Serverless Application Discovery for Coordinated Point-in-Time Backup
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional data storage management systems struggle to effectively protect serverless applications with distributed architectures, failing to provide integrated point-in-time views and coordinated copies across multiple cloud and non-cloud environments, leading to asynchronous and disassociated data protection.
Innovation Solution
A holistic data storage management system that discovers and coordinates serverless application assets, creating an application entity with associated dependencies, and generates synchronized copies for backup, replication, and migration across single-cloud, multi-cloud, and non-cloud environments, using an orchestration function to maintain data integrity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional data storage management systems are used for serverless applications, then system simplicity is maintained, but data protection reliability deteriorates due to asynchronous and disassociated backup operations across multiple environments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component that acts as a central coordinator between cloud and non-cloud storage environments. This intermediary manages the discovery, tracking, and coordination of serverless application assets across distributed environments, ensuring synchronized backup operations while maintaining system modularity. The intermediary translates between different storage environments and coordinates the backup process to achieve reliable data protection without requiring complete system redesign.
2Stability of the object's composition
If integrated point-in-time views are implemented across multiple cloud environments, then data consistency is improved, but the complexity of coordination and synchronization increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by performing discovery and tracking of serverless application assets before backup operations commence. The system proactively identifies applications, their dependencies, and associated data across cloud and non-cloud environments in advance, creating a prepared state for coordinated backup. This preliminary discovery phase establishes the foundation for consistent point-in-time views without requiring complex real-time synchronization during the actual backup process.
3Reliability
If discovery tracker is deployed in customer's cloud service account to detect applications, then data protection coverage is improved, but cloud service account costs and security risks increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs copying by creating a lightweight discovery tracker component that is deployed within the customer's cloud service account. This tracker component copies or replicates the essential functionality needed for application detection and tracking, while the actual backup and storage operations occur outside the customer's account. The tracker serves as a secure intermediary that gathers necessary information without requiring full system access, thereby improving coverage while minimizing security exposure and cost implications.
Data Source
AI summary
A holistic approach protects serverless applications in various cloud and/or non-cloud data center computing environments. An illustrative data storage management system deploys, or causes to be deployed, a discovery tracker function in a customer's cloud service account. The discovery tracker identifies and tracks what applications are executing therein, whether they are already known to the illustrative system or not. This aspect ensures that the system is up-to-date with a customer's cloud deployments, so that it may timely back up active applications, and conversely, so that it may dispose properly of copies of applications that are no longer deployed. The discovery tracker discovers application assets, relationships, and interoperability dependencies. The illustrative system creates a corresponding “application entity” that references the various assets. An orchestration function coordinates storage management operations to generate a set of copies of the application's discovered assets. The set of copies forms a point-in-time copy of the application.