Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery for Application Servers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing cloud-based backup services face challenges in ensuring continuous application uptime and data recovery during physical disasters, where the entire site hosting physical servers may go down, leading to prolonged downtime and significant impact on users/businesses.
Innovation Solution
A method that communicatively couples with an application-server LAN to discover and capture application data and metadata, identifies unique data blocks, uploads them to a cloud-computing platform, and uses a cloud-based appliance to manage the recovery of applications by downloading and reformating data for native cloud support, enabling continuous operation even if physical servers become unavailable.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If physical servers are used to host applications, then application performance and accessibility are maintained, but the system becomes vulnerable to physical disasters that can take the entire site offline
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a copy of the application and its data in a remote cloud environment. The backup system captures application data and metadata, uploads unique data blocks to cloud storage, and maintains a recovered application instance that can be activated if the physical server fails. This copying approach allows the application to continue operating from the cloud copy while the physical server handles normal workloads.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a backup system as an intermediary component between the physical server and the cloud. This intermediary captures data from the physical server, manages the upload to cloud storage, and coordinates the recovery process. The intermediary abstraction layer enables disaster recovery without requiring direct integration between the physical server and cloud infrastructure.
2Reliability
If continuous backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, then disaster recovery readiness is improved, but system complexity and overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the backup process into distinct functional components: data capture module, metadata management module, unique data block identification module, upload module, and recovery module. Each component handles a specific aspect of the backup/recovery process, making the overall system more manageable and easier to implement. The segmentation allows each module to be optimized independently.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by capturing application data and metadata during normal operation, identifying unique data blocks, and uploading them to cloud storage before a disaster occurs. The system maintains backup copies and recovery configurations in advance, so when a disaster strikes, the recovery process can be activated immediately without requiring complex real-time decision-making or data transfer operations.
3Reliability
If application data and metadata are captured and uploaded to cloud storage, then data protection is improved, but storage requirements and data management overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential information needed for recovery - unique data blocks and their associated metadata. Instead of copying the entire application state, the system identifies and uploads only the unique data blocks that need to be restored. This extraction approach significantly reduces the storage requirements compared to full application copying while maintaining sufficient recovery capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of data representation by organizing data into unique blocks with associated metadata. This parameter change allows for more efficient storage and retrieval - instead of storing complete application images, the system stores compressed, deduplicated data blocks that can be selectively reconstructed. The parameter change in data organization directly addresses the storage capacity challenge.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method includes the step of communicatively coupling with an application-server local area network (LAN). The physical servers are discovered in the application-server LAN. The applications running in one or more physical servers in the application-server LAN are discovered. The application data and the application metadata are captured. The application data and the application metadata are parsed. The unique data blocks of the application data and the application metadata are identified. The unique data blocks are uploaded to a cloud-computing platform. It is determined that the one or more physical servers running the application data and the application metadata is no longer available in the application-server LAN. A cloud-based appliance in the cloud-computing platform is placed in an operational state. An application associated with the application data and the application metadata is identified.