherein the best time corresponds to a time where the greatest amount of network bandwidth is available for the data transfers based on the network bandwidth and network uplink speed between the source and destination for the transferring stage of the backup operation so that backup data transfer is optimized for the transferring stage as decoupled from the snapshot taking and tiering stages of the backup operation.

A non-transitory computer program product having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method of optimizing a backup operation for a data protection system, comprising:

• first accessing a production network implementing a backup program of the data protection system and executing the backup operation that comprises a plurality of stages including taking a snapshot of a block device, transferring the snapshot to secondary storage, and tiering backup data from secondary storage to other storage;
• second accessing an out-of-band network comprising network devices managing network connectivity for the production network, and wherein the network devices are dual-homed to provide access to the production network and the out-of-band network;
• collecting network traffic information including network bandwidth, and a network uplink speed using a management interface of the out-of-band network;
• determining a size of a dataset to be saved in the destination to derive a dataset size;
• determining an available bandwidth between the source and destination, wherein the available bandwidth is calculated as a difference of the network uplink speed and an incoming and outgoing bandwidth;
• and
• determining a best time to perform a data transfer from the source to the destination by dividing the dataset size by the available bandwidth, wherein the best time corresponds to a time where the greatest amount of network bandwidth is available for the data transfers based on the network bandwidth and network uplink speed between the source and destination for the transferring stage of the backup operation so that backup data transfer is optimized for the transferring stage as decoupled from the snapshot taking and tiering stages of the backup operation.