Abstract:
A storage appliance can be designed to facilitate efficient restore of multiple backed up files in a system that allows files to share data blocks. A data management application or storage OS names data blocks and communicates those names to the storage appliance when backing up to or through the storage appliance. The storage appliance can leverage the data block names when restoring a group of files by restoring at data block granularity instead of file granularity. Restoring at the granularity of the data blocks by their names allows the storage appliance to avoid repeatedly sending a same data block to the restore requestor (e.g., a storage OS or data management application) while still instructing the restore requestor how to reconstruct the corresponding file(s) with mappings between valid data ranges and the named data blocks.
Abstract:
In one embodiment, a node coupled to one or more storage devices executes a storage input/output (I/O) stack having a volume layer. The volume layer manages volume metadata embodied as mappings from offsets of a logical unit (LUN) to extent keys associated with storage locations for extents on the one or more storage devices. Volume metadata is maintained as a dense tree metadata structure representing successive points in time. The dense tree metadata structure has multiple levels, wherein a top level of the dense tree metadata structure represents newer volume metadata changes and descending levels of the dense tree metadata structure represent older volume metadata changes. The node accesses a latest version of changes to the volume metadata by searching from the top level to the descending levels in the dense tree metadata structure.
Abstract:
Intelligent snapshot tiering facilitates efficient management of snapshots and efficient restore of snapshots. For intelligent snapshot tiering, a storage appliance can limit cross-tier migration to invalidated data blocks of a snapshot instead of an entire snapshot. Based on a policy, a storage appliance can identify a snapshot to be migrated to another storage tier and then determine which data blocks are invalidated by an immediately succeeding snapshot. This would limit network bandwidth consumption to the invalidated data blocks and maintain the valid data blocks at the faster access storage tier since the more recent snapshots are more likely to be restored.
Abstract:
Intelligent snapshot tiering facilitates efficient management of snapshots and efficient restore of snapshots. For intelligent snapshot tiering, a storage appliance can limit cross-tier migration to invalidated data blocks of a snapshot instead of an entire snapshot. Based on a policy, a storage appliance can identify a snapshot to be migrated to another storage tier and then determine which data blocks are invalidated by an immediately succeeding snapshot. This would limit network bandwidth consumption to the invalidated data blocks and maintain the valid data blocks at the faster access storage tier since the more recent snapshots are more likely to be restored.
Abstract:
A storage appliance can be designed to facilitate efficient restore of multiple backed up files in a system that allows files to share data blocks. A data management application or storage OS names data blocks and communicates those names to the storage appliance when backing up to or through the storage appliance. The storage appliance can leverage the data block names when restoring a group of files by restoring at data block granularity instead of file granularity. Restoring at the granularity of the data blocks by their names allows the storage appliance to avoid repeatedly sending a same data block to the restore requestor (e.g., a storage OS or data management application) while still instructing the restore requestor how to reconstruct the corresponding file(s) with mappings between valid data ranges and the named data blocks.