Retro-fitting synthetic full copies of data

• US 20070233756A1
• Filed: 10/02/2006
• Published: 10/04/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Mimosa Systems Incorporated (Iron Mountain Incorporated)
• Inventors: Ravi, T.M., D'Souza, Roy
• Granted Patent: US 8,271,436 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1458 Management of the backup or restore process
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2028 eliminating a faulty processor or activating a spare
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/203 using migration
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2041 with more than one idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2046 where the redundant components share persistent storage G06F11/2043 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2056 by mirroring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2071 using a plurality of controllers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2082 Data synchronisation
• 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 16/27 Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor

Abstract

Multi-dimensional surrogation systems and methods are provided that generate at least one data surrogate using information of data and numerous data changes received from at least one data source. Embodiments described herein perform shadowing of production server databases, including creation of synthetic fulls by retrofitting log shipping to enterprise database systems, or other systems, that do not have log shipping capabilities.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a near-line server coupled to one or more servers that include original data; and

a shadowing system coupled to the near-line server and configured to receive a copy of the original data, the shadowing system configured to receive delta data in a plurality of instances, the delta data including information of changes to the original data, the shadowing system configured to dynamically generate and maintain an updated version of the copy at the near-line server by applying the delta data to the copy as the delta data is received.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the shadowing system is configured to generate and maintain asynchronously.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the delta data includes data of an incremental difference between the original data at a plurality of instances.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the delta data includes data of a differential difference between the original data at a plurality of instances.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the shadowing system is configured to control the applying using modified information of a component of the near-line server.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the component includes one or more of structural metadata of the copy and a log file of the delta data.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the shadowing system is configured to modify the component.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the component is structural metadata of the copy.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein configured to modify comprises configured to detect a first state of the copy, wherein the first state indicates the delta data has been applied to the copy.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein configured to modify comprises configured to change the first state to a second state, wherein the second state is a state from which another updated version can be generated by applying additional delta data to the updated version.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein changing the first state to the second state includes modifying the structural metadata of the copy.

12. The system of claim 6, wherein the delta data is a plurality of log files, wherein the component is a log file of a plurality of log files.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the applying includes invoking an engine of the one or more servers and the terminating includes stalling the engine.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more servers include a messaging and collaboration server.

15. A system comprising:

a near-line server coupled to one or more servers that include original data; and

a shadowing system coupled to the near-line server and configured to receive a copy of the original data, the shadowing system configured to receive delta data that includes information of changes to the original data, the shadowing system configured to dynamically generate and maintain an updated version of the copy at the near-line server by applying at least one of the plurality of delta data to the copy as the delta data is received, the shadowing system configured to control the applying using modified information of a component of the near-line server.

16. A system comprising:

a near-line server coupled to one or more servers; and

a shadowing system coupled to the near-line server and configured to receive delta data that describes incremental changes to original data of one or more servers, the shadowing system configured to dynamically generate and maintain an updated version of a copy of the original data at the near-line server by applying at least one of the plurality of the delta data to the copy, the shadowing system configured to control the applying using modified information of a component of the near-line server.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the component includes structural metadata of the copy.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the component includes a log file of the delta data.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to modify the component.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the component is structural metadata of the copy.

21. The system of claim 19, wherein configured to modify comprises configured to detect a first state of the copy, wherein the first state indicates the delta data has been applied to the copy.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein configured to modify comprises configured to change the first state to a second state, wherein the second state is a state from which another updated version can be generated by applying additional delta data to the updated version.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein changing the first state to the second state includes modifying the structural metadata of the copy.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein the additional delta data is received after generating the updated version.

25. The system of claim 19, wherein the applying includes invoking an engine of the one or more servers.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the shadowing system is configured to cause the engine to reference a first unapplied log file of the delta data, wherein the first unapplied log file is a first log file unapplied to the copy.

27. The system of claim 19, wherein the delta data is a plurality of log files, wherein the component is a log file of the plurality of log files.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein the shadowing system is configured to identify a selected log file of the plurality of log files and replicate the selected log file to form a replicated log file.

29. The system of claim 28, wherein the selected log file is a last-received log file.

30. The system of claim 28, wherein the shadowing system is configured to generate a modified log file by modifying information of the selected log file.

31. The system of claim 30, wherein the applying comprises:

applying log files of the plurality of log files in sequence; and

terminating the applying in response to encountering the modified log file.

32. The system of claim 31, wherein the terminating comprises replacing the modified log file with the replicated log file.

33. The system of claim 31, wherein the applying includes invoking an engine of the second server and the terminating includes stalling the engine.

34. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to receive the copy from the one or more servers.

35. The system of claim 34, wherein the copy is a full copy.

36. The system of claim 34, wherein the copy is an incremental copy.

37. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to transfer the updated version to an indexed object repository.

38. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to generate and maintain in response to at least one of an automatic trigger, a timer notification, an event notification, a poll, and a request.

39. The system of claim 38, wherein the automatic trigger includes a trigger automatically initiated in response to at least one pre-specified parameter.

40. The system of claim 39, wherein the automatic trigger includes content of the updated version.

41. The system of claim 38, wherein the timer notification includes notifications corresponding to scheduled events including at least one of maintenance operations, user activities, server activities, and data population operations.

42. The system of claim 38, wherein the event notification includes notifications corresponding to changes to data of the original data.

43. The system of claim 38, wherein the request includes at least one of access attempts and configuration attempts to the original data by one or more of users of the second server, servers and applications.

44. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to generate and maintain in near real-time with complete integrity and consistency of the original data.

45. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more servers include a messaging and collaboration server.

46. The system of claim 16, wherein the original data includes one or more of application data, databases, storage groups, mailbox data, and server data.

47. The system of claim 16, wherein the shadowing system is configured to maintain the updated version by generating another updated version by applying at least one set of log files to the updated version, the at least one set of log files received later in time than the delta data.

48. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more servers include one or more of local servers, remote servers, database servers, messaging servers, electronic mail servers, instant messaging servers, voice-over Internet Protocol servers, collaboration servers, Exchange Servers, portals, customer relationship management (CRM) servers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) servers, business-to-business servers, and content management servers.