Inclusion Map for Image Backup Block Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Image backup methods often include unwanted files, leading to increased storage size, bandwidth overhead, and processing time due to the inability to exclude specific types of files, such as music and movie files, resulting in unnecessary retention of content blocks.
Innovation Solution
Pre-snapshot tracking of content blocks using an inclusion map to identify and exclude unwanted files, allowing for the creation of image backups without the need to determine block locations post-snapshot, thereby reducing storage size, bandwidth, and processing time.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If image backup backs up all allocated blocks of the source storage, then the backup speed is improved and file system overhead is reduced, but unwanted files are needlessly retained in the backup increasing storage size and bandwidth overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary scanning of the file system before the image backup process to identify and locate content blocks of unwanted files. This pre-positioning of block location information allows the backup process to skip unwanted blocks during the actual backup, maintaining high backup speed while reducing backup size by excluding unwanted files.
Solution Approach 2:
The backup process is segmented into two distinct phases: (1) a pre-scan phase that identifies and locates blocks of unwanted files without backing them up, and (2) the main backup phase that only copies blocks of wanted files. This segmentation allows the system to maintain the speed advantages of image backup while eliminating the waste of backing up unwanted content.
2Device complexity
If image backup includes all allocated blocks without file awareness, then the backup process is simplified and seeking is reduced, but processing time for restoring the backup increases due to unwanted files
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary identification and location tracking of unwanted file blocks before the backup process. By pre-marking these blocks for exclusion, the restoration process can skip them directly, reducing restoration processing time without adding significant complexity to the backup process itself.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary data structure (inclusion map or exclusion list) that stores block location information of unwanted files. This intermediary allows the backup and restoration processes to efficiently identify and skip unwanted blocks without requiring complex file system analysis during restoration, thus reducing processing time while maintaining process simplicity.
3Loss of time
If pre-snapshot tracking of content blocks is performed, then the time between snapshot and backup completion is reduced, but additional processing overhead is introduced during the scan phase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs the scanning and block location tracking as a preliminary action immediately following the snapshot. By completing this identification phase before the actual backup begins, the system reduces the overall time between snapshot and backup completion. The additional processing overhead is confined to this preliminary phase and does not affect the main backup operation.
Data Source
AI summary
Tracking content blocks in a source storage for inclusion in an image backup of the source storage. In one example embodiment, a method for tracking content blocks in a source storage for inclusion in an image backup of the source storage may include identifying files in a source storage for inclusion in image backups of the source storage, tracking, in an inclusion map and prior to a first snapshot time, locations in the source storage of content blocks of the identified files, tracking, in the inclusion map and prior to the first snapshot time, modifications to the locations in the source storage of the content blocks, taking a snapshot of the source storage at the first snapshot time, and backing up, subsequent to the first snapshot time, the content blocks tracked in the inclusion map from the snapshot into a full image backup.