SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR STORING REDUNDANT INFORMATION
First Claim
1. A method in a computer system for restoring data from a single-instanced copy, the method comprising:
- receiving a request to restore one or more data objects originally located within a hierarchy to a destination location, wherein the copy of data contains information describing the hierarchy, but only contains a single instance of each data object with the hierarchy flattened for storage on sequential media, and wherein the request specifies the original location within the hierarchy of the data objects to be restored;
for each data object in the request;
determining whether the data at the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains a reference to a data object or the data object itself;
if the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains a reference to a data object, resolving the reference to find the actual data object and copying the data object to the destination location; and
if the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains the data object itself, copying the data object to the destination location.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method and system for reducing storage requirements and speeding up storage operations by reducing the storage of redundant data includes receiving a request that identifies one or more data objects to which to apply a storage operation. For each data object, the storage system determines if the data object contains data that matches another data object to which the storage operation was previously applied. If the data objects do not match, then the storage system performs the storage operation in a usual manner. However, if the data objects do match, then the storage system may avoid performing the storage operation.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method in a computer system for restoring data from a single-instanced copy, the method comprising:
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receiving a request to restore one or more data objects originally located within a hierarchy to a destination location, wherein the copy of data contains information describing the hierarchy, but only contains a single instance of each data object with the hierarchy flattened for storage on sequential media, and wherein the request specifies the original location within the hierarchy of the data objects to be restored; for each data object in the request; determining whether the data at the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains a reference to a data object or the data object itself; if the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains a reference to a data object, resolving the reference to find the actual data object and copying the data object to the destination location; and if the original location within the hierarchy specified by the request contains the data object itself, copying the data object to the destination location. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A system for restoring single instanced data from sequential media, the system comprising:
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a file identification component configured to identify one or more files stored on the sequential media based on an original location of the file; a restored file cache configured to receive copies of files from the sequential media; and a storage operation manager configured to; receive requests to restore a file stored on the sequential media, wherein each file stored on the sequential media contains a location based on the original location of the file, traverse the sequential media and restore any instances of the file encountered to the restored file cache at the location based on the original location of the file, and when an encountered instance references an earlier instance of the file, copy the data from the location of the earlier instance in the restored file cache to the location associated with the encountered instance in the restored file cache. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for improving the retrieval of a data object in a network environment that contains multiple instances of the data object, by a method comprising:
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receiving a request to access the data object at a first location; determining at least one alternative location of an instance of the requested data object, wherein the at least one alternative location is not the first location; selecting an instance of the data object from among the determined at least one alternative location to use to satisfy the request; and sending the selected instance of the data object in response to the request. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification