Backup to and Restore from an Offsite Backup Location

• US 20160217043A1
• Filed: 01/28/2015
• Published: 07/28/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DataStax, Inc.
• Original Assignee: DataStax, Inc.
• Inventors: Bailey, Nicholas M., Bulman, Michael Davis, Barnash, Maxim, Halliday, Peter James
• Granted Patent: US 10,402,275 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1469 Backup restoration techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/80 Database-specific techniques

Abstract

Various operations, functionalities and systems are described herein for backing up one or more node to an offsite location, restoring the one or more node from the offsite location, restoring the one or more node to a point-in-time (PIT) from the offsite location, cloning the one or more node from the offsite location, and cloning the one or more node to a PIT from the offsite location. Example operating contexts include one or more cluster of nodes running a NoSQL (Not only Structured Query Language) distributed database and backup, restore and/or cloning on those one or more cluster of nodes.

Claims

1. A backup method comprising:

receiving a request to create an offsite backup of a node;

identifying, by the computing system, a first set of files referenced in a first local backup snapshot of the node;

copying, by the computing system, from the node to an offsite location, each of the identified first set of files;

creating, by the computing system, a first offsite backup snapshot located at the offsite location by adding references to each of the first set of files at the offsite location;

identifying, by the computing system, a second set of files referenced in a second local backup snapshot of the node;

copying, by the computing system, from the node to the offsite location, each of the identified second set of files without copying from the node to the offsite location any of the identified first set of files;

and

creating, by the computing system, a second offsite backup snapshot located at the offsite location by adding references to each of the second set of files at the offsite location.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising saving at the offsite location, by the computing system, an indication of the node for the copied first set of files, the copied second set of files, and the created offsite backup snapshot directory.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising copying, by the computing system, from the node to the offsite location, a commit log of the node.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the offsite location is a cloud-based storage facility.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the offsite location is user specified.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a request to restore the node backed up to the offsite location;

identifying, by the computing system, from the first offsite backup snapshot, each of the first set of files at the offsite location;

copying, by the computing system, each of the first set of files from the offsite location to the node;

identifying, by the computing system, from the second offsite backup snapshot, each of the second set of files at the offsite location;

and,

copying, by the computing system, each of the second set of files from the offsite location to the node without copying from the offsite location to the node any of the first set of files.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

receiving a request to restore, to a specified point in time, the node backed up to the offsite location;

and

creating, by the computing system, a third set of files at the node from a set of log entries of a commit log of the node stored at the offsite location, the set of log entries corresponding to the specified point in time.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is user specified.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is system generated.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the first set of files and the second set of files comprises Sorted String Tables.

11. The method of claim 6 wherein copying each of the identified first set of files from the offsite location to the node and copying each of the second set of files from the offsite location to the node without copying from the offsite location to the node any of the first set of files is done using a database streaming function of the node.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the node is one of a cluster of nodes.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embodied thereon a program, the program being executable by a processor to perform a backup method, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a request to create an offsite backup of a node;

identifying a first set of files referenced in a first local backup snapshot of the node;

copying, from the node to an offsite location, each of the identified first set of files;

creating a first offsite backup snapshot located at the offsite location by adding references to each of the first set of files at the offsite location;

identifying a second set of files referenced in a second local backup snapshot of the node;

copying, from the node to the offsite location, each of the identified second set of files without copying from the node to the offsite location any of the identified first set of files;

and,

creating a second offsite backup snapshot located at the offsite location by adding references to each of the second set of files at the offsite location.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises the steps of:

receiving a request to restore the node backed up to the offsite location;

identifying, from the first offsite backup snapshot, each of the first set of files at the offsite location;

copying each of the identified first set of files from the offsite location to the node;

identifying, from the second offsite backup snapshot, each of the second set of files at the offsite location;

and,

copying each of the second set of files from the offsite location to the node without copying from the offsite location to the node any of the identified first set of files.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14, wherein the method further comprises the steps of:

receiving a request to restore, to a specified point in time, the node backed up to the offsite location;

creating a third set of files at the node from a set of log entries of a commit log of the node stored at the offsite location, the set of log entries corresponding to the specified point in time.