SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CREATING COPIES OF DATA, SUCH AS ARCHIVE COPIES

• US 20130179405A1
• Filed: 03/05/2013
• Published: 07/11/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Bunte, Alan, Prahlad, Anand, Brockway, Brian
• Granted Patent: US 8,909,881 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/673
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/113 Details of archiving lifecycle management in storage systems G06F3/0649; backup systems G06F11/1446
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/325 Hash tables
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6218 to a system of files or objects, e.g. local or distributed file system or database

Abstract

A system and method of creating archive copies of data sets is described. In some examples, the system creates an archive copy from an original data set. In some examples, the system creates an archive copy when creating a recovery copy for a data set. In some examples, the system creates a copy without redundant data, and then encrypts the data set.

Claims

1. At least one data storage system that creates an archive copy of data originating from a file system, comprising:

a hierarchical storage system having

a storage manager server computer, and

at least one data store subsystem,

wherein the storage manager server computer includes at least one storage policy for directing storage operations,

wherein one or more client computers are coupled among the storage manager server computer and the data store subsystem, and

wherein the hierarchical storage system comprises;

an archive copy creation subsystem, wherein the archive copy creation subsystem creates a copy of at least a subset of data from the file system based on the storage policy of the storage manager server computer,

wherein the archive copy creation subsystem includes;

a data selection component, wherein the data selection component selects the subset of data to be copied based at least in part on the storage policy, wherein the selected subset of data is to be stored for a longer period of time than other data;

an indexing component, wherein the indexing component creates an index of content within the selected subset of data; and

a data adjustment component, communicatively coupled to the data selection component, wherein the data adjustment component

 

performs data compression of the selected subset of data;

 

performs data deduplication for the selected subset of data, or

 

performs both data compression and data deduplication for the selected subset of data.

2. The data storage system of claim 1, wherein the data originating from the file system corresponds to a primary copy data, wherein the selected subset of data is a subset of a secondary copy of the data, and wherein the storage manager server computer operates on the secondary copy.

3. The data storage system of claim 1, wherein the data selection component includes a user interface component capable of receiving a request from a user of the data storage system that identifies content to be searched in the selected subset of data, and wherein the archive copy creation subsystem searches the index of content in response to the received user request.

4. The data storage system of claim 1, wherein the data selection component includes a user interface component capable of receiving a request from a user of the data storage system that identifies a subset of data to be selected, and wherein the subset of data is stored to magnetic tape after being processed by the data indexing component and the data adjustment component.

5. The data storage system of claim 1, wherein the archive copy creation subsystem further comprises:

an encryption component, wherein the encryption component encrypts the selected subset of data, and

wherein the data adjustment component, the data indexing component, and the encryption component operate as a data process flow for archiving the selected subset of data to magnetic tape storage.

6. The data storage system of claim 1, wherein the indexing component creates an index of substantially unique identifiers for data objects within the subset of data;

wherein the data adjustment component identifies at least some redundancies within the subset of data using the index of substantially unique identifiers and creates a single-instance copy of the subset of data without the identified redundancies, and

wherein single-instance copy of the subset of data includes at least some of the substantially unique identifiers in headers of files of the subset of data.

7. A method of archiving an original set of data created by a file system, the method comprising:

at a first time, identifying one or more redundant data objects within the original set of data and creating a copy of the original set of data that does not include the identified one or more redundant data objects,

wherein the identifying is based on substantially unique identifiers created from data objects in the original set of data,

wherein the substantially unique identifiers are based on the content of the data objects in the original set, and,

wherein identifying includes searching an index of the substantially unique identifiers;

at a second time after the first time, encrypting or compressing the copy of the original set of data; and

at a third time after the first time and the second time, storing the copy of the original set of data as an archive copy,

wherein the archive copy is stored in a data storage medium separate from the file system,

wherein the archive copy includes at least one header file having at least some of the substantially unique identifiers,

wherein the archive copy is to be stored for a longer period of time than the production copy of the set of data,

wherein the archive copy is in a format that differs from a format of the production copy of the set of data, and

wherein data within the archive copy can not be used by applications that created the set of data without first decrypting, decompressing or converting the data within the archive copy.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein identifying one or more redundant data objects includes:

computing a hash value for each data object to be archived; and

comparing each of the hash values of the data objects.

9. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

at the first time, computing a hash value for each data object to be archived and storing the computed hash values in a table to be checked for determining data redundancies.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the original set of data is a production copy of a set of data that is for primary use by users of the set of data.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein at the second time, both encrypting and compressing the copy of the original set of data.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the data storage medium is magnetic tape, and wherein magnetic tape stores the archive copy along with an initial index of the data stored in the archive copy.

13. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

at a fourth time, later than the third time, receiving a request from a user that identifies content to be searched in the archive copy, and

at a fifth time, later than the fourth time, searching a content index of data stored in the archive copy, and wherein the archive copy is stored on magnetic tape.

14. At least one computer-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by at least one data processing device causes the creation of a copy of a production volume of data for archiving the production volume, comprising:

receiving or accessing two or more secondary copies of the production volume of the data,

wherein the two or more secondary copies include multiple instances of one or more data objects within the volume of data;

creating or accessing an index of substantially unique identifiers for each data object within the two or more secondary copies of the production volume;

identifying multiple instances of the one or more data objects using the index of the substantially unique identifiers;

storing the data from the two or more secondary copies into an archive copy,

wherein the stored data includes only one instance for at least one data object having multiple instances,

wherein the stored data includes at least part of the index of substantially unique identifiers in a header file of the archive copy; and

encrypting or compressing the data stored within the archive copy,

wherein the archive copy is for storing data for a longer period of time than the two or more secondary copies.

15. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein storing the data from the two or more secondary copies into the archive copy includes storing the one instance of the at least one data object in a first location within the archive copy and storing information related to other instances of the at least one data object in a second location within the archive copy, and wherein the archive copy is stored on magnetic tape.

16. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising:

receiving a request from a user that identifies content to be searched in the archive copy, and

searching a content index of data stored in the archive copy, and wherein the archive copy is stored on magnetic tape.

17. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein encrypting or compressing the data includes both encrypting and compressing the data stored within the archive copy.