Management Database Archiving for Scalable Backup Recovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing information management systems face performance degradation due to the exponential growth of backup job metadata, leading to impractical slowdowns in managing large-scale data environments, where hundreds or thousands of client computing devices require backup operations.
Innovation Solution
Implement a recovery manager that transfers metadata and backup job information from a storage manager to a recovery manager, maintaining a minimal management database at the storage manager, allowing the recovery manager to handle restoration operations without impacting the storage manager's performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the information management system maintains a comprehensive management database to track all backup jobs, then the system can monitor and manage backup operations effectively, but the database continuously grows and causes performance degradation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the management database into two separate databases: a first management database maintained by the storage manager for active backup operations, and a second management database maintained by the recovery manager for historical backup job information. This segmentation prevents the first database from growing indefinitely while preserving the ability to track and manage backup jobs effectively.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts historical backup job metadata from the first management database and transfers it to the second management database. This extraction removes the burden of storing extensive historical information from the storage manager's database, preventing performance degradation while maintaining comprehensive backup job tracking capabilities through the second database.
2Reliability
If the system backs up data from thousands of client devices, then comprehensive data protection is achieved, but the management database grows exponentially and becomes impractical to use
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments database management responsibilities between two separate managers: the storage manager handles active backup operations for thousands of client devices, while the recovery manager handles historical backup job information. This segmentation allows comprehensive data protection coverage without overwhelming the storage manager's database with exponential growth from managing thousands of clients.
Solution Approach 2:
The recovery manager acts as an intermediary that receives and stores backup job metadata from the storage manager. This intermediary role allows the system to maintain comprehensive data protection for thousands of clients while the recovery manager absorbs the burden of storing and managing the exponentially growing historical backup information.
3Reliability
If backup job information is retained indefinitely for recovery purposes, then data recovery capability is preserved, but the storage manager's database performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts backup job metadata from the storage manager's first management database and stores it in the recovery manager's second management database. This extraction preserves data recovery capability by maintaining comprehensive backup job information in the second database, while eliminating the performance deterioration that would occur if all this information remained in the storage manager's database.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copy of backup job metadata in the second management database maintained by the recovery manager. This copying ensures that data recovery capability is preserved through the copied information, while the original storage manager's database remains lightweight and performant for active backup operations.
Data Source
AI summary
A storage manager for an information management system determines whether one or more predetermined conditions have been met for transferring metadata of previously performed backup jobs stored in a first management database. A backup job may correspond to a backup operation of a primary storage device of a first client computing device. In response to a determination that one or more of the predetermined conditions have been met, the storage manager may transfer metadata for a second plurality of backup jobs to a second management database of a recovery manager. The recovery manager may receive a request to restore data to the primary storage device of the first client computing device based on the metadata of the second plurality of backup jobs. A media agent managed by the recovery manager may then restore the requested data to the primary storage device of the first client computing device.