Delta Disk Backup Restoration for Rapid Recovery
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional disaster recovery methods are inefficient, leading to prolonged server downtime and network overload during data restoration, as they require significant time to copy and prepare backups, which is unacceptable for business-critical applications.
Innovation Solution
The system generates delta-disks through recovery algorithms applied to backups as background activity, creating a virtual delta-disk for rapid deployment on new hardware, allowing for immediate recovery without extensive storage requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional backup restoration methods are used to transfer data from backup storage to server, then data can be recovered, but the recovery time becomes extremely long (many hours) due to limited network bandwidth
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by creating a bootable recovery environment from the backup that can be immediately deployed to restore critical system functions. Instead of waiting for complete data transfer, the bootable image contains essential system files and configurations that enable the server to become operational quickly, with remaining data restored in the background.
2Reliability
If complete backup data is transferred over network to server, then full data recovery is achieved, but network bandwidth is overloaded and transfer time extends to many hours
Solution Approach 1:
The restoration process is segmented into two independent phases: (1) rapid deployment of a bootable recovery environment containing critical system files, and (2) background restoration of remaining data. This segmentation allows the network to handle only essential data initially, avoiding bandwidth overload while ensuring complete data recovery eventually.
3Loss of time
If bootable image is created from backup for rapid restoration, then recovery time is reduced, but storage space requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential bootable components and critical system files from the complete backup to create a compact bootable image. This extracted image is sufficient to boot the system and perform initial restoration operations, eliminating the need to store and transfer the entire backup dataset immediately, thus reducing storage requirements while maintaining rapid recovery capability.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are systems and methods restoring a computing system. The described method includes emulating a virtual disk using a backup of the computing device and generating an ancillary virtual machine (VM). The method includes determining and writing, to a delta disk linked to the virtual disk, configuration modifications to the ancillary VM that enable booting of the ancillary VM using the virtual disk on a different device with dissimilar hardware as the computing device. Responsive to receiving a request to perform recovery of the computing device, the method comprises restoring the backup by creating on the different device a recovery virtual machine (VM) having a base virtual disk emulated from the backup, and modifying the recovery VM by attaching the delta disk having the configuration modifications.