Adaptable Multi-Layer Storage for Controlled Data Restoration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data management systems lack the capability to provide fine-granularity backups and quick recovery of user data across different cloud-based applications and platforms, leading to potential data loss due to end-user errors, and they do not allow for efficient search and restoration of data.
Innovation Solution
A data management and storage system that captures and stores snapshots of user data at hourly or minute intervals, allowing for fine-granularity backups, quick recovery, and aggregated search across multiple cloud platforms, using a cloud-based data management application that orchestrates data management tasks within the user's controlled storage service, with features like secondary layers for deduplication and controlled restoration of sensitive information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If data is stored in cloud-based services, then data accessibility and storage capacity are improved, but data security control and protection from user errors deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments data into multiple snapshots stored at different time intervals (hourly, daily, weekly). This segmentation allows selective restoration of specific time-point data while maintaining overall data security. The snapshot mechanism divides the data protection function into discrete, manageable units that can be independently controlled and restored.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a data management and storage system as an intermediary layer between the user and cloud storage services. This intermediary orchestrates snapshot creation, stores data locally or in controlled cloud storage, and manages restoration processes. It provides fine-granularity control over data protection without requiring users to directly manage complex storage configurations.
2Reliability
If full data backups are stored, then data recovery capability is improved, but storage costs and resource consumption worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates snapshots as copies of data at specific time points rather than maintaining continuous full backups. These snapshots are stored incrementally, capturing only changes from the previous snapshot. This copying approach enables data recovery while significantly reducing storage requirements compared to maintaining complete duplicate backups at all times.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of data storage from continuous full backups to periodic snapshots at configurable intervals (hourly, daily, weekly). This parameter change allows the system to balance recovery capability with storage costs by storing less data while maintaining the ability to restore to multiple historical time points.
3Measurement precision
If fine-granularity snapshots are stored, then data recovery precision is improved, but system complexity and management overhead worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The data management and storage system provides multiple functions through a single unified interface: snapshot creation, storage orchestration, data protection, and restoration. The system can operate with different snapshot intervals (hourly, daily, weekly) and handle multiple cloud storage providers, reducing management complexity while maintaining fine-granularity recovery precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically manages snapshot creation, storage, and restoration processes without requiring manual intervention for each operation. The data management application orchestrates the entire workflow, including identifying data changes between snapshots and coordinating with cloud storage services, thereby reducing user burden despite the complexity of fine-granularity snapshot management.
4Reliability
If data is protected through encryption and access control, then data security is improved, but data accessibility and restoration speed worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by creating and storing encrypted snapshots in advance at configured intervals. The data is protected through encryption and access control mechanisms during storage, but when restoration is needed, the pre-stored snapshots can be quickly retrieved and decrypted. This preliminary preparation of secure snapshots enables both data security and fast restoration by having protected data ready for immediate recovery.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for improving data back-up, recovery, and search across different cloud-based applications, services, and platforms are described. A data management and storage system may direct compute and storage resources within a customer's cloud-based data storage account to back-up and restore data while the customer retains full control of their data. The data management and storage system may direct the compute and storage resources within the customer's cloud-based data storage account to generate and store secondary layers that are used for generating search indexes, to generate and store shared space layers and user specific layers to facilitate the deduplication of email attachments and text blocks, to perform a controlled restoration of email snapshots such that sensitive information (e.g., restricted keywords) located within stored snapshots remains protected, and to detect and preserve emails that were received or transmitted and then deleted between two consecutive snapshots.