EFFICIENT DATA STORAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
First Claim
1. A data storage method of processing a backup comprising:
- comparing a current storage set to a most recent prior storage set on a file by file basis, wherein for each file,if a file from the current storage set is the same at the corresponding file from the most recent prior storage set, including a reference to the most recent version of the file in the current storage setif the file from the current storage set is different from the corresponding file from the most recent prior storage set, including the current version of the file in the current storage set.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An efficient data storage system is described. An agent software application on computing devices in a first tier processes snapshot backups and pushes them to an appliance software application on a server in a second tier. The appliance software application processes archive backups and pushes them to cloud storage in a third tier. A cloud application on a management server receives storage policy specifications from customers and promulgates the policies to the agent software application and the appliance software application. The policy specifications include a snapshot specification including a snapshot time period for backups in the second tier and an archive specification including an archive time period for backups in the third tier. The backups are created efficiently such that if a file has not changed, a reference to a file is included in a storage set rather than the data file itself. This reduces the size of storage sets.
13 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A data storage method of processing a backup comprising:
comparing a current storage set to a most recent prior storage set on a file by file basis, wherein for each file, if a file from the current storage set is the same at the corresponding file from the most recent prior storage set, including a reference to the most recent version of the file in the current storage set if the file from the current storage set is different from the corresponding file from the most recent prior storage set, including the current version of the file in the current storage set.
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2. A data storage system comprising:
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a software agent configured to operate on a plurality of agent computing devices at the customer location, each agent computing device having first tier local storage; a software appliance operating on a customer server computer at a customer location, the customer server computer having at least one second tier local storage system; wherein each software agent on each agent computing device identified in a snapshot backup specification is configured to create a snapshot of data on the first tier local storage of the agent computing device regularly according to a snapshot time period and send the snapshot of data to the software appliance on the customer server wherein the snapshot of data is created by the software agent performing actions including comparing a current snapshot to a most recent prior snapshot on a file by file basis, wherein for each file, if a file from the current snapshot is the same as the corresponding file from the most recent prior snapshot, including a reference to the most recent version of the file in the current snapshot and transmitting file reference to the software appliance as part of the current snapshot if the file from the current snapshot is different from the corresponding file from the most recent prior snapshot, including the current version of the file in the current snapshot and transmitting the file to the software appliance as part of the current snapshot. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19)
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5. A data storage system comprising:
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at least one agent computing device having an agent software application installed thereon, each agent computing device at a customer location, each agent computing device having first tier local storage, each agent computing device coupled to a local area network, the agent software application on each agent computing device configured to create a snapshot backup according to a snapshot time period specified in a storage policy a customer server computer having an appliance software application installed thereon, the customer server at the customer location, the customer server computer having at least one second tier local storage system, the appliance software application configured to regularly create an archive backup according to an archive time period specified in the storage policy, the archive backup including data from the snapshot backups residing on the second tier storage and to send over a wide area network the archive data to a cloud storage system having third tier storage, the local area network coupled with the wide area network a management server coupled to the wide area network and configured to communicate with and distribute the storage policy to the appliance software application on the customer server computer and the agent software application on the agent computing devices wherein the agent application is configured to create the snapshot backup by performing actions including comparing a current snapshot to a most recent prior snapshot on a file by file basis, wherein for each file, if a file from the current snapshot is the same as the corresponding file from the most recent prior snapshot, including a reference to the most recent version of the file in the current snapshot and transmitting file reference to the software appliance as part of the current snapshot if the file from the current snapshot is different from the corresponding file from the most recent prior snapshot, including the current version of the file in the current snapshot and transmitting the file to the software appliance as part of the current snapshot. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20)
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Specification