User-Supplied Expiry Timeframe for Data Object Storage Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data storage management systems are inefficient in handling limited-use data objects, such as email messages, as they rely on recipients to delete obsolete messages and often result in costly human effort and uneven results due to ignorance of message lifespans, leading to unnecessary storage and backup of data with short or predictable useful life.
Innovation Solution
A data storage management system that allows users to set a user-supplied expiry timeframe for data objects, enabling the system to proactively manage storage by excluding expired data from backups and archiving, and deleting them after their expiration, thereby reducing storage space and human intervention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional storage management systems backup all email messages without differentiation, then data protection coverage is improved, but storage costs and human effort increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments email messages into different categories based on their useful life characteristics. It identifies limited-use emails (those with predictable short lifespans like meeting announcements and test emails) versus long-term retention emails, applying different storage and backup strategies to each segment. This segmentation allows the system to protect important data while avoiding unnecessary backup of transient messages.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies different quality levels of storage management to different types of email messages. Limited-use emails receive minimal backup treatment or are excluded from backup entirely, while emails requiring long-term retention receive full backup protection. This local quality approach optimizes storage resource allocation by matching protection levels to actual data value and retention requirements.
2Quantity of substance
If recipients manually monitor and delete obsolete email messages, then storage space is reduced, but human effort and time consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables emails to self-manage their own lifecycle through embedded expiry metadata. When an email is created or received, it automatically carries information about its useful life duration. The storage management system reads this metadata and automatically deletes the email when its useful life expires, eliminating the need for recipients to manually monitor and delete obsolete messages while ensuring storage optimization.
3Ease of manufacture
If storage policies treat all user emails as an undifferentiated whole, then policy implementation is simplified, but storage efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary classification and tagging of email messages with expiry metadata at the time of creation or receipt. This preliminary action embeds retention policy information directly into each email, allowing the storage management system to automatically apply appropriate retention and deletion rules without complex real-time analysis. The preliminary tagging simplifies subsequent policy enforcement while enabling fine-grained storage efficiency optimizations.
Data Source
AI summary
Storage of data that no longer has a useful life is established by the data objects’ user(s) and overcomes predetermined rules required by information management policies. An illustrative data agent may receive instructions from an illustrative storage manager to perform secondary copy operations for certain data objects. The instructions may instruct that expiry-marked data objects are to be treated based on parsing each data object’s user-supplied expiry timeframe. The illustrative system (i) will delete expired data objects including expired secondary copies; (ii) will refrain from making secondary copies of expired data objects; and (iii) if an expiry-marked data object is not expired, the illustrative system will make secondary copies according to the instructions, but will track those expiry-marked secondary copies for future deletion after they expire, (iv) and will delete expired secondary copies even if the original expiry-marked data object has been deleted from the system prior to its expiration.