Failback Data Restoration via Reverse Connection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current disaster recovery systems face inefficiencies during failback operations, where most data traffic goes from a remote computing system to the data center, leading to wasted CPU cycles and network bandwidth due to polling mechanisms and potential latency, especially with security restrictions limiting the remote system's ability to initiate communications.
Innovation Solution
Establishing a reverse connection resource between the on-premises and remote computing systems, allowing the remote system to initiate data restoration operations, thereby reversing the traditional client-server roles and reducing the need for continuous polling and improving data transfer efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the data center continuously polls the remote computing system to check for data readiness, then data restoration can proceed, but CPU cycles and network bandwidth are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of the data center (initiator) polling the remote computing system (responder) to check for data readiness, the patent inverts the communication pattern by allowing the remote computing system to initiate communications and notify the data center when data is ready for restoration. This reversal eliminates the continuous polling mechanism and its associated waste of CPU cycles and network bandwidth.
2Loss of energy
If the data center waits for a certain time period before retrying data readiness requests, then polling frequency is reduced, but latency is introduced into the restoration process
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the remote computing system actively notifies the data center when data becomes ready for restoration. This feedback loop eliminates the need for the data center to wait for predetermined time periods before retrying requests, as the remote system proactively provides information about data readiness, thereby reducing restoration latency without requiring continuous polling.
3Reliability
If security restrictions prevent the remote computing system from initiating communications, then data security is maintained, but the remote system cannot efficiently send data back
Solution Approach 1:
The patent addresses the security restriction by inverting the traditional initiator-responder relationship. Instead of requiring the remote computing system to initiate communications (which is blocked by security restrictions), the data center establishes an outbound connection to the remote system during normal operations. This pre-established connection allows the remote system to send data back efficiently during failback operations without violating security policies, as the communication channel was initiated from the data center's side.
Data Source
AI summary
A data center communicates with a cloud-based backup system. Client-server roles are established such that a client role is assigned to the data center and a server role is assigned to the cloud-based backup system. On an ongoing basis, backup operations are performed. In the event of disaster or other cause of an outage of the data center, a failover protocol might be invoked such that the cloud-based backup system takes on additional processing operations beyond the aforementioned backup operations. After remediation, the data center issues a data restoration message to the cloud-based backup system. The remediated data center initiates a failback protocol that reverses the client-server roles of the data center and the cloud-based backup system such that the server role is assigned to the data center and the client role is assigned to the cloud-based backup system. After performing system restoration operations, the roles may be reversed again.