Federated Restore Cluster Shared Volumes Backup Consistency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Clustered environments present challenges in backup and recovery due to inconsistent redundant copies of applications across nodes, leading to outdated backups when changes are not immediately replicated, resulting in potential data loss and system downtime.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for performing federated backups and restores in a clustered environment, where a master node designates slave nodes to sequentially backup workloads, using volume shadow copy snapshots to ensure consistency, and allows for restoring workloads on their active nodes or specified locations, with external coordination by servers like EMC NetWorker.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If redundant copies of applications are maintained on multiple cluster nodes for high availability, then system reliability is improved, but backup consistency deteriorates because changes may not be immediately replicated across all nodes
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by forcing workload updates to be written to the cluster shared volume before initiating the backup process. This ensures that all redundant copies across cluster nodes are synchronized and up-to-date before the backup is taken, eliminating consistency issues in the backup data.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the backup coordination process monitors and tracks the replication status of workload changes across cluster nodes. It waits for confirmation that all nodes have received and applied updates before proceeding with the backup, ensuring consistent backup data while maintaining high availability.
2Quantity of substance
If backups are taken from individual nodes or common storage in a clustered environment, then backup storage requirements are reduced, but backup accuracy deteriorates due to outdated and inconsistent data
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a backup coordination process as an intermediary that manages the backup operation across the entire cluster. This coordinator ensures that workloads are updated and synchronized before backup, and manages the backup process to capture consistent data from all nodes, thereby maintaining backup accuracy without requiring excessive storage resources.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary synchronization of workload data to the cluster shared volume before the backup operation begins. This preliminary action ensures that the backup captures accurate and consistent data from all cluster nodes, eliminating the need for redundant storage of inconsistent backup copies.
3Device complexity
If traditional backup methods are used in clustered environments without coordination, then device complexity is reduced, but recovery time increases due to inconsistent and outdated backup data
Solution Approach 1:
The backup coordination process acts as an intermediary that orchestrates the backup operation across the cluster, managing the complexity of coordinating multiple nodes and ensuring data consistency. This centralized coordination reduces recovery time by ensuring that accurate, consistent backup data is available, eliminating the need for complex post-backup verification and data reconciliation processes.
4Ease of operation
If workloads are restored without identifying their active node, then ease of operation is improved, but system reliability deteriorates because workloads must be migrated rather than restored in place
Solution Approach 1:
The restore process implements feedback by querying the cluster to identify which node is currently active for each workload. This feedback mechanism ensures that workloads are restored to their correct active nodes, maintaining system availability and reliability while keeping the restore operation simple through automated node identification.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, system, article of manufacture, and apparatus for restoring workload backups in a clustered environment is discussed. In some embodiments, each node in the environment may be sequentially restored based on a request received from a remote client. Additionally or alternatively, the process may be controlled from an external server.