Remote Mirror Data Backup System with Domain Agents
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional remote mirroring over wide area networks faces significant delays and performance degradation, leading to long recovery times and high costs, especially in multi-site environments with varying storage needs and network conditions.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for remote mirror data backup that employs a multi-agent environment with domain mirror agents for dynamic storage allocation and communication, ensuring data consistency and optimizing storage resource utilization across multiple sites, including the allocation of virtual mirror devices, remote mirroring operations, data consistency checks, and recovery mechanisms, which allows for flexible data protection policies and reduced costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If remote mirroring is implemented over a wide area network, then data safety against disasters is improved, but network delay increases and storage access performance degrades
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the remote mirroring system into multiple independent domain sites, each with its own domain mirror agent managing local storage resources. This segmentation allows each domain to operate semi-autonomously, reducing the impact of network delays on overall system performance while maintaining data safety across sites.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic storage allocation where domain mirror agents can dynamically assign and reallocate storage resources across domain sites based on current network conditions and storage needs. This dynamic adjustment optimizes performance by adapting to varying network delays and availability.
2Ease of operation
If conventional logical volume management is used, then storage resource sharing is simplified, but adaptability to multi-site environments with varying storage needs is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends conventional logical volume management by making it universal across multiple domain sites. Each domain mirror agent can manage storage resources locally while also coordinating with other domains, enabling the same logical volume management mechanism to function effectively in diverse multi-site environments with varying storage needs.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces domain mirror agents as intermediary components between conventional logical volume management and multi-site environments. These agents translate and adapt logical volume operations to work across different domain sites, maintaining ease of operation while enabling multi-site adaptability.
3Reliability
If synchronous replication is used, then data consistency is improved, but replication performance over WAN is significantly impaired
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs dynamic replication modes that can switch between synchronous and asynchronous replication based on network conditions and storage needs. This allows the system to maintain data consistency when network conditions permit synchronous operations while achieving better replication performance when asynchronous mode is activated due to WAN delays.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a method and a system for remote mirror data backup over a network. The system comprises a local domain site and at least one remote domain site, wherein each site has one domain mirror agent and one storage server system thereon. Each storage server system includes one or more storage servers, and one of the domain mirror agents is predefined as the master mirror agent. With such a remote mirror system, the method performs the operations of virtual mirror device allocation, mirror operation, data consistency check, third mirror allocation, and recovery of local storage device. The present invention expands the conventional logical volume management (LVM) to a network environment, effectively improving the backup/recovery capability of remote mirroring.