DATA PROTECTION SCHEDULING, SUCH AS PROVIDING A FLEXIBLE BACKUP WINDOW IN A DATA PROTECTION SYSTEM

• US 20090320029A1
• Filed: 06/18/2008
• Published: 12/24/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Kottomtharayil, Rajiv
• Granted Patent: US 8,769,048 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/102
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1461 Backup scheduling policy
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5019 Workload prediction
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/506 Constraint
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/505 considering the load

Abstract

A data protection scheduling system provides a flexible or rolling data protection window that analyzes various criteria to determine an optimal or near optimal time for performing data protection or secondary copy operations. While prior systems may have scheduled backups at an exact time (e.g., 2:00 a.m.), the system described herein dynamically determines when to perform the backups and other data protection storage operations, such as based on network load, CPU load, expected duration of the storage operation, rate of change of user activities, frequency of use of affected computer systems, trends, and so on.

Claims

1. A method for dynamically determining a schedule for performing a data storage operation, the method comprising:

receiving a request to perform a storage operation;

applying one or more performance criteria to dynamically determine a time to perform the storage operation; and

scheduling the data storage operation based on the one or more applied performance criteria,

wherein one or more of the applied performance criteria are unassociated with an amount of data to store under the storage operations, and

wherein at least one of the one or more applied performance criteria relate to a predicted usage of computing resources in performing the storage operation.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the request includes a deadline for performing the storage operation based on past trends of storage operations.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the request includes a desired frequency for performing the storage operation.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the request includes a request criterion and wherein applying at least one performance criterion takes into account the request criterion.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one performance criterion of the one or more performance criteria relates to a time when resources of the computer systems affected by the storage operation are unlikely to be in use.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one performance criterion of the one or more performance criteria relates to a time when the network will have a relatively lower load.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one performance criterion of the one or more performance criteria relates to a time when a media library to which data will be transferred by the storage operation is not in use.

8. The method of claim 1 including reviewing the determined schedule before the storage operation starts and changing the schedule based on other scheduled storage operations.

9. The method of claim 1 including reviewing the determined schedule before the storage operation starts and changing the schedule based on information received after the storage operation was last scheduled.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein scheduling the data storage operation avoids at least some conflicts between computer systems over resources needed to perform the storage operation.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein scheduling the data storage operation comprises determining a schedule that is able to complete multiple requested data storage operations within a desired storage window.

12. A system for dynamically scheduling storage operations so that the storage operations can be completed during an available storage window, the system comprising:

a management component to receive storage operation requests;

a jobs agent configured to dynamically determine a schedule for performing multiple storage operations; and

a database agent configured to store performance data for determining a time to perform each storage operation,

wherein the performance data facilitates an analysis of system resource load to be used at least in part in determining the schedule.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the jobs agent determines a priority for a received storage operation request based on the stored performance data.

14. The system of claim 12 wherein the jobs agent dynamically determines a schedule based on the resources required by each request and usage of the resources at various times within the storage window.

15. The system of claim 12 wherein the database agent stores historical data about an availability of resources for performing storage operations.

16. The system of claim 12 wherein the database agent stores recently measured data about an availability of resources for performing storage operations.

17. The system of claim 12 wherein the jobs agent dynamically determines a schedule that increases the priority of previously scheduled jobs that were not completed in a previous storage window.

18. A method in a data storage system for performing a data storage operation, the method comprising:

within a selected time window between a start time and an end time, determining that a condition associated with a data storage operation to be performed by the data storage system satisfies a threshold condition;

if the threshold condition is satisfied, then scheduling a time to start the data storage operation within the selected time window, based on the determined condition; and

performing at least a portion of the data storage operation at the scheduled time within the selected time window.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the condition associated with the data storage operation relates to information included in a request to perform the data storage operation.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the condition associated with the data storage operation relates to characteristics of resources within the data storage system.

21. The method of claim 18, wherein the condition is calculated from multiple criteria, the criteria including:

a first criterion associated with a relative priority to the data storage operation; and

a second criterion associated with a determined usage of resources within the data storage system.

22. The method of claim 18, wherein the threshold condition is dynamically determined based on a characteristics of the performing data storage operation.

23. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

stopping the data storage operation at a time after the scheduled time when the condition does not satisfy the threshold condition; and

restarting the data storage operation at a next time after the scheduled time when the condition satisfies the threshold condition.

24. A system for instructing a data storage system to perform data storage operations outside of a scheduled time window, comprising:

a resource monitoring component, wherein the resource monitoring component receives information identifying usage of resources within a data storage system outside of the time window,

a priority component, wherein the priority component assigns a relative priority to two or more jobs within a queue of jobs to be transferred to storage media;

a determination component, wherein the determination component determines when a threshold condition associated with the usage of resources within the data storage system is satisfied; and

a scheduling component, wherein the scheduling component schedules the jobs to be performed by the data storage system based on the assigned relative priorities when the threshold condition is satisfied.

25. A computer memory storing a data structure, wherein the data structure includes two or more entries, each of the entries relating to a data storage job to be performed by a data storage system and comprising:

a first criterion associated with one or more characteristics of the data storage job to be performed by a data storage system;

a second criterion associated with one or more characteristics of resources within the data storage system; and

a third criterion associated with historical information related to a previous performance of the resources within the data storage system;

wherein the data structure is configured to be accessed by a storage policy within the data storage system before performance of the data storage job.

26. The computer memory of claim 25, wherein the first criterion includes:

an assigned priority for the data storage job relative to other data storage jobs within the data structure;

a deadline in which to perform the data storage job; and

a number of times the data storage job was previously scheduled to be performed.

27. The computer memory of claim 25, wherein the second criterion includes:

a value for a current usage of the resources within the data storage system; and

a value for a predicted usage of the resources within the data storage system related to performing the data storage job using the resources.