Method, system, and apparatus for providing alert synthesis in a data protection system

• US 9,141,482 B2
• Filed: 08/30/2013
• Issued: 09/22/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Ingen, Catherine Van, Berkowitz, Brian T., Anand, Karandeep Singh, Thangarathnam, Manikandan, Kulkarni, Purushottam M., Shelton, William T., Harikrishnan, Seetharaman, Srinivasan, Sundararajan, Lashkari, Yezdi Z.
• Primary Examiner(s): Iqbal, Nadeem
• Application Number:
  US14/015,920
• Publication Number:
  US 20140223227A1
• Time in Patent Office: 753 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0781 Error filtering or prioritizing based on a policy defined by the user or on a policy defined by a hardware/software module, e.g. according to a severity level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1448 Management of the data involved in backup or backup restore
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1458 Management of the backup or restore process
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1461 Backup scheduling policy
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1466 to make the backup process non-disruptive
• 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 11/2071 using a plurality of controllers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99955 Archiving or backup

Abstract

A method for diagnosing problems with protection of a data source and recovery of the same. The method includes diagnosing a copy of data located at the storage location and diagnosing a temporal version of the copy of data. Based on the diagnosis it is determined whether an error or a warning was detected. If either were detected a response is provided with a suggested solution.

Claims

1. A method for protecting a protected group of protected objects, each protected object having data, the method comprising:

maintaining a production copy of the protected group at a production location and a backup copy of the protected group at a recovery location;

performing a recovery process in accordance with a recovery plan;

generating a trail of errors encountered while the recovery process is performed;

determining whether the recovery process has failed; and

after determining that the recovery process has failed, utilizing the trail to identify an error that resulted in the failure.

2. The method of claim 1 including after identifying the error that resulted in the failure, providing a suggestion to resolve the failure.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the suggestion is to check a network connection.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the identified error is caused by a network connection.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the performing of the recovery process includes executing a recovery job and the identified error is the recovery job being unable to contact the production location.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the performing of the recovery process includes executing a recovery job and the identified error is a result of the protected object at the production location not being available to the recovery job.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the performing of the recovery process includes executing a recovery job and the identified error is a result of the recovery job not being able to read data of the protected object from the recovery location.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the identified error is cause by not having sufficient disk space.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the performing of the recovery process includes executing a recovery job and the recovery process fails when the recovery job failed to complete.

10. A computer-readable memory storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computer system to protect a protected group of protected objects, the computer-executable instructions comprising instruction that:

maintain a production copy of the protected group at a production location and a backup copy of the protected group at a recovery location;

perform a recovery process in accordance with a recovery plan by launching execution of a recovery job to recover a protected object, wherein the recovery plan specifies how the protected object of the protected group is recovered from the recovery location to the production location;

generate a task trail that includes errors encountered during execution of the recovery job;

determine whether the recovery job has failed; and

after determining that the recovery job has failed, utilize the task trail to identify an error that resulted in the failure.

11. The computer-readable memory of claim 10 including after identifying the error that resulted in the failure, provide a suggestion to resolve the failure.

12. The computer-readable memory of claim 10 wherein the identified error is a result of the recovery job being unable to contact the production location.

13. The computer-readable memory of claim 10 wherein the identified error is a result the protected object at the production location not being available to the recovery job.

14. The computer-readable memory of claim 10 wherein the identified error is a result of the recovery job not being able to read data from the recovery location.

15. The computer-readable memory of claim 10 wherein the recovery job fails when the recovery job failed to complete.

16. A computing system for protecting a protected group of protected objects, the computing device comprising:

computer-readable storage storing;

a recovery plan for recovering a protected object from a recovery location to a production location, a production copy of the protected group being stored onsite at a production location, a backup copy of the protected group being stored offsite at a recovery location; and

computer-executable instructions that;

launch a recovery process in accordance with the recovery plan, the recovery process generates a trail of error encountered while the recovery process is performed; and

upon determining that the recovery process has failed, utilize the trail to identify an error that resulted in the failure; and

a processor for executing the computer-executable instructions of the computer-readable storage.

17. The computing system of claim 16 wherein the computer-executable instructions further, after identifying the error that resulted in the failure, provide a suggestion to resolve the failure.

18. The computing system of claim 16 wherein the launching of the recovery process results in execution of a recovery job and the identified error is the recovery job being unable to contact the production location.

19. The computing system of claim 16 wherein the launching of the recovery process results in execution of a recovery job and the identified error is a result of the protected object at the production location not being available to the recovery job.

20. The computing system of claim 16 wherein the launching of the recovery process results in execution of a recovery job and the recovery process fails when the recovery job failed to complete.