Continuous Object Store for Point-in-Time File System Recovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Legacy data protection and recovery solutions are fragmented, leading to high expenditures with little return, and manual recovery techniques often cause downtime due to human errors and process issues, resulting in 80% of unplanned downtime.
Innovation Solution
A data management system (DMS) that captures real-time, continuous data history as an object-oriented logical representation, allowing for any point-in-time reconstruction of file system components, with a continuous real-time object store that reintroduces data and ensures strong individual file integrity and crash consistency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual recovery techniques are used, then data can be restored, but human errors and process issues cause 80% of unplanned downtime
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs automated recovery operations without human intervention. The data management system automatically identifies the point-in-time for recovery, reconstructs the file system state using stored metadata and data blocks, and restores data to the primary file system, eliminating human errors that cause 80% of unplanned downtime
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by continuously capturing and storing file system metadata and data blocks in real-time before any potential failure occurs. This pre-captured data enables immediate automated recovery without requiring manual intervention or complex procedures
2Reliability
If real-time continuous data protection is implemented, then data integrity is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments data protection into separate components: metadata capture, data block capture, and recovery reconstruction. Each component handles a specific aspect of data protection independently, managing complexity through functional segmentation while maintaining comprehensive data integrity
Solution Approach 2:
The data management system acts as an intermediary layer between the primary file system and storage devices. It intercepts and stores metadata and data blocks without disrupting the primary file system operations, providing real-time protection while maintaining system simplicity through abstraction
3Loss of substance
If point-in-time reconstruction is enabled, then data loss is minimized, but storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates copies of metadata and data blocks at different points in time and stores them in a secondary storage location. These copies enable point-in-time reconstruction without requiring the primary storage to hold all historical versions simultaneously, minimizing data loss while managing storage requirements through selective copying
Data Source
AI summary
A data management system (DMS) includes a continuous real-time object store that captures all real-time activities, with associated object metadata information. The DMS is capable of reintroducing any point-in-time view of data ranging from a granular object to an entire file system. A set of algorithms (for creation of a file or directory, modification of a file or directory, deletion of a file or directory, and relocation/renaming of a file or directory) are used to generate and maintain a file system history in the DMS and to ensure that a latest version of a directory always refers to a latest version of its children until the directory changed. Any point-in-time recovery is implemented using the file system history in one of various ways to provide strong individual file integrity, exact point-in-time crash consistency, and/or recovery of last version of all files in the file system.