METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR OFFLINE INDEXING OF CONTENT AND CLASSIFYING STORED DATA

• US 20080294605A1
• Filed: 03/28/2008
• Published: 11/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/17/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Gokhale, Parag, Brockway, Brian, Schwartz, Jeremy A., Ngo, David, Prahlad, Anand, Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Muller, Marcus S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,170,995 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1446 Point-in-time backing up or restoration of persistent data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2228 Indexing structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2372 Updates performed during offline database operations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/319 Inverted lists
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data

Abstract

A method and system for creating an index of content without interfering with the source of the content includes an offline content indexing system that creates an index of content from an offline copy of data. The system may associate additional properties or tags with data that are not part of traditional indexing of content, such as the time the content was last available or user attributes associated with the content. Users can search the created index to locate content that is no longer available or based on the associate attributes.

Claims

1. In a data management system residing within a private computer network, a method for indexing content, comprising:

identifying a production copy having one or more production data objects each having content, wherein the production copy is available from a production data server within the private computer network;

identifying an offline copy from the private computer network, wherein the offline copy includes one or more offline data objects each having content, which are copies of the one or more production data objects;

identifying content within the one or more offline data objects;

creating a content index, without affecting the production data server, of the identified content within the offline data objects, wherein the content index classifies the identified content based on at least one or more attributes of the identified content; and

,

updating the content index by associating the offline data objects with the production data objects.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein creating or updating the content index comprises determining a state of data protection of the identified content.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein creating or updating the content index comprises determining whether the identified content is encrypted.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein creating or updating the content index comprises determining whether the identified content has associated access control information.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein creating or updating the content index comprises determining at least a portion of a topology of a network in which the identified content is stored.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein creating or updating the content index comprises determining whether the identified content contains one or more specified text strings or words.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

eliminating duplicate content within or among the offline data objects.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying an offline copy includes identifying a copy to use from among multiple offline copies based on a time required to access each of the multiple offline copies.

9. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a computer system to identify archived content, by a method comprising:

receiving a search request directed to target content, wherein the search request contains classifications associated with the target content;

searching an index containing information associated with the target content to generate search results, wherein the index contains information identifying at least one content item that is not available from mounted disk media or faster media, wherein the faster media has a retrieval time or accessibility that is faster than mounted disk media;

for search results identifying content items that are not available from mounted disk media or faster media, retrieving information about the target content from an archive or secondary storage location; and

providing the search results in response to the search request.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises searching based on user-defined attributes.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises receiving an availability criteria related to the content, searching based on information about the availability criteria of the content, and generating search results indicating an estimated time required to access the content.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises:

receiving a range of time during which deleted content was last available, searching based on a time the content was deleted, and generating search results for accessing the deleted content.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises searching based on a time range.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises searching an original copy of the content.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 further comprising after receiving the search request, creating the content index dynamically based on the content available in the system.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein searching a content index comprises:

identifying data items deleted from primary storage but that are still available in secondary storage, identifying time information associated with availability of the deleted data items, and generating search results for accessing the deleted data items.

17. A computer system for indexing and searching content, comprising:

an offline copy component configured to select an offline copy of the content,

wherein the offline copy is a secondary copy of data, and wherein the secondary copy of the data is a copy of a primary copy of the data created using at least one of the following storage operations;

snapshot, backup, replication, archive and migration;

a content indexing component configured to store in a content index attributes of the content within the selected offline copy; and

an index searching component configured to identify indexed content based on a received search query and the attributes stored within the index,

wherein the index of the content is created without consuming additional resources of a system that is the original source of the content.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the content indexing component decrypts encrypted content.

19. The system of claim 17 wherein the content indexing component selects a copy to use for indexing from among multiple offline copies of the data based on a time required to access each of the multiple offline copies.

20. The system of claim 17 wherein the content indexing component selects a copy to use for indexing from among multiple offline copies of the data based on a server load or backup schedules associated with at least some of the multiple offline copies.