APPLICATION-LEVEL LIVE SYNCHRONIZATION ACROSS COMPUTING PLATFORMS INCLUDING SYNCHRONIZING CO-RESIDENT APPLICATIONS TO DISPARATE STANDBY DESTINATIONS AND SELECTIVELY SYNCHRONIZING SOME APPLICATIONS AND NOT OTHERS

• US 20170185488A1
• Filed: 12/05/2016
• Published: 06/29/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: KUMARASAMY, Paramasivam, VALLABHANENI, Brahmaiah, MITKAR, Amit
• Granted Patent: US 10,387,266 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1482 by means of middleware or OS functionality
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1662 the resynchronized component or unit being a persistent storage device re-synchronization of failed mirror storage G06F11/2082; rebuild or reconstruction of parity RAID storage G06F11/1008
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2028 eliminating a faulty processor or activating a spare
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2097 maintaining the standby controller/processing unit updated initialisation or re-synchronisation thereof G06F11/1658 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/328 Computer systems status display G06F11/327 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files

Abstract

An illustrative “Live Synchronization” feature creates and maintains a ready standby “synchronized application” that is available to take over as a failover solution for a “primary” application that operates in a production environment, but will do so on a different computing platform (e.g., physical server, virtual machine, container, etc.), and possibly on a differed kind of computing platform than, the primary. The illustrative system has specialized features and components for discovering and singling out each primary application and identifying and locating its disk image, e.g., VMDK file. The application is Live Synched to the standby/failover application without reference to whether and how other co-resident applications might be treated. The standby/failover destination supporting the synchronized application may be located anywhere, whether in the same data center as the primary or geographically remote or in a private or public cloud setting.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

synchronizing a first application, which is represented in a first disk image that stores the first application'"'"'s primary data, to a standby version of the first application,

wherein the first application executes on a first computing platform in communication with the first disk image, which is stored in a first data storage device,

wherein the first disk image represents the first application and not a second application that also executes on the first computing platform, and

wherein the standby version of the first application comprises a copy of the first disk image which is stored in a second storage device associated with a second computing platform that hosts the standby version of the first application; and

wherein the synchronizing comprises continuously replicating changed data blocks from the first disk image to the copy of the first disk image.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the copy of the first disk image is continuously replicated from changed data blocks at the first disk image after an initial backup of the first disk image.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

booting up the standby version of the first application from the copy of the first disk image; and

executing the standby version of the first application on the second computing platform, based on the copy of the first disk image.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

on detecting a failure of the first application, booting up the standby version of the first application from the copy of the first disk image; and

executing the standby version of the first application on the second computing platform, based on the copy of the first disk image, wherein the standby version of the first application executes instead of the first application.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein after an initial backup of the first disk image, the copy of the first disk image is repeatedly restored from incremental backups taken of the first disk image which incremental backups comprise changed data blocks copied from changes at the first disk image.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the first application is selected for synchronization and further wherein the second application that also executes on the first computing platform is not selected for synchronization to a corresponding standby version,

thereby selectively synchronizing some applications on the first computing platform and not other applications on the same first computing platform.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein only a portion of the first disk image is selected for synchronization such that the second copy of the first disk image represents only the selected portion of the first disk image, and wherein the selected portion is one of:

a logical volume, a physical disk, a file, and a folder.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the first computing platform is a physical computing device and wherein the second computing platform is a virtual machine.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the first computing platform is a virtual machine and wherein the second computing platform is a physical computing device.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the first computing platform is a first type of virtual machine and wherein the second computing platform is second type of virtual machine which is different from the first type of virtual machine.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the synchronizing comprises:

automatically discovering, by a data agent operating on a third computing platform that is distinct from the first computing platform and the second computing platform, operational characteristics of the first application, including identifying and locating the first disk image.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the synchronizing comprises:

causing to be installed on the first computing platform, by a data agent operating on a third computing platform that is distinct from the first computing platform and the second computing platform, an application-utility;

causing the application utility to establish communications with the first application and with the data agent; and

automatically discovering by the data agent, via the application utility, operational characteristics of the first application, including identifying and locating the first disk image.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the synchronizing comprises:

causing to be installed on the first computing platform, by a data agent operating on a third computing platform that is distinct from the first computing platform and the second computing platform, a changed-block filter;

causing the changed-block filter intercept and transmit to the data agent changed data blocks in the first disk image resulting from write operations performed by the first application; and

using the changed data blocks received from the changed-block filter to (a) repeatedly generate incremental backup copies of the first disk image, or (b) provide continuous data replication of the changed data blocks to the standby copy of the first disk image.

14. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

identifying a second application that also executes on the first computing platform,

wherein the second application is represented in a second disk image that stores the second application'"'"'s primary data, and

wherein the second disk image represents the second application and only the second application;

synchronizing the second application to a standby version of the second application,

wherein the standby version of the second application comprises a copy of the second disk image which is restored to a third storage device associated with a third computing platform that hosts the standby version of the second application, and

wherein the third computing platform is distinct from the second computing platform that hosts the standby version of the first application;

on detecting a failure of the second application, booting up the standby version of the second application from the copy of the second disk image to execute in place of the first application,

wherein the standby version of the second application executes on the third computing platform;

thereby synchronizing co-resident applications to disparate standby destinations.

15. A computer-readable medium, excluding transitory propagating signals, storing instructions that, when executed by at least one secondary storage computing device, cause the secondary storage computing device to perform operations comprising:

automatically discovering operational characteristics of a first application,

including identifying and locating a first disk image that stores the first application'"'"'s primary data and represents the first application,

wherein the first application executes on a first computing platform in communication with the first disk image, and

wherein the first computing platform is distinct from and in communication with the secondary storage computing device;

synchronizing the first application represented in the first disk image to a standby version of the first application,

wherein the standby version of the first application comprises a copy of the first disk image which is stored in a second storage device associated with a second computing platform that hosts the standby version of the first application,

wherein the second computing platform is distinct from the first computing platform hosting the first application and is also distinct from the secondary storage computing device, and

wherein the copy of the first disk image is continuously replicated from changed data blocks at the first disk image after an initial backup of the first disk image.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 15 wherein the operations further comprise:

on detecting a failure of the first application, causing the standby version of the first application (a) to boot up from the copy of the first disk image, and (b) to execute instead of the first application,

wherein the standby version of the first application executes on the second computing platform.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 15 wherein the copy of the first disk image is continuously replicated from changed data blocks at the first disk image after an initial backup of the first disk image.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 15 wherein after an initial backup of the first disk image, the copy of the first disk image is repeatedly restored from incremental backups taken of the first disk image which incremental backups comprise changed data blocks copied from changes at the first disk image.

19. A computer-readable medium, excluding transitory propagating signals, storing instructions that, when executed by at least one computing device in a storage management system, cause the at least one computing device to perform operations comprising:

synchronizing a first application represented in a first disk image that stores the first application'"'"'s primary data to a standby version of the first application,

wherein the first application executes on a first computing platform in communication with the first disk image,

wherein the first disk image represents the first application, and

wherein the standby version of the first application comprises a copy of the first disk image which is stored in a second storage device associated with a second computing platform that hosts the standby version of the first application;

booting up the standby version of the first application from the copy of the first disk image; and

executing the standby version of the first application on the second computing platform, based on the copy of the first disk image.