Legacy Data Restoration via Metadata Extraction
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Enterprises face challenges in restoring historic data due to obsolete technology, high operational costs, and risks associated with legacy infrastructure, including unsuccessful recoveries, data loss, and the complexity of migrating encrypted data, which often results in data integrity issues and increased capital investment.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for restoring historic data that involves receiving a request from a user through a transformation backup server, extracting metadata from legacy storage devices, determining the format of the historic data, and using predefined execution processes to extract and restore the data without large-scale migration or data conversion, thereby eliminating the need for dual backup infrastructure and reducing costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If legacy backup infrastructure is retained for historical data recovery, then data recovery capability is maintained, but operational cost increases and recovery reliability decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts metadata from legacy backup media and stores it in a modern, readable format in the new backup server. This allows the legacy storage media to be fully utilized without retaining the legacy backup infrastructure, resolving the contradiction by removing the complex dual infrastructure while maintaining recovery capability through extracted metadata
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary process that converts legacy backup media formats into a universal readable format through metadata extraction and conversion. This intermediary layer enables the new backup server to access and restore data from legacy media without requiring dual infrastructure, thereby maintaining reliability while reducing complexity
2Adaptability or versatility
If migration tools are used to migrate data from legacy platforms, then data can be transferred to new infrastructure, but data integrity is compromised and migration success rate decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential metadata from legacy backup media and stores it in a standardized format. This extraction approach avoids the complex data migration process that compromises integrity, while still enabling full data recovery capability through the extracted metadata, thus resolving the contradiction between adaptability and reliability
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of migrating data from legacy to modern formats (which compromises integrity), the patent inverts the approach by extracting metadata from legacy media and storing it in modern format, then using this metadata to directly restore original data to the requested server. This inversion eliminates the migration step that causes integrity issues while maintaining full adaptability
3Ease of operation
If upfront data migration is performed to new target media, then future recovery operations are simplified, but capital investment and time consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary extraction and conversion of metadata from legacy backup media before the actual data recovery operation. This preliminary action simplifies future recovery operations by having the metadata ready in a readable format, while avoiding the time-consuming full data migration process, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and time loss
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts only the necessary metadata information from legacy media and stores it in a standardized format for future recovery operations. This extraction approach provides the simplicity needed for future operations without requiring time-consuming full data migration, resolving the contradiction by taking out only what is needed rather than migrating everything
4Adaptability or versatility
If encrypted data is migrated between platforms, then data can be accessed on new systems, but encryption keys are lost and data becomes inaccessible
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts metadata including encryption keys from legacy backup media and stores them in the new backup server. This allows encrypted data to remain on legacy media while the keys are extracted and made available for decryption, resolving the contradiction by extracting keys separately rather than migrating encrypted data, thus maintaining both accessibility and reliability
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure discloses method and data restoration system for restoring historic data of an enterprise. The data restoration system receives a request from a user through a transformation backup server, for restoring historic data from a legacy storage device of a plurality of legacy storage devices, associated with an enterprise, along with metadata associated with the historic data. The metadata is previously extracted and stored in a format recognizable by the transformation backup server. The data restoration system determines format of the historic data based on the metadata and extracts historic data from the legacy storage device, using at least one of the metadata and a predefined execution process associated with the historic data, based on the format of the historic data. Thereafter, extracted historic data is restored to the user. The present disclosure recovers legacy data as when required without large migration or any data conversion.