AUTOMATED, TIERED DATA RETENTION

• US 20140344234A1
• Filed: 08/04/2014
• Published: 11/20/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/08/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: AMARENDRAN, Arun Prasad, CHATTERJEE, Tirthankar, VARADHARAJAN, Prakash
• Granted Patent: US 9,262,449 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/694
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1458 Management of the backup or restore process
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/185 Hierarchical storage management [HSM] systems, e.g. file migration or policies thereof details of archiving G06F16/11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/21 Design, administration or maintenance of databases

Abstract

The automatic, tiered retention storage system according to certain aspects can automatically classify data items based on content, such as based on the inclusion of search terms in the data items, or based on metadata or other characteristics associated with the data. Based on the classification, the system can assign the data items to corresponding user-defined “buckets.” In some embodiments, each bucket is associated with a particular tier in the storage system having a specific retention period.

Claims

1. A method for automatic, tiered data retention in a networked data storage system, comprising:

copying primary data comprising a plurality of data items generated by one or more applications executing on one or more client computers from primary storage to secondary storage;

accessing a user-defined data retention policy comprising a set of classification criteria for assigning the data items to a plurality of retention containers within secondary storage, each retention container associated with a particular retention period, the classification criteria for at least a first of the-retention containers comprising at least one search term;

using one or more computer processors, parsing through the data items to determine which data items contain an instance of the search term associated with the first retention container; and

for one or more first data items that contain an instance of the search term associated with the first retention container;

assigning the first data items to the first retention container at least in part based on the determination that the first data items contain the search term; and

pruning the first data items from the first retention container only after the first data items have been retained for a duration that is at least as long as the retention period associated with the first retention container.