DEDUPLICATED DATA DISTRIBUTION TECHNIQUES

• US 20160092312A1
• Filed: 12/31/2014
• Published: 03/31/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Crashplan Group LLC
• Original Assignee: Code 42 Software Incorporated
• Inventors: Dornquast, Matthew, Bispala, Brian, Allison, Damon, Armstrong, Brad, Scorcio, Marshall, Lonergan, Rory, Lindquist, Peter, Parker, Christopher
• Granted Patent: US 9,916,206 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1435 using file system or storage system metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1453 using de-duplication of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1748 De-duplication implemented within the file system, e.g. based on file segments de-duplication techniques in storage systems for the management of data blocks G06F3/0641
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/178 Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/182 Distributed file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/183 Provision of network file services by network file servers, e.g. by using NFS, CIFS network file access protocols H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1844 Management specifically adapted to replicated file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1873 Versioning file systems, temporal file systems, e.g. file system supporting different historic versions of files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2329 using versioning
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/552 involving long-term monitoring or reporting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/604 Tools and structures for managing or administering access control systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2111 Location-sensitive, e.g. geographical location, GPS
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/821 Prioritising resource allocation or reservation requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0428 wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1072 Discovery involving ranked list compilation of candidate peers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

In connection with a data distribution architecture, client-side “deduplication” techniques may be utilized for data transfers occurring among various file system nodes. In some examples, these deduplication techniques involve fingerprinting file system elements that are being shared and transferred, and dividing each file into separate units referred to as “blocks” or “chunks.” These separate units may be used for independently rebuilding a file from local and remote collections, storage locations, or sources. The deduplication techniques may be applied to data transfers to prevent unnecessary data transfers, and to reduce the amount of bandwidth, processing power, and memory used to synchronize and transfer data among the file system nodes. The described deduplication concepts may also be applied for purposes of efficient file replication, data transfers, and file system events occurring within and among networks and file system nodes.

Claims

1. A method for a deduplication-based reconstruction of file system data, the method comprising operations performed by at least one processor of a first computing system, and the operations including:

transmitting, to a second computing system, a request for metadata of a desired file;

receiving, from the second computing system, the metadata of the desired file, the metadata of the desired file indicating respective identifiers of each block of the desired file;

identifying, with use of the metadata of the desired file, at least one block of the desired file on a data store associated with the first computing system; and

reconstructing the desired file with use of the at least one block of the desired file on the data store, and with use of the metadata of the desired file received from the second computing system.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each block of the desired file is stored in a matching source file on the data store associated with the first computing system, the operations of reconstructing the desired file including:

retrieving each block of the desired file from the matching source file on the data store associated with the first computing system; and

writing each block retrieved from the matching source file to a file system location in a destination data store associated with the first computing system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one block of the desired file is not stored in the data store associated with the first computing system, the operations of reconstructing the desired file including:

transmitting, to the second computing system, a request for the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store associated with the first computing system, the request indicating respective identifiers of the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store associated with the first computing system;

receiving, from the second computing system, the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store associated with the first computing system;

writing the at least one block of the desired file received from the second computing system to a file system location in a destination data store associated with the first computing system;

retrieving at least one remaining block of the desired file from a source file stored in the data store associated with the first computing system; and

writing the at least one remaining block of the desired file to the file system location in a destination data store associated with the first computing system.

4. The method of claim 1, the operations performed by the at least one processor of the first computing system including:

obtaining the at least one block of the desired file from the data store associated with the first computing system;

determining, from an index associated with the first computing system, that at least one other block of the desired file is not stored on the data store associated with the first computing system, the determining performed using the metadata of the desired file received from the second computing system; and

obtaining the at least one other block of the desired file from the second computing system;

wherein the operations of reconstructing the desired file include reconstructing the desired file from the at least one block of the desired file obtained from the data store associated with the first computing system and the at least one other block of the desired file obtained from the second computing system.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the determining that the at least one other block of the desired file is not stored on the data store associated with the first computing system is performed with use of a bloom filter cache, wherein the bloom filter cache operates upon at least a portion of the respective identifiers of each block of the desired file.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the at least one block of the desired file is performed with use of a block index, the block index providing respective identifiers of a plurality of blocks located within files stored on the data store associated with the first computing system.

7. The method of claim 6, the operations performed by the at least one processor of the first computing system including:

validating the desired file in response to the reconstructing, the validating performing a comparison of a digital signature of the desired file that is provided from the reconstructing with a digital signature of the desired file that is provided from the metadata of the desired file.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the respective identifiers of each block of the desired file are based at least in part on an MD5 hash value determined for a respective block and wherein the digital signature of the desired file is based at least in part on an SHA-2 hash value determined for a respective file.

9. At least one machine-readable medium that is not a transitory propagating signal, the medium comprising instructions that, when executed by hardware of a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations including:

receiving, from a source remote to the computing device, a metadata of a desired file, the metadata indicating respective identifiers of each block of the desired file;

identifying, with use of the respective identifiers, at least one block of the desired file on a data store; and

reconstructing the desired file with use of the at least one block of the desired file on the data store, and with use of the metadata of the desired file received from the source remote to the computing device.

10. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, comprising instructions, that when executed, further cause the computing device to perform operations including:

transmitting, to the source remote to the computing device, a request for the metadata of the desired file, wherein the metadata of the desired file is received in response to the request; and

retrieving the at least one block of the desired file from the data store.

11. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein each block of the desired file is stored in a matching source file on the data store, and wherein the instructions that cause the computing device to reconstruct the desired file include operations including:

retrieving each block of the desired file from the matching source file on the data store; and

writing each block retrieved from the matching source file to a file system location in a destination data store of the computing device.

12. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein at least one block of the desired file is not stored in the data store, and wherein the operations to reconstruct the desired file include:

transmitting a request for the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store, the request indicating respective identifiers of the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store;

receiving the at least one block of the desired file that is not stored in the data store;

writing the received at least one block of the desired file to a file system location in a destination data store of the computing device;

retrieving at least one remaining block of the desired file from a source file located in the data store; and

writing the at least one remaining block of the desired file to the file system location in a destination data store of the computing device.

13. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, comprising instructions, that when executed, further cause the computing device to perform operations including:

obtaining the at least one block of the desired file from the data store;

determining, from an index, that at least one other block of the desired file is not stored on the data store, the determining performed using the metadata of the desired file received from the source remote to the computing device; and

obtaining the at least one other block of the desired file from a source other than the data store;

wherein the operations of reconstructing the desired file include reconstructing the desired file from the at least one block of the desired file obtained from the data store and the at least one other block of the desired file obtained from the source other than the data store.

14. The machine-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the determining that the at least one other block of the desired file are not stored on the data store is performed with use of a bloom filter cache, wherein the bloom filter cache operates upon at least a portion of the respective identifiers of each block of the desired file.

15. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein identifying the at least one block of the desired file is performed with use of a block index, the block index providing respective identifiers of a plurality of blocks located within files stored on the data store;

and the machine-readable medium comprising instructions, that when executed, further cause the computing device to perform operations including;

validating the desired file in response to the reconstructing, the validating performing a comparison of a digital signature of the desired file that is provided from the reconstructing with a digital signature of the desired file that is provided from the metadata of the desired file.

16. A computing device, comprising:

a processor and a memory;

a local data store, the local data store to store a plurality of file system elements including a plurality of files;

a deduplicated file transfer module in operation with the processor and the memory, the deduplicated file transfer module to;

process metadata of a particular file, the metadata indicating respective identifiers of each block of the particular file;

identify, with use of the metadata, at least one block of the particular file on the local data store from at least one file of the plurality of files; and

retrieve, with use of the metadata, at least one other block of the particular file from a remote data store.

17. The computing device of claim 16, further comprising:

a file chunking module in operation with the processor and the memory to;

divide a particular file of the plurality of files into at least one block; and

a block indexing module in operation with the processor and the memory to;

identify the at least one block of the particular file with use of a block index, the block index providing respective identifiers of a plurality of blocks located among the plurality of files stored on the local data store.

18. The computing device of claim 16, further comprising:

a node communication module in operation with the processor and the memory to;

transmit, to a source remote to the computing device, a request for the metadata of the particular file, wherein the metadata of the particular file is received in response to the request;

transmit, to the source remote to the computing device, a request for the at least one other block of the particular file, the at least one other block of the particular file not stored in the local data store, and the request indicating respective identifiers of the at least one block of the particular file that is not stored in the local data store; and

receive, from the source remote to the computing device, the at least one block of the particular file that is not stored in the local data store in response to the request for the at least one other block of the particular file.

19. The computing device of claim 16, further comprising:

a file storage module in operation with the processor and the memory to;

reconstruct the particular file with use of the at least one block of the particular file provided from the local data store, and with use of the metadata of the particular file; and

store the reconstructed particular file in the local data store.

20. The computing device of claim 16, further comprising:

a file versioning module in operation with the processor and the memory to;

request at least one data block of the particular file from a remote version data store, in response to a request for a retrieval or a storage of at least one block from a particular file version of the particular file.